Rwanda Floods: How Climate Disasters Impact Disabled Lives

The Disability Justice Project April 28, 2025

In 2023, climate-fueled floods devastated Rwanda’s Western and Northern provinces, killing nearly 130 people and displacing thousands. For Florentine Mukantagwera, the disaster is only the latest in a life shaped by the overlapping forces of war, poverty, disability, and climate change. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, she and her family fled to Congo, returning a decade later to a demolished home — the fragile shelter she still occupies today. As climate disasters grow more frequent, Mukantagwera and other Rwandans with disabilities face heightened risks with little protection. Yet even as storms batter her roof and landslides threaten her safety, she finds strength in her community of neighbors. “I sit here and find them providing me food and porridge,” she says. “There’s a Bible verse saying that, ‘For I was hungry, and you gave me food.’ … You cannot imagine how much that porridge relieved me.”