Burundi: UN gears up for possible return of more than 300,000 refugees

An emergency team from the United Nations refugee agency left Geneva today for Burundi to take steps towards re-establishing field offices in key provinces for the possible return of more than 300,000 people who fled the Central African country’s civil war to Tanzania.

Facilitated voluntary returns to other parts of Burundi have increased since the signing of a ceasefire and power-sharing agreement between the transitional government and the National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) in late 2003.

“An expanded UNHCR presence would enable us to begin facilitating returns to additional provinces in the south and east of the country,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Kris Janowski told a news briefing in Geneva.

Security permitting, the team will look into possible new offices in Ruyigi province along the central stretch of the border and Makamba in the south, and possible expansion of the existing UNHCR presence in Muyinga in the north. UNHCR closed its office in Ruyigi and reduced its presence in Muyinga in 2002 due to insecurity and has not had a presence in Makamba for decades.

The return operation will focus on the more than 300,000 Burundian refugees still living in camps in western Tanzania. Another 470,000 Burundian refugees – so-called "old caseload" refugees who left Burundi in 1972 – live outside the camps in towns and villages. Various factors, including the availability of land for those who left Burundi over three decades ago, remain impediments to their return.