UN agency builds homes for returnees, IDPs

Thousands of internally displaced people and returning refugees in three Burundian provinces are the beneficiaries of 7,100 homes, 14 primary schools and five health centres that the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has built and handed over to the government. Some 1,300 of the homes are Cankuzo Province, in the east, 300 in the central province of Gitega and the rest in the eastern province of Ruyigi, one of the areas worst affected by 12 years of civil war from which the country is now emerging. The UNHCR handed over the buildings during a ceremony at Kabuyenge site in Gisuru, one of the six communes in Ruyigi Province, where the agency built 200 homes for returning refugees and IDPs, one primary school and staff rooms for primary school teachers. The UNCHR deputy representative to Burundi, Valentin Tapsoba, said the total cost of the infrastructure at Kabuyenge was seven million Burundi francs (US $70,000). The minister of national solidarity, gender and human rights, Françoise Ngendahayo, said the Kabuyenge site, which hosts IDPs and returning refugees, was built "to foster reconciliation between returnees and IDPs who will have to live together now". At least 80 percent of the homes would go to returning refugees and the rest to IDPs. In a statement issued on Tuesday, UNHCR said the agency financed the building of 44 schools and 11 health centres in 2005 in 10 provinces hosting the largest number of returnees. It also completed and handed over to the government 27 schools while 17 others it built in the provinces of Muyinga, Karuzi and Kirundo are due to handed over soon. The agency also said it was providing building materials to at least 23,000 families to enable them to build homes. More than 20,000 of these families have now completed building the homes. The UNHCR said it had spent $12 million on reconstruction and rehabilitation since 2005. It added that since the launch of refugee repatriation operations in 2002, it had facilitated at least 296,000 refugees to return home mainly from neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, the agency announced that it would resumed its activities on Thursday in Gasorwe camp, in the northeastern province of Muyinga, which hosts 8,730 Congolese refugees. It suspended activities at the camp on 18 April following a skirmish. The UNHCR public relations Catherine Lune-Grayson said on UN-supported Radio ONUB that the agency did not want all the refugees in the camp to be victimised. The skirmish occurred when a Burundian man, his wife and their three children went to the camp to seek refugee status. When a UNHCR agent, who determined that their claim was invalid denied the request, the family prevented the agent from leaving the UNHCR office. Some of the Congolese refugees then joined in, and the situation became violent when people began throwing stones, damaging several UNHCR vehicles. There were no injuries.