Nearly 60,000 Rwandans were refugees or asylum seekers at the end of 2001, including about 25,000 in Tanzania, nearly 15,000 in Uganda, some 5,000 in Congo-Brazzaville, about 5,000 in Zambia, some 3,000 in Zimbabwe, nearly 2,000 in Congo-Kinshasa, some 1,000 each in Mozambique and Burundi, and more than 1,000 new Rwandan asylum seekers in Europe.

An estimated 30,000 Rwandans in Congo-Kinshasa were living in refugee-like circumstances, their entitlement to full refugee status uncertain pending full screening. About 20,000 Rwandan refugees and asylum seekers repatriated during the year.

Rwanda hosted some 35,000 refugees at year's end, including 33,000 from Congo-Kinshasa and 2,000 from Burundi.

Political and Social Background

Rwanda has been a major source of refugees for decades.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsi Rwandans fled the country during the 1950s and 1960s and remained refugees for more than 30 years before returning in the mid-1990s. Approximately 1 million ethnic Hutu Rwandans fled the country in 1994 and repatriated in huge numbers a few years later, although more than 50,000 have not yet returned.

Struggles for political and economic power between Hutu and Tutsi leaders since the 1960s – mixed with pervasive mistrust between the two ethnic groups – have led to abuses ranging from ethnic discrimination to massacres. A civil war in the early 1990s between Tutsi rebel exiles and a Hutu-dominated government produced a short-lived peace accord in 1993 that officially welcomed Tutsi refugees back to the country after a generation in exile.

Hutu extremists, however, launched a genocide in 1994 against the Tutsi population and politically moderate Hutu leaders. Between a half-million and 1 million persons, overwhelmingly Tutsi, were massacred. The scale and intensity of the killing was "unprecedented in the history of the ... entire African continent," a UN report concluded.

Tutsi rebels militarily defeated the government's Hutu-dominated army in 1994, bringing the genocide to a halt. Some 1.7 million Rwandan Hutu responded by fleeing the country, many of them forced to leave by their own Hutu political leaders. Large-scale repatriation of Hutu refugees has occurred annually since late-1996. Rwanda's government – ethnically mixed, but dominated by Tutsi in key positions – has generally encouraged Hutu refugees to repatriate.

Attacks by Rwandan Hutu insurgents claimed thousands of lives in northwest Rwanda during 1994-99, inflaming tensions lingering after the 1994 genocide. The insurgency weakened in 1999 after Rwandan government troops invaded Congo-Kinshasa and pushed insurgents away from Rwanda's border.

Some 2.5 million Hutu and Tutsi former refugees – nearly one-third of Rwanda's population – have attempted to reintegrate since 1994 in a country that has the highest population density in Africa. "Rarely in human history has a society insisted that all its people live together again, side by side, in the aftermath of genocide," asserted Life After Death, a 1998 report by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR).

During 2000-2001, most of Rwanda enjoyed relative peace, despite social tensions linked to refugee reintegration, poverty, land shortages, ethnic distrust, and several controversial government policies. Hutu insurgents mounted short-lived attacks in the country's northwest in mid-2001 but were quickly defeated by government forces. Military leaders claimed that more than 2,000 rebels were killed or captured in the fighting and declared the security situation "under control" by June.

The country held local elections in March and returned to the polls later in the year to elect local judges to participate in a semi-traditional judicial system, known as gacaca, that will bring to trial more than 100,000 individuals accused of complicity in the 1994 genocide.

Repatriation to Rwanda

About 20,000 refugees repatriated to Rwanda during 2001, primarily from Congo-Kinshasa and Tanzania. Approximately 80,000 refugees have repatriated since 1999, virtually all of them Hutu.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) temporarily suspended repatriation operations mid-year because of insurgent attacks in northwest Rwanda, a major returnee area. Repatriation programs quickly resumed when security improved.

Rwandan government authorities continued to encourage the return of remaining refugees. "We request that [UNHCR] organize a visit to the camps with only one message: that Rwandans are free, advised, and encouraged to return to their country," an assistant to the Rwandan president declared in July.

Two transit centers in western Rwanda processed new returnees, providing routine background checks and health screenings. Returnees received a three-month food supply, plastic sheeting, blankets, sleeping mats, soap, cooking utensils, and transportation to their home areas.

UNHCR reported that many returnees managed to regain possession of their former houses, while others settled on new land provided by the government. Numerous international aid agencies, led by the UN Development Program, provided long-term reintegration assistance.

All returnees received government-issued identity cards. UNHCR reported that it continued to intervene in situations where local residents accused individual returnees of crimes linked to the 1994 genocide. UNHCR acknowledged that it lacked adequate numbers of protection staff to monitor all returnees on a regular basis, but reported that the agency received relatively few reports of threats or harassment against returnees during 2001.

