U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2004 - Burundi

Nearly 355,000 Burundians were refugees at the end of 2003, including 325,000 in Tanzania; an estimated 20,000 in Congo-Kinshasa, nearly 2,000 in Malawi, at least 2,000 in Rwanda, some 2,000 in South Africa, some 1,000 each in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. An estimated 470,000 Burundians lived in refugee-like conditions in western Tanzanian, primarily camped in settlements.

About 400,000 Burundians were internally displaced at year's end, including some 300,000 living in camps.

Nearly 85,000 Burundian refugees repatriated to during the year, primarily from Tanzania.

Burundi hosted some 42,000 refugees at the end of 2003, including about 41,000 from Congo-Kinshasa and nearly 1,000 from Rwanda. More than 10,000 new refugees fled to Burundi during 2003, primarily from Congo-Kinshasa.

Uprooted Burundians

Some 755,000 Burundians remained uprooted at the end of 2003, including an estimated 400,000 internally displaced persons and some 355,000 refugees in neighboring countries – primarily in Tanzania.

Burundi's current conflict stems from 30 years of violent competition for power between the country's majority ethnic Hutu and minority ethnic Tutsi populations. A relatively small number of Tutsi elites have dominated the country's politics and military since independence in 1962.

In 1993, Tutsi soldiers assassinated the newly elected Hutu president, triggering a civil war and uprooting approximately 1.5 million Burundians. Despite continuing violence and bleak prospects for peace, some 200,000 refugees repatriated to Burundi during 1996 – 99. Many of the returnees, however, fled again when renewed violence struck their communities.

The 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement called for a power-sharing government, which took office in November 2001, but failed to secure peace since the agreement contained no cease-fire provision and Burundi's two main Hutu rebel groups, the Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) and the National Liberation Forces (FNL), refused to sign the accord or engage in negotiations.

Rebel forces intensified attacks in recent years, with harsh reprisals by Burundian government troops and Tutsi civilian militia despite cease-fire agreements between Burundi's transitional government and rebel factions signed in October 2002 and December 2002.

Violence spilled over into 2003 as government forces and rebel factions violated the ceasefires. In April, Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, succeeded Burundi's Tutsi president, Pierre Buyoya, but violence and displacement continued as FNL rebels led a major offensive against the capital in July.

Although the Burundian government signed a peace agreement with FDD rebel leaders in November, awarding rebels ministerial posts, splinter rebel groups continued assaults throughout the year displacing tens of thousands. "While engaged in their war against government soldiers, combatants of both rebel movements sometimes have deliberately targeted civilians, often because they knew them to have or believed them to have links to the authorities. In other cases, they have killed civilians to demonstrate that government officials could not or would not protect the people of a given area," Human Rights Watch reported in December. Government and rebel soldiers led continuous and deliberate attacks on civilians and forcibly displaced people in order to loot homes, causing massive forced flight in 2003.

Much of the fighting and displacement during the year occurred in Bujumbura Rural Province, including the capital Bujumbura. Displacement was largely temporary, since many people returned home soon after fighting subsided. In central Burundi's Gitega Province, clashes between FDD rebels and the Burundian army intensified in late January, displacing 9,000 families, according to local officials. In March, FNL attacks on government military positions forced an estimated 23,000 people to flee in the Gisovu Region of Bujumbura Rural Province. In March, FNL rebel attacks displaced an additional 3,000 people in the village of Rukaramu, northwest of Bujumbura.

In April, approximately 80,000 people fled the village of Kanyosha, southeast of Bujumbura, after heavy fighting between rebel and government forces. FDD shelling of Bujumbura in mid-April and a FNN assault south of Bujumbura in the district of Kabezi in late April caused significant displacement. Rebel and government soldiers deliberately killed civilians fleeing the violence in Kabezi, according to international human rights observers.

