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Online GIS for global awareness: Rwanda genocide

It is already 19 years from the Rwandan Genocide and United Nations failure. In this post I will not talk about the international failure about the event; I'd rather prefer to introduce the use of online geographic information systems (GIS) to create global awareness about different topics.

Internet changed the way we communicate and socialize. It allows to intantly share information with the whole world, reaching more people than any other social media. In turn, GIS mapping is an interesting and effective way to engage people in learning about the world, learn geography and study specific issues. Thus, the combination of those two technologies seems a perfect way to share events and create awareness. Different foundations already used those combination for creating awareness about different topics like environment, social justice or climate change.

I consider the crisis in Darfur kml one of the best campaigns to communicate and create awareness about a specific event. Although there are other initiatives to create awareness about genocides, I still have not found any about the Rwandan genocide.

In this post I want to share an online application with some information about such event. The current version contains: Six memorials, three location related to the event and further books and movies about those events and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Two online GIS application are included, both with the same information. One using the cloud service from ESRI (GIS frame 1), and the other using Google Earth (GIS frame 2)


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GIS frame 1. Information about Rwandan genocide using the cloud GIS service from ERSI
For better visualization follow the link



GIS frame 2. Information about Rwandan genocide using the cloud GIS service from Google Earth
For better visualization follow the link

References and Further Reading
Geographies of the holocaust
Crisis in Darfur
Global awareness
Shake hands with the devil
Rwanda genocide in ESRI cloud GIS
Rwanda genocide in Google Earth cloud GIS
Hotel Rwanda foundation


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