French President Emmanuel Macron and Rwandan President Paul Kagame have jointly inaugurated a new memorial in central Paris dedicated to the victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, a ceremony laden with symbolism for both countries.

The monument, titled The Archive, stands on the banks of the Seine, within sight of France’s key institutions of power. Designed by Berlin-based Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba, it consists of two imposing black brass steles. Their stark, minimalist form is intended to evoke both gravestones and open books, inviting reflection on memory, responsibility and the written record of history.

An inscription on the work pays tribute to the estimated 800,000 men, women and children, most of them Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, who were massacred over roughly one hundred days in 1994. Here, like an archive, rest the voices and words, the memories and experiences, the feelings and hopes of the victims and the survivors, the text reads, framing the memorial as a living repository rather than a closed chapter.

Macron described the inauguration as the culmination of a long and patient quest for truth, casting the memorial as part of a broader effort to confront France’s role in Rwanda. In a world where empires sometimes have the temptation to falsify history, in this moment also where the past is a battlefield, telling the truth is more necessary than ever. This is the condition for peace, he said.

The genocide was triggered when the plane carrying Rwanda’s then president, Juvénal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, was shot down as it approached Kigali. The attack was swiftly blamed on the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front. Within hours, extremist Hutu militias, backed by elements of the army and police, launched a campaign of extermination against Tutsis and Hutu opponents.

Rwandan authorities have long accused the international community of ignoring clear warnings and failing to intervene. Kagame, addressing the gathering in Paris, said France had been in a unique position to observe and to act. It took too long for France to come to terms with its role, causing additional pain and on some points we still have not found consensus, he noted.

Yet Kagame also acknowledged the depth of France’s recent reckoning. No country has gone as far as France in setting the record straight and accepting its part in the tragedy, he said, framing the new memorial as both a gesture of remembrance and a marker of a fragile but evolving reconciliation.