In May, an offensive by the Burundian army against FDD rebels caused the displacement of more than 12,000 people in Bubanza Province, northwestern Burundi. At the end of May, as many as 40,000 people from the towns of Masama, Gitenga, Mwaza and Kiremba Hills fled fighting between government forces and FNL factions in nearby Kabezi.

In June, while the government began demobilizing and cantoning rebel troops, as mandated under the Arusha Peace Accords, heavy fighting between government soldiers and FDD rebels forced as many as 65,000 civilians from their homes.

A major rebel attack on Bujumbura in early July killed approximately 300 people and displaced 15,000 others. Most of the uprooted civilians returned home by August and found their houses looted. In July, a lull in fighting in Kayanza Province, northern Burundi, allowed some 45,000 internally displaced people to return home. About 20,000 people fled their homes at Mpanda District, Bubanza Province, following two days of fighting between FNL rebels and the Burundian army in August.

Attempting to derail renewed negotiations between FDD rebels and the government, FNL rebels increased attacks in early September. Fighting between rebel groups and government forces led to the displacement of more than 47,000 people in east and northwest Bujumbura, with 10,000 fleeing across Mubimbi District from Bugarama and Muzani to Kinama. Most hid in forests and banana plantations with no food or shelter during the heavy seasonal rains. Rebel attacks on government soldiers in Ruziba and Muyira, Kanyosha District, in September led to reprisals attacks that forced civilians deemed rebel supporters from their homes. Revenge killings were also reported.

In November, an additional 12,000 people fled fighting between government forces and FNL rebels in western Bujumbura Rural, according to local officials. More than 25,000 new Burundian refugees fled to Tanzania during the year, with some 3,000 flooding across the border during the first week in February.

Conditions for Displaced Burundians

Burundi's massive, largely unassisted population of internally displaced persons continued to grow during 2003. An estimated one in six Burundians became uprooted during the year. Women and children constituted the majority of the estimated 300,000 Hutu and Tutsi internally displaced persons who lived in some 200 camps scattered throughout the country. An additional estimated 100,000 displaced persons survived outside of camps in mountainous regions, forests, and with relatives, beyond the reach of humanitarian assistance programs. Conditions for internally displaced Burundians remained deplorable. Humanitarian agencies provided limited food rations and health care to some accessible populations. Unable to return to their villages of origin because of poor security, many Burundians who repatriated from Tanzania during 2003 instead crowded into camps for internally displaced persons. Rates of HIV/AIDS were particularly high in camps for internally displaced people because of sexual violence and the deterioration of family structures, according to health workers. The civil war and massive population upheaval continued to provoke food shortages and outbreaks of infectious diseases such as malaria. Education services for displaced children remained largely nonexistent.

The unpredictable violence forced the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to curtail programs to monitor the reintegration of refugees during the year. Warring factions attacked and abducted international humanitarian workers during the year. At the beginning of the year, military authorities prevented humanitarian workers from aiding thousands of displaced people suffering in the Moso area of Ruyigi Province, eastern Burundi, for more than one month. Humanitarian agencies were unable to measure the displacement following a bloody January rebel offensive on Mwegereza Hill, eastern Ruyigi Province, which also prevented the UN World Food Programme (WFP) from distributing food in the region. Poor security in the central Burundi Province of Gitega closed the main highway to Muramvya Province, preventing international relief agencies from transporting much-needed aid. In August, WFP provided emergency food aid to 12,000 uprooted people in Mutambu District, Bujumbura Rural Province, and 21,000 people displaced by fighting in northwest Burundi's Bubanza Province. In September, the provincial governor warned that international relief agencies neglected 3,500 civilians in need of urgent assistance displaced by fighting between rebel groups in Bujumbura Rural Province.

Burundian Returnees

About 85,000 people returned to Burundi in 2003, most without any international assistance. Many Burundians repatriated during the year despite continued fighting and poor security throughout the country. UNHCR provided only limited humanitarian assistance to returnees, resulting in inadequate aid for returning Burundian refugees.