Land Issues in Rwanda

One of the most densely populated countries in the world – with an estimated 8 million people – land pressures have long dominated Rwandan life and the government's policies. As more than 2 million refugees returned to Rwanda in the years after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda's government announced an ambitious program to reorganize the country's immense rural population into hundreds of new villages, in a policy called "villagization."

As many as 1 million rural residents had moved into designated rural villages by 2001, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which based its estimate in part on Rwandan government statistics. More than a quarter-million new houses were built during 1995-2001 at villagization sites, according to a joint study by the Rwandan government, international aid agencies, and donor nations. The pace of new housing construction and population transfers slowed considerably during 2001, researchers found.

The villagization policy was controversial from the start. The Rwandan government argued that villagization would ease land pressures and enable rural residents to benefit from new schools, health centers, and other economic opportunities while maintaining access to nearby farm land. Critics charged that the relocation policy was a coercive security measure by the government.

In more recent years, even supporters of the villagization strategy have expressed concern about bad planning and poor services at some sites. "Many [villagization sites] today lack adequate basic services," noted a report co-sponsored by the Rwandan government in November 2001. Many families had to walk farther for water, farming, and school at the relocation sites than at their previous homes, according to HRW.

A study by Oxfam in early 2001 found that many residents with substandard housing at villagization sites nonetheless wanted to stay there because services, though often poor, were an improvement over their previous homes. The Oxfam study said that some residents who chose to leave the sites were allowed to do so. HRW urged Rwandan officials in 2001 to stop relocating rural residents but noted that new transfers appeared to be more voluntary than coercive.

The villagization program has spurred debate among diplomats, humanitarian aid officials, and human rights advocates over whether the transfer of rural Rwandans to new villages is "internal displacement." The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described residents of Rwanda's villagization sites as "newly relocated" but did not define them as displaced.

"While conditions of return and resettlement are often yet inadequate, governmental and international efforts to stabilize the situation through durable solutions have advanced beyond the threshold of what still could be called internal displacement," a report by an OCHA analyst concluded in December 2001. USCR no longer defined residents of villagization sites as internally displaced, but continued to monitor the situation for new signs of coercion, repression, or wholesale government neglect typically associated with internal displacement.

Refugees from Congo-Kinshasa

Most Congolese refugees in Rwanda were ethnic Tutsi who fled war and ethnic violence in Congo-Kinshasa in the mid-1990s. About 4,000 new refugees arrived during 2001, including many who had repatriated prematurely to Congo-Kinshasa a year earlier.

More than 95 percent of the 33,000 Congolese refugees in Rwanda lived in two camps. Gihembe camp, in north central Rwanda's Byumba Province, housed nearly 17,000 refugees. Kiziba camp, in western Rwanda's Kibuye Province, contained about 15,000 residents.

Congolese refugees received a full range of assistance, including food aid, health care, systems for water and sanitation, and education programs. Nearly 11,000 refugee students attended schools in or near the camps, including some 8,000 primary-school pupils and more than 1,000 secondary-school students. A program for pre-school youth, adult literacy classes, and vocational training were also available.

Aid workers installed a library and lights in classrooms at Kiziba camp during the year to expand education programs. Construction of new latrines and a maternity hospital also began at the camp. Workers at Gihembe camp added 300 new houses and struggled to repair a broken water pump to improve the camp's water supply. Funding constraints forced UNHCR to suspend projects meant to help refugees generate income.

Armed attacks by Rwandan insurgents against Congolese refugees caused numerous deaths in the mid-1990s, but have not recurred in recent years. Other protection concerns remained, however. Rape remained a problem at Kiziba camp, according to UNHCR. Local officials routinely arrested refugees for cutting trees near the camps; aid workers responded with programs to educate camp residents about Rwanda's environmental concerns.

About 2,000 refugees voluntarily repatriated from Rwanda to Congo-Kinshasa during the year. UNHCR counseled against the repatriation, viewing eastern Congo-Kinshasa as too dangerous for safe return. More than 1,000 Congolese refugees who had repatriated during 1999-2000 returned to Rwanda in late 2000 and early 2001 because Congo-Kinshasa posed security problems and offered relatively few assistance programs.

Refugees from Burundi

Nearly 2,000 Burundian refugees lived in Rwanda, including about 600 who arrived during 2001. About 500 refugees resided at Kigeme camp in Gikongoro Province; the remainder lived on their own primarily in urban areas.

UNHCR stated in 1999 that conditions in Kigeme camp were "not up to the desired standards." Residents of the camp received food aid and access to a camp health clinic. UNHCR distributed blankets, soap, and used clothes during 2001. About 170 refugee students attended a primary school at the camp.

Government authorities continued to restrict the freedom of movement of refugees at Kigeme camp, virtually all of whom were ethnic Hutu. Refugees were subject to arrest if they left the camp without authorization. Government officials said they placed Kigeme camp in an isolated location to give the refugee population land for farming, but some aid workers suspected that government officials viewed the refugees as a potential security threat.

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