50,000 displaced people fear returning home

Two years after a peace agreement was signed in Burundi, at least 50,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are unable or unwilling to return home, a UN official said in Bujumbura on Friday. The Special Adviser of the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator on Internal Displacement and Director of the Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division, Dennis McNamara, who was on a three-day visit to the country, said an estimated 120,000 Burundians were still living in IDP camps. He said a preliminary report of a survey conducted by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) between February and April showed that more than half of these IDPs were unlikely to leave the camps. The survey found that many of the IDPs in the southern provinces of Makamba and Bururi had returned to their villages but that two-thirds of those remaining in camps were in the northern and central provinces of Ngozi, Kirundo, Muyinga and Gitega. Even if security conditions were to improve, IDPs from these provinces would not be willing to return, the survey found. They still fear that attacks that caused them to flee their homes could recur. According to a report issued by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in May, "Sheer psychological fear of returning before an election (whether founded or not) is another strong factor". Communal elections are scheduled for 3 June and presidential elections for 19 August. "Burundian history has shown that the post-election period is most vulnerable to violence, and more disruptive than pre-election intimidation," Mariam Bibi Jooma, the author of the ISS report, said. Jooma added, "Widows make up a significant percentage of the [IDP] population ... Two-thirds of IDP households are headed by women and children." Jooma's report is critical of the way various UN agencies are assisting IDPs. "The absence of a clear division of responsibilities... means that the UN's work is largely reactive. UN agencies are involved as a function of their mandates and resources rather than in response to the needs of IDPs," Jooma said.