UN agency coping with Congolese refugee influx

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Burundi has stepped up efforts to improve conditions for Congolese refugees who have fled the eastern South Kivu Province following recent fighting there, the agency reported on Tuesday. The agency said it had received its largest group of Congolese refugees in recent days, bringing to 34,000 the number of those who had fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 9 June. "On Monday, 238 Congolese refugees crossed into Burundi after fleeing reported fighting in eastern DRC," the agency reported. "UNHCR registered and moved them to three transit centres in the border region - Rugombo, Gatumba and Cibitoke - where the refugee agency and its partners have completed the distribution of food, blankets, jerry cans and other relief items." The UNHCR has sent a six-member emergency team, from its Geneva headquarters and other operations, to the Burundi-DRC border zone to improve conditions at the transit sites. "Among its first tasks, the team will work on starting education programmes and recreational activities for the refugee children," UNHCR reported. It added that it was also helping some of the refugee youth to take their end-of-year exams in Burundi so as not to lose school year credits because of fleeing their country. UNCHR said 377 primary schools students were taken on Sunday from the transit centres to the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, to sit for the exams. More than 200 secondary school students are expected to follow in the coming days. The influx in Congolese refugees follows fighting in the South Kivu provincial capital of Bukavu in late May and early June between dissident and loyalist Congolese army troops. The dissidents invaded Bukavu on 26 May ostensibly to protect the minority Congolese Tutsi, known as the Banyamulenge, from persecution by a military official sent there by the transitional government in the capital, Kinshasa. They withdrew on 8 June, and loyalists re-entered the town a day later. Meanwhile, the UNHCR reported that in Rwanda, 78 Congolese refugees who had fled fighting in Bukavu returned to their homes on Monday, bringing to 472 the total number of UNHCR-assisted returnees. It added that an estimated 3,500 Congolese refugees remained in Rwanda following the recent influx. "They include 1,320 living at the Nyagatare transit centre and some 2,200 living with family and friends in Cyangugu," the agency said.