Two Harvard-educated lawyers, Binaifer T. Nowrojee and Christopher J. Ayres, described personal experiences with the 1994 mass genocide in Rwanda in a speech Monday to the Harvard African Students' Association (HASA).

Both Nowrojee and Ayres have worked in Africa and are activists for human rights in Rwanda.

Nowrojee, who is originally from Kenya and is now a tutor in Lowell House, worked with Human Rights Watch to successfully push the United Nations to recognize rape as a war crime.

Ayres, a Harvard Law School graduate and current director of the Cambridge-based Amahoro Advocacy Clinic and Shelter Inc., began a term as the UN attorney in Rwanda in 1994.

As a result of Nowrojee's work, rape is now prosecuted as a war crime by the International Criminal Tribunal, which is investigating the situation in Rwanda.

During the speech, Nowrojee discussed sexual violence in the country.

"I found that women were held in sexual slavery. Often women were brutalized by gun butts, sticks, and other objects and then mutilated," Nowrojee said.

"[One] 16-year-old who was raped repeatedly could not get medical attention. Some time later, the girl was treated by UN medics and they found that she had a severe infection and was HIV positive," she said.

Ayers discussed how the conflict affected people of all ages.

He told of a 13-year-old boy who had lost his family to genocide. Ayers took the boy into his family, but after a year the boy was forced into the military, and began training for the war.

"Soon after, he was brought back to me, rolled up in a carpet with a hole in his head," Ayers said.

"Leon Pierre was by far not the youngest soldier. Some were as young as 10," Ayers added.

The problems in Rwanda date back to the colonial times when the Tutsi, who comprise 15 percent of Rwanda's population, were the favored group of the area's Belgian colonizers.

When independence came, the Hutu tribe, who comprised 85 percent of the population, took power and have held power since. When it was feared that President Habyarimana would give some power to the Tutsis, he was assassinated and a three-month long genocide of Tutsis began. The result was death of over 500,000 Rwandans, Nowrojee said.

Macani Toungara '02, who is from the Ivory Coast, said that the speeches shed new light on the genocide in Rwanda.