Arusha — A London-based human rights organisation, African Rights, says that the children survivors have been left to bear the legacy of physical injuries and emotional anguish, often without even minimal support of a social network, in a new report published on eve of the 12th commemoration of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The 28 page report titled: "A wounded generation .The children who survived the Rwanda's genocide", details the impact the genocide has had on children survivors. It contains testimonies from various children, who were all under 20 years during the genocide.

According to the report, while the signs of trauma were most evident in the very young in the first two or three years after the genocide, the fact that the trauma is today particularly pronounced among survivors in secondary schools, speaks volumes of the hurt and injury in the hearts and minds of those who were very young in 1994.

The majority of the children interviewed talk of suffering during the loss of their loved ones including parents, sisters, brothers and other relatives.

"I was the only survivor from my family. I became an orphan at a very young age. I had to leave school, not for lack of means, but because of psychological problems. I had trouble remembering things after the massacre", said Vestine Umugwaneza who was 11 years old during the genocide. He has sworn never to forget the events of 1994.

Another survivor, Charlotte Ingabire, who was aged 15 during the genocide, does not see the worth of living without members of her entire family who were all killed in front of her.

"I am dead, even if others see me as alive. I hid so I wouldn't die. This is how I've come to be suffering alone, with no consolation and no-one to rely on in the difficult conditions in which I find myself today", lamented Ingabire.

Another shocking testimony is that of a girl raped several times during the genocide when she was only seven years old.

Only identified as Devota, she was kept and raped by a man for two months. The man fled to Zaire and left her in the hands of street boys in Gikongoro market (south) who also sexually abused her in turns.

A woman rescued her and took her to her house but the husband of the Good Samaritan raped her too. She was infected with a sexually transmitted disease and she is still ill.

The human rights body states that a small number of people were saved from the genocide in 1994 and in the intervening years few have been protected from its consequences.

"In their desolation and despair, these youngsters echo each other. Their words, which bear witness to a series of personal tragedies, are a prolonged collective indictment of the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. But they are also evidence of unacceptable neglect on the part of both national and international actors over the past 12 years."

The genocide resulted in the deaths of an estimated one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate ethnic Hutus.