If the hand-wringing of pundits has left you in despair that this country is beyond healing, learn from the women of Rwanda.
Most people rightly recall that small nation in East Africa as the site of a 1994 genocide of unspeakable brutality, in which as many as one million (mostly Tutsi) died in a span of 100 days. With machetes and clubs, Hutu extremists slaughtered not only neighbors, but even Tutsi in their own families. The country was decimated — the equivalent of 32 million Americans murdered this fall.
What fewer people know is that when the killing ended, the impossible happened. Women created 15,000 village councils that formed a leadership pipeline; they designed a grass-roots justice process that allowed healing; they took on influential roles historically denied them...
from The Hill
Ambassador Swanee Hunt
Ambassador Hunt served as U.S. Ambassador to Austria from 1993 to 1997. She currently serves as the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and as chair of Inclusive Security in Washington.