Refugee numbers in Tanzanian camps at six-year low

The number of Burundian refugees living in camps in western Tanzania has fallen to a six-year low, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday from Geneva. UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said more than 40,000 refugees had returned to Burundi since the beginning of the year, bringing the number of those remaining in the camps to less than 300,000. He said UNHCR convoys carried most of the refugees who returned this year through two major border crossings in Burundi's eastern province of Ruyigi. The agency also organised three "go-and see" visits this year, during which some of the refugees visited their home communes and reported back to those left in the camps, Redmond said. He added that during the latest visit in early May, 10 refugees from the Lukole camps in Tanzania visited their home communes in the northern province of Kirundo. The visits were intended to assure refugees that favourable conditions existed for their return. Redmond said Tanzanian authorities estimate that almost 200,000 Burundian refugees remain in settlements outside the camps, in addition to another 300,000 who have already settled in Tanzanian villages on their own. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the country over the course of Burundi's 10-year-old civil war between the minority Tutsi-dominated government against various Hutu rebel groups. At least 300,000 Burundians have died since 1993. Burundi is in the second phase of a three-year transitional period, brokered under a Peace and Reconciliation Accord signed in August 2000 in Arusha, Tanzania. Elections are due to be held by November.