Odette Nyiramilimo

Who is Odette Nyiramilimo?

Odette Nyiramilimo is a Rwandan physician and senator. She served as Minister of State for Social Affairs in the government of Paul Kagame from March 2000 to October 2003.

Nyiramilimo, an ethnic Tutsi, was born in Kinunu, Gisenyi prefecture, the seventeenth of her father's eighteen children, born to his second wife. At age three many members of her family were killed in the power struggles following independence. After an eventful childhood, which included expulsion from school because she was Tutsi, she attended medical school in Butare and became a physician. She later married Jean-Baptiste Gasasira, also a physician, and the two later founded a private maternity and pedatrics practice in Kigali called Le Bon Samaritain.

Nyiramilimo's life story was profiled at length in Philip Gourevitch's book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.