UN refugee agency launches repatriation campaign

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched a repatriation campaign targeting 80,000 Rwandan refugees, mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the agency reported on Thursday. It said its representatives and those of the Ugandan government met on Monday and Tuesday with refugees at the Nakivale and Oruchinga camps, to discuss the first organised repatriation programme for 25,000 refugees. "The first convoys from these two camps located in Uganda's south-western district of Mbarrara are expected to take refugees back to Rwanda in the coming weeks," the agency reported. It said the refugees were believed to be all that remain of an estimated two million Rwandans who fled to neighbouring countries following the 1994 genocide in their country that left at least 800,000 people dead. More than 600,000 Rwandans returned home following a Rwandan-backed uprising in October 1996 in the Congo, the agency said. It added that in December 1996, another 500,000 Rwandans returned from Tanzania. "Returns, both organised and spontaneous, have taken place since, including massive numbers from Burundi," the agency reported. "Last year [2002], some 23,000 and 11,000 Rwandans returned from Tanzania and the DRC respectively." Under the repatriation programme in Uganda, the refugees would be transported from Mbarara to the Rwandan border for onward travel to their home villages, the agency said. They would also receive aid packages comprising plastic sheeting, kitchen utensils, jerry cans, soap and a three-month supply of food from the UN World Food Programme. The agency reported that it had helped return 11,900 Rwandan refugees from the Congo in 2003 and that it planned to repatriate the remaining 21,000 in 2004. On Tuesday, UNHCR signed a tripartite agreement with Rwanda and Malawi for the return of at least 5,000 refugees from Malawi, the agency said.