Rwanda

Year-end Overview

Plan Overview

Working environment

 
Rwanda has been hosting thousands of refugees for decades, and today is home to over 170,000 refugees and asylum-seekers mainly from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Government has maintained open borders and refugees who have been allowed to settle in urban areas, with over 32,000 registered refugees living and working outside camps. The Government supports the refugee response through provision of land for reception centers and refugee camps, leads camp management and coordination, and has demonstrated progressive approach to refugees by committing to include them in national systems like health insurance and education.
 
UNHCR co-leads the refugee response with the Government, coordinating construction and management of camps and all protection and multisectoral assistance programmes. The refugee response includes a range of UN agencies and local and international NGO actors, as well as private sector partners. However, in five protracted Congolese camps, UNHCR and WFP are the only operational UN agencies.
 
While the overall security situation in Rwanda remains calm, the political instability in neighboring Burundi and eastern DRC continue to present a risk of an influx of refugees. Currently, Rwanda receives approximately 150 new refugee arrivals from Burundi per week.
 
Rwanda also receives thousands of Rwandan returnees each year, and UNHCR has increased its facilitation of voluntary return in advance of the end 2017 deadline for organized return agreed at the 2016 Ministerial Meeting on the Comprehensive Solutions Strategy relating to Rwandan refugees.
 

Key priorities

 
In 2018, UNHCR will focus on: 

• Furthering the socio-economic inclusion of refugees and reduce dependency on humanitarian aid through a multi-year,               multi-partner approach aiming to expand the integration of refugees in national systems and implementing a joint Government-UNHCR market-based livelihoods strategy to improve refugees’ self-reliance and ability to live independently from humanitarian assistance;
• Continuing to advocate for access to the asylum procedure for individual asylum-seekers who are not benefiting from prima facie recognition and working with the Government to assure functioning asylum procedures; 
• Supporting the Government to implement the commitments made at the 2016 Leaders’ Summit on Refugees to integrate refugees in national systems for education, health insurance access and national documentation system; 
• Forging strategic partnerships with the Government, development actors and One UN to include refugees in the national development plan and UN Development Assistance Plan;
• Promoting access to land and expanding Mahama camp to ensure that in the immediate term all refugee families live in dignified shelters. In the long term, alternatives to camps will be explored whereby some self-reliant refugees move out of camps and camps are transformed into villages, and all refugees and host communities are accessing national services.