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Pauline Nyiramasuhuko

Rwandan politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ271767 ↗
Source-derived summary

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko (born 1 April 1946) is a Rwandan politician who was the Minister for Family Welfare and the Advancement of Women. She was convicted of having incited troops and militia to carry out rape during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. She was tried for genocide and incitement to rape as part of the "Butare Group" at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. In June 2011, she was convicted of seven charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. Nyiramasuhuko is the first woman to be convicted of genocide by the ICTR, and the first woman to be convicted of genocidal rape.

Early life and career

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was born in the small farming community of Ndora, in the province of Butare, to a poor Hutu family. She attended high school at the Ecole sociale de Karubanda. There, she became friends with Agathe Habyarimana, the future wife of Juvénal Habyarimana, who became President of Rwanda in 1973.

Nyiramasuhuko trained and worked as a social worker. In 1968 she married Maurice Ntahobali, with whom she had four children.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pauline Nyiramasuhuko” is rwandan politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pauline, Nyiramasuhuko and Rwandan, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1946, 1994, 2011, 1973—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1946-04. For this dossier, Pauline, Nyiramasuhuko and Rwandan is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “rwandan politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q271767. VIAF identifies the subject as 309840664. The Library of Congress control number is no2014082837. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1994, 2011 and 1973.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Pauline Nyiramasuhuko”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Pauline Nyiramasuhuko primary sources, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko archive and Pauline research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Pauline Nyiramasuhuko”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Pauline Nyiramasuhuko” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.