37,000 Burundian refugees repatriated from Tanzania

Dar es Salaam. A total of 37,000 Burundian refugees have voluntarily been repatriated from Tanzania between January and this month.

That brings to 48,930 the total number of Burundian refugees repatriated from Tanzania since September 2017.

According to a report by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 2,000 refugees were to be repatriated every week between April 5 and December 31, 2018.

The decision was reached during a meeting involving Tanzania, Burundi and UNHCR.

It was planned that 72,000 Burundian refugees be repatriated from Tanzania by December.

However, a Burundian official has said it will be hard to reach the target.

The highest peak was recorded in May where more than 6,000 Burundian refugees returned home, followed by July, August and June.

Many of them returned to Muyinga, Ruyigi, Cankuzo, Makamba and Rutana provinces.

Instead, it repatriated between 1,000 and 2,000 refugees or even fewer than 1,000 refugees a week.

However, UNHCR report has revealed that 70 per cent of returnees had only one meal per day.

It also said 33 per cent of returnees found their land temporarily occupied by other people including family members while 79 per cent of primary school children were not schooling.

It was also found that 72 per cent of returnees did not have birth certificates and 73 per cent did not have national identity cards while 29 per cent of them were without access to the health system, many due to financial problems.

UNHCR says to make the process successful, additional funding is needed to increase the capacity of transit centres, hire safe transportation, address critical staffing shortages, continue to provide modest return packages, and improve the returnees’ monitoring framework in Burundi.