UN facilitates more refugee repatriations

With Rwandan refugees in Tanzania increasingly eager to go home, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that it had stepped up its operations to facilitate their return. In a weeklong effort starting on Monday with the departure of 479 refugees, the UNHCR said it was helping some 19,000 others at the Ngara camp in northwestern Tanzania to follow suit. "The number of Rwandan refugees wishing to go home with UNHCR assistance has increased gradually since April, when more than 124 returned," the UNHCR reported. "So far in November, more than 2,000 Rwandans have decided to repatriate." At the end of the current operation, during which daily return convoys will make the run, "the repatriation operation should return to its normal schedule of twice-weekly convoys through the end of the year", the agency said. People want to go back, it said, partly as the result of confidence-building measures such as two recent "go-and-see" visits to Rwanda. "The majority of the recent returnees say they feel encouraged to go home after the installation of the gacaca tribunals, local traditional courts working to resolve judicial matters dating back to the 1994 genocide," the UNHCR said. The repatriations are being effected within the framework of the Tripartite Commission for Voluntary Repatriation to Rwanda signed in September by the UN refugee agency and the governments of Rwanda and Tanzania. UNHCR said some 7,100 Rwandans had returned voluntarily so far this year. See UNHCR story