IRIN interview with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, was in Tanzania from the 8 to 10 November to discuss the refugee situation with the Tanzanian authorities. Following meetings with government officials, he spoke to IRIN in Dar es Salaam on Monday. Question: What is the UNHCR doing to speed up the repatriation of Burundian refugees in Tanzania? Answer: My thesis is that first, we [UNHCR] have to be present in Burundi, which still is not the case today. So, although on paper there is peace, we still have to implement that, in our own actions of being all over the country. If that is the case, I think the conditions are such that we can inform people that it is safe to go home. I don’t think that we should wait for all the [transitional government's] reforms. The agreement is now that rebel leaders will form part of the government itself and we will see that in the next couple of weeks. There are agreements to integrate them into the army, there are even percentages known and in certain places there is cantonment so we see the beginning of the demobilisation. It is not about waiting for a year before we see a process. And I am confident that the process will show that it is doable. There are also technical modalities but I think a month from now we can start. It is a voluntary process. We will inform the people, of course, but in such a situation, those who wait too long find a more difficult situation back home because you have to find your lives their again, land you can farm. There is a balance of arguments – you can say lets wait and see or you can say, OK lets go. Normally this levels out. Q: You met with leaders of the Burundian refugees in the camps. How is UNHCR trying to resolve the problems caused by the Tanzanian government's restriction of the refugees' movement? A: I said very strongly to the [Tanzanian] refugee commissioner in the region: Lets not talk about what happened, but lets see what we do from here. You have to relax a little bit because there is a great tradition in Tanzania for hospitality but now the racket is becoming too negative. And it is enormously important for your country and the region here that Burundian people who are going home, during their last time here, whether it is a few months or a few years, are treated in a fair way. I urged the Ministry of Home Affairs that it is very important to write the last page of the history of Burundian refugees in Tanzania in such a way that it capitalises on the good traditions of these countries and that there is humane treatment and a good repatriation. Q: Did you discuss the entry procedure Congolese refugees arriving in Tanzania following recent fighting in South Kivu Province, eastern Congo? A: Yes, we also spoke about the Congolese. Although we have a government in place [in the Congo], based on the inter-Congolese dialogue, there are still limited numbers still fleeing out of South Kivu Province, in particular to Tanzania. This has been going on for some time and there is some confusion [as to] what to do with them. Should they be received in the settlements that we have already or are they just going around in the countryside? So the government has asked us to look at the possibility of an additional refugee site, to organise it and to try to avoid a mixing up of refugees and armed elements. I said that if you were concerned about security or refugees mixing up with crime, then you have to register the people and you have to allow them entry. We are there to register them and then if the capacity in the existing camps is insufficient we don’t exclude the idea of an additional camp but it is not good to complain and not accept people to come in regularly. At the same time, I said to the foreign minister, let us not lose the perspective of the repatriation. Time has come for a good tripartite agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and the UNHCR. We will go down with the government here to look into the reality. We will provide good handling and governance of the refugees when they come in. If they permit us we can do that. It is also good for Tanzania. Q: The Tanzanian government recently proposed the concept of safe havens in conflict-torn countries as a way of reducing the burden of refugees on developing countries. Did you discuss this with the government and what is UNHCR’s position on the proposal? A: We discussed that, we have a number of hesitations but we said, in any case, that the best thing would be to have peace in Burundi. There is now peace in Burundi, there is [peace] in Rwanda and even in the DRC. I think we have to go for peace in the country. So the concept of safe havens is not at the top of the agenda anymore because its ultimate ambition was not the safe haven but the return and that is going to happen anyhow. I want to make an additional remark. I understand some of the frustrations of the [Tanzanian] president that the peace process took so much time. Having said that, sometimes there are misunderstandings, misunderstandings that refugees are the cause of crime. It is simply not true. We have certain problems and sometimes refugees mixed up with armed elements who came to the refugee camps to hide weapons or to get young people. This of course is unacceptable for the government of Tanzania, and us. So we have to have strict policies to check on refugee camps. But, beyond that, you cannot say that refugees are criminal elements. I mean they are not all saints, but nobody is that. So I refuse to take that view that there is a relation between refugees and crime. I think we have to overcome that. It is only a few years ago that people thought that the AIDS problem was caused by refugees. We have to be a bit honest with this.