U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2000 - Rwanda

Approximately 35,000 Rwandans were refugees at the end of 1999, including about 20,000 in Tanzania, some 8,000 in Uganda, about 5,000 in Congo-Brazzaville, some 3,000 in Kenya, and 1,000 in Burundi.

An estimated 30,000 Rwandans in Congo-Kinshasa were living in refugee-like circumstances, their entitlement to full refugee status uncertain pending full screening.

Approximately 600,000 Rwandans were internally displaced at the end of 1999, although estimates varied widely because of different definitions of the displacement problem.

Rwanda hosted about 35,000 refugees at year's end, including nearly 35,000 from Congo-Kinshasa, and some 1,000 from Burundi.

Some 35,000 or more Rwandan refugees repatriated during the year.

Pre-1999 Events

Rwanda and its estimated 8 million people have a history of politically inspired conflict rooted in tensions between the ethnic Hutu majority – about 85 percent of the population – and the ethnic Tutsi minority.

Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi fled the country in the 1950s and 1960s and remained refugees for more than 30 years, one of the longest exiles in modern African history. Armed Tutsi exiles invaded Rwanda in 1990 to assert their right to return and share political power with the country's Hutu leaders. A 1993 peace accord acknowledged those rights.

Hutu extremist leaders in Rwanda launched a campaign of mass murder in April 1994, targeting moderate Hutu and the country's entire Tutsi population for extermination. A half-million to a million persons, overwhelmingly Tutsi, were massacred in a three-month genocide orchestrated at the highest levels of Rwanda's government. The scale and intensity of the genocide were "unprecedented in the history of the...entire African continent," a UN report stated.

A largely Tutsi rebel force, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), responded to the genocide by ousting the government in mid-1994. Some 1.7 million Rwandan Hutu refugees fled the country. Some fled because they feared RPA retribution; others were forced to leave by their own Hutu hardline political leaders.

The change in government persuaded some 800,000 long-time Tutsi refugees to repatriate during 1994-96. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees suddenly returned in late 1996 under controversial circumstances precipitated by civil war in Zaire (now Congo-Kinshasa, also known as the Democratic Republic of Congo) and expulsion by Tanzania. Another 200,000 Hutu refugees returned to Rwanda during 1997.

By 1998, the overwhelming majority of Rwandan refugees, Hutu and Tutsi, had returned to their homeland. The reintegration of some 2.5 million returned refugees – nearly one-third of Rwanda's population – was complicated by a persistent insurgency in the northwest. Insurgents' attacks and the RPA's counterinsurgency tactics killed thousands of civilians. A half-million or more Rwandans were internally displaced as 1998 ended.

"Rarely in human history has a society asked – insisted – that all its people live together again, side by side, in the aftermath of genocide," a 1998 report by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) stated.

Political and Security Situation in 1999

Security improved in northwest Rwanda during 1999 as government troops drove Rwanda's insurgents into neighboring Congo-Kinshasa and pursued them there. Insurgent attacks inside Rwanda occurred much less frequently than in previous years.

The country continued its painful recovery from the 1994 genocide. The legal system remained choked with 130,000 prisoners, most of them Hutu males suspected of participating in the genocide. A long-awaited UN report in December acknowledged that "the United Nations failed the people of Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. It is a failure for which the UN as an organization, but also its member states, should have apologized more clearly, more frankly, and much earlier," the report stated.

In response to the UN report, the Rwandan government stated that "apology is not enough," and called on the UN "to take the lead in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the country."

USCR provided information and analysis during the year to the International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. On the fifth anniversary commemorating the genocide, a USCR analysis published in the Los Angeles Times stated that the U.S. government "feigned ignorance" and "committed a willful act of negligence" by refusing to respond to the genocide as it occurred.

A USCR public statement in December repeated USCR's recommendation, made in earlier years, "for an independent review of U.S. policies during the genocide." USCR noted that "the U.S. government is now virtually alone in refusing to allow an independent examination of its policy failures during the Rwandan genocide."

Uprooted Rwandans

Although the number of internally displaced persons remained fairly steady throughout 1999, the causes of the displacement changed. During 1998 and early 1999, insurgent attacks and government counterinsurgency tactics in northwest Rwanda drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. As security improved, government land-use policies became the primary cause of population displacement.

