IDP sites among regroupment camps reportedly dismantled

Some 18,198 people, constituting five per cent of a total of 352,168 Burundi civilians forcibly relocated by the government to regroupment sites since the latter months of last year, had returned to their homes as of 7 April, an inter-agency assessment team has found. The mission found that 16,912 internally displaced people (IDPs) had chosen not to return
home, a regional humanitarian update from UNOCHA stated. The government has claimed to have dismantled 23 sites but the recent assessment mission found that, of these, only nine were regroupment sites - "the rest being IDP camps," OCHA reported. The occupants of 14 IDP sites had refused to return home, it added.

Meanwhile, WFP has recently appealed for $16 million for an operation in which it hopes to provide food aid to 350,000 people living in some 50 regroupment sites in Bujumbura Rural province. The agency said it feared food aid needs could grow if the June harvest in the province failed due to regrouped populations having limited access to their land. WFP has been
providing food to the sites since October 1999, but said a deteriorating nutritional situation earlier this year prompted it to expand its operation to reach tens of thousands of families trying to survive in the ad hoc sites. "Some of these people have been living in very precarious circumstances for nearly a year now, and have less and less resistance to
ward off malnutrition and disease," WFP's Representative for Burundi, Thomas Yanga, stated in a press release.