Tanzania has submitted a request to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) asking partners to help finance a voluntary repatriation of Burundi refugees.
Tanzania’s Home Affairs Minister Hamad Yusuf Masauni made the appeal on Wednesday at the 73rd meeting of the UNHCR’s Executive Committee held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Mr Masauni argues that the political situation in Burundi has improved since President Evariste Ndayishimiye took over in 2020 and that refugees at Nyarugusu and Ndutu camps in Kigoma Region should return home.
For the plan to succeed, authorities will have to first win over refugees still sceptical of the repatriation, the minister said, as he presented the country’s reports on the situation of refugees, in a meeting chaired by UNHCR Commissioner General Filipo Grandi.
Since 2018, three years after the political impasse in Burundi led to a mass exodus of its citizens to neighbouring states including Tanzania, the two East African countries have been holding a series of meetings over the return of refugees, but to no avail.
Hundreds of Burundians are reluctant to go back home fearing for their security. In 2015, then president Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term after a disputed law change that removed the two-term limit. During the fracas, more than 400,000 citizens fled to Tanzania, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
According to Tanzanian government figures, 200,000 Burundians entered Tanzania through porous borders and are being hosted at designated refugee camps of Nyarugusu and Ndutu.
In 2018, Tanzania announced it would repatriate all Burundian refugees on its soil, but the exercise was postponed owing to the prevailing insecurity and political situation in Burundi at the time.
A year later, the two countries agreed in principle to embark on refugee repatriation but only 64,000 expressed their desire for repatriation from camps in northwestern Tanzania. The voluntary exercise took place in October 2019.
Statistics by Tanzania’s Home Affairs Ministry show there are still 136,221 Burundians at refugee camps in the country. This is after the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued a statement that said returnees should not be forcefully returned but should only go home voluntarily. - EMMANUEL ONYANGO, The EastAfrican
