Does UNHCR Tanzania , Burundi and Tanzania Government respect refugees Convention in Mutabila refugee camp?

State to strip Burundian refugees of asylum status
By Orton Kiishweko,Kasulu

Tanzania will strip Burundian refugees of their status if they do not go back to their country by end of June this year, Home Affairs minister Lawrence Masha said yesterday.

Addressing about 41,000 Burundian refugees staying at the Mtabila camp in Kasulu, the minister said the decision had been unanimously agreed by Tanzania, Burundi and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). He told the refugees: "If you do not leave by June 30, the Government will use international laws to ensure that you return home."

The minister announced Thursday the camp would be closed by June following a repatriation exercise coordinated by the UN refugee agency, Tanzania and Burundi.

Mr Masha told the refugees that they should go back home to "live new lives" in the central African country once torn by tribal clashes between the majority Hutus against Tutsis.


Burundi's minister for National Solidarity and Repatriation, Ms Immaculee� Nahayo, said her government had already prepared and designated areas to accommodate the refugees upon their arrival in the country.

"We will temporarily place you in peace villages before giving you land where you will permanently stay and farm," she told the refugees on Thursday.

Minister Nahayo, who was once a refugee for many years in Tanzania before returning to her country, said the $50 the UNHCR had bee giving the refugees would be "a significant starter" in their new lives.

UNHCR country director and representative, Mr Yacoub Elhillo, told the refugees "Home is home. There is no other place like it."He said the two governments, Tanzania and Burundi, had made a decision and the UN agency was fully behind it.

The agency, with the assistance of other partners, would facilitate the provision of education, food, health care, water to the returnees.

Mr Elhillo said all subsequent assistance to the refugees would be directed to the Burundian government for the re-integration of returning refugees.

Since 2007, the agency had been giving a $50 grant per person in a family. It said the grants would be ceased at the end of June, and would only be distributed to returnees.

In 2007, Tanzania was home to about 150,000 Burundian refugees. The number decreased to 41,000 refugees since the repatriation process.

All the remaining are at the Mtabila camp. Some refugees said they were concerned about their husbands and relatives who were serving jail terms in Tanzanian prisons.

Mr Masha said all Burundian prisoners would be transferred to their home to complete their sentences in the country's prisons.

On Wednesday, the minister saw off the first group of Congolese refugees who volunteered to go back to their country this year.

Some of them had been in the country for decades and were reluctant to return to the DRC fearing they would not get land and food.