Macron and Kagame Inaugurate Paris Memorial to 1994 Rwandan Genocide Victims

French President Emmanuel Macron and Rwandan President Paul Kagame inaugurated a memorial on Tuesday honoring the victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis. The double stele created by artist Grada Kilomba stands on a lava stone slab at the Esplanade Habib-Bourguiba on Quai d'Orsay in Paris, overlooking the Seine.

The memorial was installed in May 2026 and has been in place for several days as of June 2, 2026.

It was commissioned by France in memory of the victims. The inauguration took place at a joint ceremony attended by both presidents. An inscription on the memorial, written in French, English, Kinyarwanda and Swahili, recalls the dates from April 7 to July 4, 1994, and states that more than a million men, women and children were massacred because they were Tutsi.

The four narrow sides list the UNESCO main sites of remembrance: Nyamata, Murambi, Gisozi and Bisesero in Rwanda. More than one million Tutsis were killed over a period of just over 100 days in 1994, according to France 24. The work is striking in its human scale, with a few sober words engraved in the metal recalling the tragedy.