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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

RWANDA-TANZANIA: Rwanda is safe for returning refugees, says UNHCR head

NAIROBI, 16 April 2003 (IRIN) - Rwanda is safe for refugees in Tanzania and Uganda to return home, the head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, told IRIN on Tuesday. However, he added that any repatriation must be voluntary.

Lubbers, who visited Uganda as part of a tour of East Africa, was speaking at a news conference in Nairobi. "In Tanzania, we informed the refugees that they could return to Rwanda. Some have returned but many remain," he said.

The position taken by the Tanzanian government to repatriate most Rwandan refugees by March, he said, had resulted in a number of them entering Uganda. Such people, he said, were "not refugees anymore". However, he said, "they could register individually as refugees" in Uganda.

On 12 April, an international NGO, the Lawyers Committee, issued a statement in New York saying at least 6,000 mainly Rwandans and Burundians who had left Tanzania were living in unofficial camps in southwestern Uganda without adequate food, housing and medical care.

"For more than a year and a half, this group of refugees - which is predominantly made up of Rwandans and Burundians - has been barely surviving in unofficial camps, unable to legally work and without any humanitarian aid," the committee reported.

Lubbers said he had found no evidence to support speculation that one refugee camp in Uganda was being used by Ugandans to train Rwandan dissidents. Lubbers toured the Kiryandogo refugee camp in Masindi District, northeastern Uganda, during his visit to Uganda.

"We did not find any indication that this is a camp for training dissidents to fight," he said.

Themes: (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs

[ENDS]

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