About 55,000 were refugees by end of 2000 - US committee

Approximately 55,000 Rwandans were refugees and asylum seekers at the end of 2000, a US Committee for Refugees (USCR) country report for Rwanda said. It said nearly 30,000 of these people were in Tanzania, some 15,000 in Uganda, about 5,000 in Congo-Brazzaville, up to 3,000 in Kenya, about 1,000 each in Burundi and the DRC and 2,000 new Rwandan asylum seekers in Europe. It, however, said that an estimated 30,000 Rwandans in the DRC were living in “refugee-like” circumstances, “their entitlement to full refugee status uncertain pending full screening”.

Approximately 150,000 Rwandans were internally displaced at the end of 2000, although estimates varied widely because of different definitions about which populations qualified as displaced, the report said. Rwanda hosted nearly 30,000 refugees at the year’s end, including about 28,000 from the DRC and some 1,000 from Burundi. While some 25,000 Rwandan refugees repatriated during the year, about 10,000 new refugees fled the country, the report added.