Stephanie Nyombayire


Stephanie Nyombayire is a Rwandan activist and public official. She is the director general of communication in Office of the President of Rwanda and a representative for the Genocide Intervention Network.
𝕏 presssecrwanda

Biography

Nyombayire was born in 1986. She graduated from Kent School in Kent, Connecticut in 2004 and Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania in June 2008.
She lost dozens of her family members in the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, although she herself was not in the country at the time. As a result, she felt particularly attuned to situations of genocide, and in 2004, joined with Mark Hanis and Andrew Sniderman to form the Genocide Intervention Network to advocate for intervention in the Darfur conflict in Sudan.
MTVUniversity chose Nyombayire as one of three students to report on the atrocities in Darfur. Denied entry into Sudan, she traveled to Chad and met with refugees in an effort to show the world the atrocities. She was accompanied by Nate Wright and Andrew Karlsruher, with a small film production crew from MTV who produced the telefilm Translating Genocide. The documentary aired on March 12, 2006. On April 6, 2005, Nyombayire gave a speech at the Hart Senate Office Building attended by members of Congress in an effort to get the Bush administration to take decisive action to end the genocide. On September 25, 2006, the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act passed the House.
Nyombayire gave the introduction for U.S. President Bill Clinton at the Genocide Intervention Network's July 13, 2005 Campus Progress student conference where Clinton offered an apology for the world's inaction during the Rwandan genocide.
In 2007, Stephanie was named one of Glamour magazine's Top Ten College Women for her work on Darfur. Stephanie was honored by Rwandan First Lady Jeannette Kagame for her role in founding the Genocide Intervention Network, and in 2008 was invited to speak on a Clinton Global Initiative panel on student activism.

News Coverage