Departures of note

Dafroza Gauthier was a Franco-Rwandan chemical engineer and activist who devoted her life to pursuing justice for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Born in Rwanda, she was forced into exile in 1973 and settled in France, where she worked as a chemical engineer in Reims. Much of her family, including her mother, was killed during the genocide.

In 2001, with her husband Alain, she co-founded the Collectif des parties civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR), an organization that tracked down Rwandan genocide suspects living in France and brought them before French courts. The couple were behind nearly all of the roughly thirty complaints filed in France against suspected genocidaires, and were often called 'the Klarsfelds of Rwanda.'

Gauthier testified at the first genocide trials held in France and campaigned publicly against impunity and revisionism, speaking regularly at schools and universities to preserve the memory of the genocide. In 2017 she and her husband received Rwanda's National Order of Exceptional Friendship from President Paul Kagame in recognition of their service. She died of cancer in Reims on 3 October 2026 at the age of 72.