Watch Stephanie Nyombayire '08 at Clinton
Global Initiative Event on Student Activism

by Alisa Giardinelli
04/07/2008

Stephanie Nyombayire '08 is a co-founder of the Genocide Intervention Network.

Stephanie Nyombayire '08 spoke during a Clinton Global Initiative event last month on a panel that focused on some of the ways in which students and universities are building peace on campus and beyond. In her opening remarks, she said: 

"When I found out what was going on in Darfur, I knew part of the reason genocide was allowed to happen was because people chose silence.  I didn't want to be part of the people who choose silence in the face of genocide, who choose silence in the face of human rights abuse. So we decided, as students at Swarthmore, that we were going to break the silence that surrounds genocide, break the impunity that surrounds genocide, and that we would do it as students."  Watch the discussion; Stephanie begins at 6:48.

Over winter break, Rwanda's First Lady Jeannette Kagame honored Stephanie as a Young Rwandan Woman Achiever in a ceremony that launched her Imbuto Foundation, designed to encourage innovation and hard work among Rwandan women and reward young women who have shown exceptional resilience to develop themselves and others. Stephanie, a political science major and psychology minor from Kigali, Rwanda, was recognized for co-founding the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net) to address the situation in Darfur.

In addition to her work with GI-Net, Stephanie has reported on the Darfur crisis from the Chad-Sudan border with MTV and testified before the Texas Senate Commission, which unanimously passed Senate bill 247 on Divestment from Sudan. In 2005, she introduced former President Bill Clinton at a national Campus Progress conference that united thousands of Democrats across the country. Last spring, Glamour magazine named her one of the 10 top college women in the country.