Focus on factors spurring refugees to go home

After several years of waiting, the few hours more mattered little. Like others around him, Joseph Kayuka, sat patiently surrounded by a few precious belongings: a bench, a bicycle and some clothes, as well as pots and pans, crammed into a couple of old sacks. Only the hushed murmuring of conversation and the occasional crying of children broke the silence. But, by mid morning of 1 October, Kayuka, his wife Imacule Mkingiya and their five children had boarded the truck and were riding along a bumpy road heading west back into Burundi. "I know the war is not over yet and the country is not safe yet, but we have no life in Tanzania," he said, shouting above the rattling din of the truck. The truck formed part of a convoy, organised by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), taking 555 refugees back to Cankuzo Province, eastern Burundi. Kayuka left the camp because, he said, there was little food and nowhere to farm. "If you go outside the camps, you are in big trouble. They can arrest you," he added. In accordance with a tripartite agreement between the UNHCR and the governments of Burundi and Tanzania, the truck was part of a UNHCR convoy heading to the border post at Murusagamba, in Kibondo District, western Tanzania. This is the newly opened and most southern border crossing for UNHCR facilitated returnees. Under the agreement, two other crossing points farther south, at Mabamba and Manyovo, were to have been opened to facilitate the return of some of the 350,000 Burundians in Tanzania. However, despite both governments' desire to see the refugees go home, and some of the refugees' apparent wish to leave, UNHCR has been reluctant to open further crossing points, saying security could not be guaranteed on the Burundian side. Since UNHCR began its latest repatriation scheme from Kibondo on 6 May, 618 refugees have returned home. But humanitarian workers say that the 14,000 spontaneous (unassisted) repatriations over the same period point to conditions in the camps, rather than peace in Burundi, as being the force driving the refugees to leave. Kayuka's reasons for going home were shared by most of his compatriots, who took advantage of the transport to Murusagamba. "Getting fresh food is especially difficult, as going into the villages has been stopped. We are arrested by the security people," Buraria Banyizako said, as she struggled to control her six children clambering around the back of the truck. "There may not be peace in Burundi, but I know how I will survive," she said. "At least I will be free and in peace when I walk around the market or check my crops." Banyizako added that there were many more people in the camps who wanted to go home, but the convoys going to their regions were yet to begin. The restrictions that the refugees referred to in Tanzania included the strict application of a law that had previously been relaxed, permitting refugees to move only within a four-kilometre radius of the refugee camps, and allowing for interaction with the local population, work on farms and the safe collection of firewood. "The recent tightening of the law confining refugees to the camp boundaries is significantly hindering projects initiated to improve the quality of asylum for refugees," a joint UNHCR and UN World Food Programme assessment mission said in a report published on 19 September. But the Tanzanian government said it introduced the restrictions in a bid to cut down on crime in western Tanzania, which was largely blamed on refugees, and the results have proved them right. "Now, we don't have as many incidents such as hijacking and the number of cases of banditry have fallen," Elmon Mahawa, the Kigoma regional commissioner, told IRIN. "The policy has been very effective, everybody is happy with it and this is how we want it to stay." And, despite a joint government/UNHCR committee that was set up to look into the restrictions on refugees, the UNHCR said that the restrictions were likely to remain in place. "We are not happy with the restrictions and we are trying to keep open discussions on the issue, but it seems we are still at a stalemate," Annette Nyekan, head of UNHCR's sub-office in Kibondo, told IRIN. Leaving on their own initiative Meanwhile, citing the onset of the rainy season and poor conditions in the camps, Burundian refugees in Kasulu District, farther south, are also beginning to head home unassisted by UNHCR. A refugee in the Muyovosi camp, Kasulu, told IRIN that refugees who want to return home were paying between 4,000 and 8,000 Tanzania shillings (US $4 to $8) per person for a place in a truck back to Manyovo, on the border with Burundi. "These convoys, and there are two a week at the moment, are escorted by the Tanzanian authorities," the refugee said. UNHCR officials in Kasulu acknowledged the "spontaneous" repatriations, saying it did look as though the UN agency was "the last obstacle", but added that they were awaiting an assessment of the security situation in southern Burundi before beginning facilitated returns to the region. Mahawa said that eastern Burundi "wasn't totally safe" but added that it could not be that bad, as they were no longer receiving many refugees coming into the country. Government Pressure The Tanzanian government has made no secret of its desire to see the refugees return home, but Mahawa said that repatriation would be carried out according to national and international refugee laws. "We want them [the refugees] to go because of the insecurity here and we are using a lot of resources looking after them, when we need to concentrate on our own development. Our people have suffered enough," Mahawa said. "It is unfortunate that we have had to take these measures now, but we are abiding by the law. We won't repatriate any refugees by force," he said. Others not ready to go Now that the transitional government and the major rebel group in the country signed a power sharing agreement on Wednesday in South Africa, it remains to be seen whether the many refugees in Kibondo and Kasulu who had pegged their return on such an agreement will leave. Most of the refugees said that despite the protracted peace process, the situation in Burundi was no better than it was when they left. Army reform is yet to be carried out, the recent clashes between two Hutu rebel groups had confused an already complex situation and those who were returning home were not doing so because they believed there was peace, but because they could not tolerate the camps any more, they added. Another refugee said that those going back were from areas that were nearer the Burundi-Tanzania border, and would easily flee if fighting between the army and rebels broke out again. "Those who really saw the killing of civilians in the early months of October 1993 are not ready to go home yet," a refugee said. Nonetheless, as the UNHCR convoys awaited permission to enter Burundi, holding two of his youngest sons up high, so that they could see out of the truck, Kayuka said he was relieved to be back home. "I will first build a house and then I will go back to my job as farmer. "I will grow tomatoes. My land is there, they wrote and told me so, but I know there are others who lost theirs. "I'm happy because my children have seen their country at last. God has helped us get there," he said.