ECHO director tours region

Constanza Adinolfi, the director the EC's Humanitarian Aid Office, ECHO, arrived in Tanzania on Tuesday, on the second leg of her three-nation visit to East Africa, the agency announced. She was due to visit refugee camps in Tanzania from which some Burundians are being repatriated, ECHO reported. There are almost 500,000 Burundian refugees in Tanzania, which also hosts nationals of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On Thursday, Adinolfi is due to arrive in Burundi, where she will inspect ECHO-funded projects for internally displaced persons, meet government and UN officials, as well as representatives of organisations acting as project implementing partners for ECHO. Burundi has known no peace despite the signing of the Arusha Peace Agreement of 28 August 2000, and the inauguration of a transitional power-sharing government on 1 November 2001. Hutu rebels - the Front pour le democratie au Burundi and the Forces Nationales pour la Liberiation - were not party to the Arusha deal and continue to wage a guerrilla war against government troops. Yet, thousands of Burundians have started to return home, some with the support of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. On the first stop of her six-day tour, which began in Kenya on Monday, Adinolfi met representative of organisations supporting victims of crises in neighbouring countries. The ECHO regional office in Nairobi covers the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. Since the start of its humanitarian intervention in 1994, the EC has been funding projects in the region. In 2001, ECHO said it had provided 32 million euro (about US $31.1 million) towards the care of refugees in Tanzania, and 20 million euros ($19.4 million) for relief activities inside Burundi. It said another 27 million euro ($26.2 million) had been allocated for operations in Tanzania in 2002 and 17.5 million euro ($17 million) for vulnerable people in Burundi.