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The Geopolitics of Rwandan Resettlement: Uganda and Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Charles David Smith
Charles David Smith*
Affiliation:
Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, and Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

By October 1994 the population of refugees from Rwanda and Burundi registered with the UN High Commission of Refugees in Tanzania was about 570,000. (Personal communication: Yukiko Hameda, UNHCR-Nairobi.) And from the point of view of the international and Tanzanian authorities responsible for refugees, the crisis continues to grow. On December 23, 1994, Patrick Chokala, Press Secretary to the Tanzanian President, claimed that 300-400 refugees enter Tanzania every day; the total number then was 591,000. (Daily News, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 24 December 1994.)

The human tragedy, the genocide which began after President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1994 and which in the space of a few short months left one-half million people dead and precipitated the flight of two and one-half million people to refugee camps in Zaire and Tanzania, cannot be undone, although expeditious and fair judicial procedures are a necessary step to a secure future.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 54 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995 

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References

Notes

1. All refugees are supposed to register with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, but those outside the camps often do not register. This deficit is sometimes offset by overcounting in the camps. Rations are allocated according to the numbers on the registration cards; sometimes people obtain cards in more than one name or register fictitious family members to get extra food to sell on the black market, which thrives in the camps.

2. The East African, January 9-15, 1995.

3. Kiddu-Makubuya, M. “Voluntary Repatriation by Force? The Case of Rwandan Refugees in Uganda,” in Adelman, H. and Sorenson, J., African Refugees (Boulder CO: Westview Press), 1994 Google Scholar.

4. Watson, Catharine, Exile from Rwanda? Background to an Invasion. (Washington: US Committee for Refugees; American Council for Nationalities Service), 1991 Google Scholar.

5. This is an area of ridges: water accumulates in the valleys along the border, but on the Tanzanian side there is a wide plateau with little water. This band of lakes along the border is therefore one of the few areas between Rwanda and Lake Victoria, 100 kilometers to the east, with enough water to supply the camps.

6. The government of Tanzania reported 590,000 Rwandan refugees in late December 1994; my experience in January 1995, working on food distribution in Kagenyi, made me all too aware of the number of fraudulent refugee registration cards in circulation.