Some 2,500 Rwandans flee Tanzania to Uganda

Some 2,500 Rwandan refugees have fled from camps in western Tanzania over the last six to eight weeks to the area around Lake Nakivale in southwestern Uganda, a spokesman from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Jonathan Clayton, told IRIN on Tuesday. He said their flight appeared to have been triggered by fears that the ongoing voluntary repatriation process for Rwandan refugees in Tanzania could become compulsory. Rwandan officials were keen to see the remaining caseload of refugees, who fled to Tanzania in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, return home because the presence large numbers of Hutus outside the country was regarded as a potential destabilising factor. Tanzanian officials, moreover, have stated publicly that the country can no longer bear the burden of hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees, and that Rwanda is stable enough for their return. Meanwhile, the Rwandans are entitled to UNHCR protection only in Tanzania, as the first country where they had sought asylum. "On advice of UNHCR, the [Ugandan] government stopped recognising Rwandan asylum seekers from Tanzania since they were already accessing international protection [in Tanzania]," the independent Monitor newspaper quoted Ugandan Minister for Disaster Preparedness Moses Ali as saying on 1 October. He was speaking at the 53rd session of the executive committee of the UNHCR programme in Geneva, Switzerland. Ugandan officials, who are monitoring the situation, fear that if assistance is offered to the refugees, it may act as a magnet for others who wish to leave Tanzania, Clayton said. Negotiations were ongoing regarding a voluntary return to Tanzania, he said, and it was essential that the refugees understood that they could not be forcibly repatriated to Rwanda. There were an estimated 22,500 Rwandan refugees in Tanzania at the end of August.