In early 1999, some 600,000 or more people in the northwest lived in displacement camps or had congregated for protection in towns and other government-secured sites. About half of the inhabitants of displacement camps were under age 15, and two-thirds were under age 20, according to surveys by aid workers and government officials.

As security improved in the northwest, government authorities implemented a policy of villagization that required tens of thousands of rural families to relocate into 180 newly established village sites scattered throughout the northwest. Similar villagization policies were already underway in other parts of the country. The size of villagization sites ranged from 100 families to nearly 2,000.

Government officials argued that villagization would ease land pressures in Africa's most densely populated country and would enable residents to benefit from schools, health centers, and other economic opportunities while maintaining access to nearby farm land. Government leaders insisted that they would not force families to resettle involuntarily.

Critics of the policy, including many aid workers and international donors, expressed concern that the villagization program was coercive, poorly planned, overly ambitious, and was linked to the government's security interests rather than to economic development. One independent study warned that the policy would cause "long-term social tension."

By mid-year, some 400,000 persons in the northwest transferred from their homes and displacement sites to permanent villagization locations, and authorities dismantled numerous displacement camps. Authorities forced some residents to destroy their homes and move to the new permanent sites, a UN report found. Those who resisted the relocation were often fined or imprisoned, according to Human Rights Watch.

Some 40 percent of people who transferred into villagization sites in the northwest disliked the relocation and preferred to return home, a Rwandan government survey found. An assessment by the UN Special Representative of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Rwanda concluded that some residents moved to the sites voluntarily, and some involuntarily. The UN Special Representative urged that "villagization needs more public discussion."

"If proper services were provided in advance, settlers would be clamoring for admission" to the villagization sites, a UN human rights report stated in September. "Services should be installed before settlers are sought."

Critics and supporters of villagization agreed that most new sites lacked adequate services, such as water, sanitation, schools, and health care. Only half of the population in northwest Rwanda had access to their original farm land, a factor that reduced crop production. UN aid workers in June reported "significant improvement in the nutritional status of the recently resettled displaced population in the northwest," but warned that "significant numbers in the northwest will remain reliant on food aid" until early 2000 or beyond.

By late 1999, the government had reportedly established more than 300 villagization sites in the northwest and indicated plans to resettle 370,000 more families into as many as 800 new sites nationwide. The legal status of the villagization program remained unclear: although government ministers authorized the policy, the country's legislature had not yet ratified it.

International aid organizations debated the ethics of their participation in the controversial villagization program, while trying to meet the emergency needs of large numbers of displaced people. UN agencies appealed to international donors for $37 million to assist displaced populations; donors supplied about $26 million by mid-year. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) helped distribute nearly 250,000 blankets and water cans to 130,000 displaced families.

New Rwandan Returnees

More than 35,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees repatriated during 1999. Most returned from Congo-Kinshasa; about 1,000 repatriated from Tanzania.

Rwandan refugees returned home from Congo-Kinshasa because continued warfare there made asylum unsafe. Rwandan government troops involved in the Congolese war reportedly pressured some refugees to repatriate, while others told UNHCR that they were returning to Rwanda voluntarily.

Returnees typically stayed for one or two days in a transit center for processing before proceeding to their homes. Most returnees rapidly integrated into local communities, joining relatives who had repatriated previously. Most returning families received a three-month food supply, blankets, water containers, sleeping mats, kitchen utensils, and plastic sheeting to construct shelters. UNHCR offered special programs for new returnees in some areas, including livestock projects and fish ponds.

Adequate shelter remained a problem for many. Some returnees found their homes occupied and had to wait months to regain full possession. Reports of conflict over land and housing were infrequent, however.

UNHCR reported that new returnees suffered fewer arrests and beatings in 1999 than in previous years. However, a local human rights organization charged that returnees occasionally disappeared before reaching their homes, and security personnel arrested returnees who failed to register properly. Government soldiers raped 12 female returnees, including four girls, at a transit center in May, according to a UN report.

Rwandan officials visited refugee sites in Tanzania in April to persuade refugees to return home. About 60 Rwandan refugees living in Tanzanian camps visited Rwanda in September to assess conditions for repatriation.

Reintegration Conditions

Rwandan society continued on a path of gradual reintegration and reconstruction as it attempted to recover from the bloodshed and massive population displacement experienced in the 1960s, 1970s, and much of the 1990s. Although the country enjoyed relative calm during 1999, ethnic and political tensions inherent in a post-genocide society lingered.

