Government addresses need for refugee policy

The Tanzanian government had no official policy on refugees - despite hosting over 450,000 official refugees - and was sheltering people from troubled neighbouring countries in accordance with traditional generosity, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Bernard Mchomvu, said this week. A ministry official contacted by IRIN on Thursday
confirmed that the country had no policy document and relied on the "open-door policy" which, he said, had often been "taken for granted." Action on refugees was guided by the Refugee Act drafted in 1996 and amended in 1998, and which needed "a bit of polishing," he said.

Mchomvu's comments were made at a workshop in Dar es Salaam organised by an NGO, the Centre for Forced Migration and Dar es Salaam University to allow discussion of refugee policy and law. Mchomvu had welcomed the opportunity to address refugees' access to land for cultivation and the location of refugee camps "among many issues," news organisations reported. The government "will not ignore the [workshop] recommendations because something needs to be done," the ministry official who spoke to
IRIN said. There was also a need to refine the Immigration Act because the difference between illegal immigrants, economic migrants and refugees was not always apparent, he added.