Rwandan refugees reluctant to return home

A senior Zambian official on Wednesday said the authorities would continue to persuade Rwandan refugees that it was safe to return home.

"There has been some resistance from the Rwandan community to the repatriation process, mainly because they fear persecution by the government. But there's really no evidence of this, which makes the current situation very difficult for all the parties concerned," the Zambian Ministry of Home Affairs Commissioner for Refugees, Jacob Mpepo, told IRIN.

He added that during talks with local Rwandan community leaders, some had said "it would be okay to return home as an educated Hutu".

"However, others said that if they did not have any skills to contribute to the communities in which they settled [in Rwanda], they would be discriminated against," Mpepo said.

Hundreds of thousands of mainly Hutu Rwandans fled the country after the genocide in 1994, which claimed the lives of more than 800,000 moderate Hutus.

Last year the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began repatriating the estimated 5,000 Rwandans from Zambia, after a tripartite agreement was signed between the UNHCR and the governments of Zambia and Rwanda. But since the repatriation began in May 2003, just 123 Rwandans have returned home.

Mpepo said the government and UNHCR would step up their education efforts, which he hoped would allay some of the concerns raised by refugees.

"We need to intensify the information campaign, so that the refugees know exactly what to expect if they decide to return home," he explained. "There are also plans to conduct a go-and-see exercise, which means a few Rwandans would go back home and then return to Zambia to tell their compatriots what the conditions on the ground are like."

Another option was to encourage Rwandans who had gone home last year to return to Zambia and tell refugees about the current political and social situation in Rwanda.