Joint civil society statement Ahead of the African Union (AU) High-Level Dialogue on displacement taking place from 4-6 December in Uganda, 15 African and international NGOs call on African leaders and regional organisations to urge the government of Tanzania to stop pressuring 163,000 refugees and asylum seekers into returning to Burundi, where there are…
(7 December 2016) Today, the International Refugee Rights Initiative launched a new report, “I Know the Consequences of War: Understanding the dynamics of displacement in Burundi”. The report brings much needed insight as to how Burundians are deciding to flee or stay in a context in which more than 300,000 are already in exile. The…
Based on interviews conducted in Nakivale settlement in Uganda and discussions of the findings with the government of Uganda and UNHCR, the briefing tells the story of a small number of Burundian refugees and asylum seekers who have fled into a second phase of exile. As former refugees living in Tanzania’s Mtabila refugee camp, they…
Jean-Marc is Burundian by nationality. But he has never lived in Burundi. He was born into exile in Rwanda in 1976 where he lived as a refugee until the 1994 genocide when his father was killed and the rest of the family had to flee to Tanzania. Over the course of the next two decades,…
Approximately 162,000 former Burundian refugees in Tanzania are living in legal limbo in Tanzania. Having been accepted for naturalisation and having renounced their Burundian nationality, they are now unable to get certificates confirming their new status. The situation facing this group is the subject of a paper launched by the International Refugee Rights Initiative today, “I…
(10 August 2012) On 21 July 2012, Tanzania’s Daily News reported that Tanzanian President, Jakaya Kikwete, had announced that “all refugee camps sheltering Burundian refugees would be closed down”. There was, the paper quoted him as saying, “no strong reason for the Burundians to stay […] when back home peace had been restored and life…
4 October 2011) On 25 May 2011, a Tripartite Commission comprised of the governments of Tanzania and Burundi and the UNHCR met to discuss the future of approximately 38,000 refugees in Mtabila camp in Tanzania. The talks ended with a decision to close the camp on 31 December 2011. The government of Tanzania has announced…