Nearly 2,400 Burundians returned from Tanzania through the Kobero border crossing in Muyinga Province in January. In February, Tanzanian and Burundian authorities agreed to open three more entry points in southeastern Burundi to help facilitate repatriation. The newly designated border crossings did not open until August, however. Burundian authorities opened new border entry points in northeastern Cankuzo and western Ruyigi Provinces in September.

UNHCR limited repatriation operations to secure areas in northern Burundi in 2003. An estimated 15,000 Burundian refugees left camps in the Kibondo region of Tanzania and returned home in May, reportedly to escape harsh refugee camp conditions. Some 5,000 of the spontaneous returnees resettled in Ruyigi and Makamba Provinces in eastern and southern Burundi. UNHCR facilitated more than 5,000 returns to areas of Burundi it deemed secure during May and June.

UNHCR and WFP provided returnees with limited emergency assistance, including three-month food rations, blankets, plastic sheeting, water containers, and kitchen utensils. To aid returnee reintegration, UNHCR improved sanitation, rehabilitated water and transportation systems, and implemented peace, reconciliation, and judicial programs in returnee areas. The Burundian government offered all returnee children free primary and secondary schooling. Authorities in Gitega Province assisted returnees with land reclamation disputes. However, the agency established to coordinate repatriation programs and reintegration under the Arusha Accords, the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons and Refugees (CNRS), failed to distribute food aid and material for shelters to returnees at the Gatumba transit center near the border with Congo-Kinshasa.

UNHCR and the governments of Burundi and Tanzania signed a Tripartite Agreement in August, creating a legal and logistical framework for the voluntary return of Burundian refugees from camps in western Tanzania.

Refugees from Neighboring Countries

More than 40,000 refugees from Congo-Kinshasa lived in Burundi at the end of 2003, including more than 11,000 new arrivals, primarily from Congo-Kinshasa. About 11,000 Congolese refugees spontaneously repatriated without international assistance during the year.

Most of the 11,000 new Congolese refugees fled renewed violence in South Kivu Province and deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Congo-Kinshasa. About one-third of the total Congo-Kinshasa refugee population lived in UNHCR-administered transit centers and refugee camps. During the year, more than 7,000 refugees arrived at Rugombo transit center in Burundi's northwest Cibitoke Province, just one mile (1.6 km) from the Congolese border, and more than 1,000 lived in Gatumba transit camp in Bujumbura Rural Province, less than three miles (5 km) from the border.

UNHCR relocated Congolese refugees to safer camps away from the volatile border area, closing Rugombo and Gatumba camps in 2003, transferring most Congolese to the new Cishemeye transit center in Cibitoke Province 60 miles (40 km) from the Congolese border, which housed more than 10,000 Congolese refugees by the end of the year. More than 3,000 others lived in another new camp, Gasorwe, in northeastern Burundi's Muyinga Province. Some 500 Congolese refugees chose to spontaneously repatriate instead of transferring to camps further removed from Congo-Kinshasa.

Intense fighting between militia groups in Uvira, eastern Congo-Kinshasa, in May forced 5,000 Congolese refugees to flee to Cibitoke Province, northwestern Burundi, where they took shelter in schools, churches, and with host families. UNHCR transferred some 1,400 of these refugees to Cishemeye transit center, where they all received emergency food aid.

Congolese refugees in the transit centers and camps received basic health care, water, and housing materials from UNHCR and monthly food rations from WFP. Some 3,000 Congolese refugees in Gasorwe camp demonstrated against poor living conditions in April, stoning refugee agency cars and protesting that their monthly food ration was insufficient.

An additional 30,000 Congolese urban refugees lived primarily in Bujumbura and received limited medical and financial assistance.

Fewer than 1,000 Rwandan refugees remained in Burundi at the end of 2003. UNHCR facilitated the return of 166 Rwandan refugees during the year.