"Although the security situation in Rwanda has improved, continued peace and stability will depend on the successful reintegration of present and future returnees," as well as the course of political conflicts elsewhere in the region, UNHCR stated in late 1999.

An estimated 70 percent of the Rwandan population lived in poverty, the UN reported. Because of the large-scale death toll during the 1990s, some 300,000 children lived in households without adults, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "Most [of the children] live in appalling conditions," UNICEF stated.

With more than 40 percent of the country's most fertile land uncultivated in the northwest because of security concerns and population movements, the Rwandan government and UN agencies appealed to international donors for $7 million in food aid during the second half of 1999. Aid agencies called potential instability in northwest Rwanda a "time bomb."

Housing remained a "serious problem" despite more than 100,000 new home constructions in recent years, UNHCR reported. Schools remained inadequate and under-staffed: only 4 percent of the population had a secondary education, and northwest areas of the country reported a ratio of one teacher per 70 students.

UNHCR spent $14 million on repatriation and reintegration projects during 1999. UNHCR and the UN Development Program signed a formal agreement in March to prepare for UNHCR's reduced assistance role in Rwanda. "The emergency phase is over. But for longer term stabilization, the money gets very tight," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, said during a visit to Rwanda in June.

Although UNHCR prepared to curtail its assistance activities, other sources warned that UNHCR should bolster its protection efforts on behalf of the country's large returnee population.

In a September report, the Special Representative of the UN Human Rights Commission recommended that "UNHCR [should] upgrade and increase the number of its staff in the northwest in order to follow developments affecting the returnees more closely and to assist and protect them." The report warned that local human rights organizations were unable to monitor events regularly outside the capital, Kigali.

In mid-December, UN humanitarian agencies suddenly re-instated special travel precautions in the northwest because of renewed security concerns.

Refugees from Congo-Kinshasa

Nearly 35,000 Congolese refugees lived in Rwanda at the end of 1999. Most were ethnic Tutsi Congolese who arrived in Rwanda in the mid-1990s because of war and ethnic violence in their own country. Some 1,500 new refugees – most of them babies born in the refugee camps – added to the refugee population during 1999.

The vast majority lived at two camps. The largest, Gihembe camp in north central Rwanda's Byumba Province, housed nearly 18,000 refugees. Kiziba camp in western Rwanda's Kibuye Province contained about 14,000 residents. UNHCR enlarged Gihembe camp during the year to alleviate crowding.

Congolese refugees received regular food aid, blankets, soap, water containers, water and sanitation facilities, health centers, hospital referrals, vaccinations, and recreation programs from UNHCR. The UN refugee agency provided health education, vocational training for adolescents, family reunification services, and programs to promote economic and social opportunities for women refugees. Each refugee received about two pounds (1 kg) of firewood per week to avoid local deforestation.

Nearly 7,000 Congolese children attended primary schools in Rwanda; nearly 300 attended secondary school. Aid organizations constructed additional classrooms to accommodate refugee students and launched a campaign to encourage school attendance by another 8,000 school-age refugees who were not enrolled.

Deadly attacks against Congolese refugees by Rwandan insurgents occurred in 1997 but did not recur in 1999. Protection concerns persisted, however. UNHCR urged Rwandan authorities to provide better protection for refugee women against reported sexual violence in the camps.

UNHCR expressed concern that some refugees were being manipulated to repatriate prematurely to Congo-Kinshasa based on misinformation about conditions there. Some refugees reportedly repatriated and had to flee again to Rwanda because conditions in Congo-Kinshasa remained dangerous. Rwandan authorities attempted to begin a registration campaign in August to prepare the refugees for large-scale repatriation, but authorities dropped the program when UNHCR opposed it.

UNHCR reported staffing shortages in Rwanda. Numerous staff positions remained empty because many international aid workers were reluctant to work in the country.

Refugees from Burundi

Approximately 1,000 Burundian refugees were in Rwanda, including 500 at Kigeme camp in Gikongoro Province, and up to 900 who lived on their own.

Refugees at the camp had only limited freedom of movement and required close monitoring to ensure their safety, UNHCR reported. "Conditions are not up to the desired standards," UNHCR said.

Government officials indicated the refugees might eventually be permitted to integrate locally, but no steps along these lines occurred in 1999.