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STORY: This man doesn't know his birthday or the whereabouts of his family.

He's among potentially dozens, even hundreds, of Rwandans discovered by soldiers in 1994 among the bodies of their dead relatives during the country's genocide. Those infants were then taken to orphanages.

"For us we were a child, a baby, we could not manage to remember what was happening."

From Sunday (April 7), Rwanda is commemorating the lives of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus killed 30 years ago.

But for this man, who chose to remain anonymous due to enduring stigma, his ability to make peace with the past is bound up with the mystery of his identity.

People would say he was a Hutu, he says, and related to the Interahamwe.

It's a militia implicated in the killings of Tutsis and moderate Hutus before and during the genocide.

"So I was very unconfident and very uncomfortable, most of the time I chose to be alone, to stay inside the house, my room, not going in public areas, yes."

The stigma was one reason why he fled Rwanda.

Analysts who have studied the social dynamics of Rwanda after the 1994 violence say that many refugees feel they cannot return home.

But Allan Ngari, Africa Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, says the commemorations do offer an opportunity for reconciliation - and also serve as a reminder.

"I think it's the responsibility of the international community that this should never happen again and we have a classical example of a country that at the time was seen to be of no strategic importance when the lives of so many people were at stake."

Now living abroad, this man says he has struggled to get official documents but has also been helped by the Rwandan disapora.

He and others like him have compiled a book of their stories, documenting the difficulty of living without an identity.

But he says after thirty years, a period in which he has struggled to trust people, he has "no hope" that his life is going to get any better.