Tanzanian refugee population drops below 100,000

Monday, 30 November 2009

The number of refugees from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo living in northwestern Tanzania has dropped to below 100,000 for the first time in 15 years, the UN refugee agency said.

"As recently as the year 2000, Tanzania hosted the largest refugee population on the African continent, with over 680,000 refugees sheltered in camps in Kigoma and Kagera regions", the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement made available to AFP Sunday.

"Today, most of these refugees return safely back home with UNHCR help and only two camps are left, one for Congolese and one for Burundians with a combined population of 99,000 refugees," it added.

"For the first time in 15 years, the refugee camp population in Tanzania has dropped below 100,000." It was only two months ago that UNHCR closed its field office in Ngara, marking its total withdrawal from the Kagera region.

Following the closure of refugee camps in Lugufu and Kibondo, the UNHCR offices in these locations have also been shut down.

The closure of the Lugufu office was marked earlier this week with the handover of the office keys to the acting Kigoma Regional Administrative Secretary.

The UNHCR office in Kibondo was officially closed on Tuesday and keys were handed over to the Kibondo District Commissioner. In both locations, assets worth a combined residual value of four million dollars were handed over to the District authorities and included warehouse buildings, living compounds, vehicles and water tanks.

In addition to the camp refugees, Tanzania hosted some 218,000 Burundian refugees since 1972 in three Old Settlements in the Rukwa and Tabora regions.

In 2008, they were finally given the choice to return to their motherland or apply for naturalisation in Tanzania. UNHCR assisted 53,500 of these refugees to return to Burundi and another 165,000 to apply for Tanzanian citizenship.

Sapa-AFP