Spontaneous returns continue despite security concerns

Bernard Ndorainywe, 39, is a Burundian who has lived in the Nduta refugee camp in western Tanzania since 1996, and he wants to go home. However, as with many of the 100,000 refugees in the camps in Kibondo District, his home is in southern Burundi, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is not facilitating repatriation. Undeterred, Ndorainywe is prepared to hike the 40-km back to the border. "We'll leave this evening, and will get home in about three days time," he said as he and 20 family members were preparing to set off on 21 June. "If people want to help us, we will accept it, but I am tired of waiting in the camps and am going to return home anyway." Just how many "spontaneous" returnees are leaving camps in Kibondo District for Burundi is unclear. The UNHCR says measuring the flow is difficult, because not all the refugees hand in their ration cards to the agency and pick up the voluntary repatriation forms that entitle them to support once they return to Burundi. While the governor of the western province of Ruyigi was quoted on Burundian radio as saying that repatriation to the area was "in full swing", an official of the UN Office of the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs told IRIN that in the first week of June over 2,000 refugees had returned spontaneously. UNHCR in Kibondo could not confirm these numbers. Humanitarian workers in Kibondo said that getting information on these returnees was difficult for the same reasons that UNHCR was unwilling to conduct a large-scale repatriations into southern Burundi, which was that the security situation was considered by many to be unsafe. "Based on the information that we get from our new arrivals, there is still fighting between the government and rebel forces in Ruyigi and [the southern province of] Makamba," Fatma Mohammed, an official in UNHCR's sub-office in Kibondo, told IRIN. These concerns were echoed in a recent political update compiled by the humanitarian NGO Christian Aid. "Ninety percent of the population in this camp feels that the situation is not conducive to repatriation today," Barnabas Bugera, a Burundian refugee leader in Kanembwa refugee, said. However, neither these reports nor the news that some of the refugees were being attacked and mugged on both sides of the border, are enough to deter Ndorainywe from returning home. "I'm not afraid. I could just as easily die here in the camps," he said. "I have waited in the camps too long and have to take my chances. There can't be war everywhere, but if there is no peace, I'll just cope like all the others." UNHCR is currently facilitating voluntary repatriation through Ngara for refugees living in the Kibondo camps, but only those originating in the northern provinces of Burundi. However, these numbers are limited and, according to humanitarian workers in Kibondo, will soon dwindle. The numbers have already fallen from 400 refugees a week at the beginning of the exercise to 90 in the last group, which left on 20 June. While it may be difficult to know exactly how many Burundians have made, or will make, the same journey as Ndorainywe, it is clear that there is a desire amongst most Burundians to go home, in spite of the risks involved.