- As Burundi is finding increased peace and stability, more than 10,000 refugees have returned home from camps in Tanzania in January and the first half of February this year. However, over 300,000 Burundian refugees still live in camps in the eastern neighbour country.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR is registering the first steps of a new trek of Burundians from the overcrowded camps in Tanzania. "So far this year, 9,125 Burundian refugees have returned home in UNHCR-organised movements, while another 897 have returned on their own," the agency reports from Giseru in Burundi.
Giseru is a new border crossing point that was opened in late January to allow UNHCR to organise returns to Burundi's eastern Ruyigi province, which was previously inaccessible for security reasons. The UN refugee agency has registered nearly 5,200 Burundians returning through the new border crossing point.
- Given the success of the returns through Gisuru so far and the interest among the refugees to return home to Ruyigi, UNHCR is increasing the number of weekly convoys along this route to four starting this week, the agency now announces. Each convoy transports around 1,000 refugees back home.
At the same time, refugees staying in camps in the Ngara region of Tanzania further to the north have been returning in twice-weekly convoys through the other border crossing point at Kobero in Burundi's north-eastern Muyinga province. UNHCR says it plans to "continue the convoys for some 1,000 refugees per week, which will bring the total weekly returns to 5,000."
Recent improvements in security in many areas of Burundi have paved the way for an increased UNHCR presence and programmes to receive returnees. The agency has now been able to reopen local offices in Burundi that it had to close in 2001 for security reasons.
UNHCR began facilitating returns to Burundi in 2002, but until this year had limited these organised convoys to provinces in northern and central Burundi for security reasons. This year, following ceasefire and power-sharing agreements between the government and the main rebel group, the FDD, improved security has been opening up opportunities for organised refugee returns to new regions of the country.
However, UNHCR recently warned that refugees are returning to a country devastated by a decade-long war. "The majority return to find their houses in ruins, many lack land to cultivate. Basic services, health education water are lacking," the agency's Zobida Hassim-Ashagrie said in late January.
But in relative terms, the repatriation process is still slow and only in its beginnings. More than 300,000 Burundi refugees still live in camps in Tanzania.
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