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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
BURUNDI-RWANDA: "Asylum seekers" need urgent relief aid, UN official says
BUJUMBURA, 26 Oct 2005 (IRIN) - Some 1,110 Rwandans who have sought refuge in northern Burundi urgently need relief aid, an official of Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.
"They left the Gatsinda site in Ngozi [Province] as the head of the zone requested it considering their security was threatened," Catherine Lune-Grayson, the UNHCR public relations officer, said. "They are now at a site where there is not much for them."
The Rwandans are now at a playing ground, two kilometres from a school in Mivo Zone in Burundi's northern province of Ngozi.
The Burundian news agency, ABP, reported on Tuesday that the Rwandans were without food or shelter.
Lune-Grayson said Burundian authorities on Monday called on the humanitarian community, including the UNHCR, to help the Rwandans, whom the agency considers asylum seekers.
She said a humanitarian assessment was made on Tuesday at a meeting of representatives of the humanitarian community and relief would "soon be taken to the asylum seekers".
She added that the asylum seekers were vulnerable as they had just a little food, as they last received relief aid at the beginning of October.
Lune-Grayson said the Rwandans had lived in the classrooms in unhygienic conditions and after they left for the playing ground, administration officials sprayed the classrooms with disinfectants on Monday, to prevent pupils from catching infectious diseases.
She said UNHCR could not build a site for the asylum seekers without the government's permission. However, she said, the agency would help the Rwandans at Mivo as the government had authorised the organisation to do so there.
The agency's public information assistant in Burundi, Didier Bukuru, told IRIN Tuesday that the asylum seekers "need to be regrouped so that assistance can be easily provided to them".
ABP reported that the Rwandans currently have no fixed site; it said they moved from one place to another and had been accused of destroying crops and trees of Burundian families.
The news agency reported that Mivo administration officials had appealed for the Rwandans to be allocated a site on government land.
Bukuru said more asylum seekers were located in other parts of the country, including Mugano, in Muyinga Province; Rwisuri in Kirundo Province; and Mparamirundi and Gatsinda in Ngozi Province.
Lune-Grayson said the 2,100 asylum seekers at Rwisuri in Kirundo were receiving aid but described their situation as "relatively precarious".
The Rwandans first sought refuge in Burundi in February and March but they were all repatriated by June. Since then, most have returned to northern Burundi. Lune-Grayson said the total number of Rwandan asylum seekers in Burundi was 3,700.
An official of the Burundi Red Cross Society, who requested anonymity, said the organisation had been collaborating with UNHCR in operations to distribute aid, twice a month, to the asylum seekers.
He said 73 Rwandan families whose grass-thatched houses were set on fire in late September at Rwisuri were now living in "difficult conditions". He said they were in need of utensils, clothing and building material.
"The assistance provided to them is sufficient for all of them," the official said. He added that whenever the asylum seekers were set in known sites, "the Red Cross Burundi can get assistance to them".
He said although the organisation has sufficient expertise in humanitarian aid, at times it faced problems of means for intervention.
Administration, security, intelligence and media border officials from Rwanda and Burundi met on Saturday in Cyangugu Province in Rwanda to discuss security on the common border. This followed a recent accusation by Rwandan officials that Rwandan rebels of the Front démocratique pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) have been recruiting from the asylum seekers and stealing cattle and motorcycles in Rwanda.
The meeting was attended by officials from Kayanza, Cibitoke on the side of Burundi and Gikongoro and Cyangugu on the side of Rwanda. ABP reported that the officials agreed to arrest each other's fugitives from the law.
Cibitoke Governor Sylvestre Bizimana agreed to hand over to Rwanda on Tuesday 22 Rwandans detained by police who did not have residence permits.
ABP reported that Rwanda, on its part, said it would hand over to Burundian officials a Burundian who had been arrested by Rwandan police. It was agreed that administrators from both sides would meet once a month, and governors once every three months.
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but May not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2005
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