UN appeals for $38.7m for refugees and host population

The UN appealed on Wednesday for US $38.7 million for its 2004 operations to look after refugees and promote development in western Tanzania. "The 2004 CAP makes a strong appeal to donors to ensure that adequate humanitarian assistance in order to meet international minimum standards, reduce future vulnerability and simultaneously promote conditions leading to sustainable development in western Tanzania," the UN said in the 2004 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) for Tanzania. The annual appeal is put together by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and is a product of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), a mechanism created a decade ago by the UN General Assembly to ensure strategic and coordinated humanitarian response to crises. It highlighted the continued presence of at least 470,000 refugees from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the possibility of their imminent return. A plea was also made for development funds to ease the pressure the refugees' presence has, in the last decade, put on local resources and the 1.9 million Tanzanians living in refugee-affected areas. "Although some inputs for refugee operations have benefited the host community the perceived disparity of assistance provided has spurred tensions between the populations," OCHA said. The UN said that while Kagera and Kigoma, regions that host the refugees, do not receive as much development aid as other regions in Tanzania, humanitarian organisations could not continue to support sufficient development activities due to limited funds, capacity and mandates. Humanitarian workers also say that if aid operations close down in the region, many of the existing services would face dramatic cuts in funding and support. Therefore, the funds from the 2004 appeal would support government efforts to alleviate human suffering and hunger, protect human rights, provide basic services and formulate a sustainable programme for developing western Tanzania. A deputy permanent secretary in the President's office, Damian Foka, said that Tanzanians who had once shared a sense of solidarity with the refugees now felt discriminated against, so the government was appealing for international help on their behalf. "We [the government] would like to indiscriminately provide the minimum requirements but there are budgetary restraints to meet all these requests," he said. "So I hope the donors and the government can, in partnership, strike a balance between the refugees and the host community." Burundi's ambassador, Ferdinand Ngendadanka, said that following the recent power sharing agreement between the government and the main Hutu rebel faction, 2004 was being seen as the year that the refugees would return home. He appealed to the donor community to help the Burundian government provide the necessary services on the ground once the refugees repatriate. Meanwhile, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has appealed for at least $27 million for its refugee work, asked donors to be flexible with their pledges so that refugee needs were catered for whether they remained in camps in Tanzania or returned home. The UN World Food Programme's needs for Tanzania in 2004 are expected to amount to at least $52 million, but this has been included in the Great Lakes regional CAP, the agency said on Wednesday. [The CAP Appeal for Tanzania is available online on: www.un.org]