BURUNDI: Returnee families need shelter
BUJUMBURA, 27 October 2009 (IRIN) - Hundreds of Burundian families who recently returned home from Tanzania have been living in the open in western Bubanza province after they failed to trace their original homes.
For about a month, some of the 300 families (including 85 returnees), who arrived recently from a transit camp, have been living under trees and on the veranda of the Gihanga communal office in Bubanza.
"We came here because we did not know where our fathers and grandfathers lived. What we know is that they lived here [in Gihanga]," Donatien Mukeko, one of the returnees, said.
She said most of those who had returned were born in Tanzania and feel like “foreigners in the villages of their grandparents”.
Health risks
Virginie Nzeyimana said: "Mosquitoes bite us every night, we have no mosquito nets, and even if we had them where would we hang them? The rains also hit us."
Although Nzeyimana was born in Rutana in eastern Burundi, she arrived on 24 October in Gihanga because it is her husband's home.
"As you can see, I only have one piece of clothing yet it sometimes gets very cold," she said.
Nzeyimana said the returnees urgently needed shelter as the rainy season had started.
"Officials should look for acceptable shelter for us; we need to be treated as human beings after we suffered for long in exile," she said.
She added they also needed a health service and more food. The returnees said the food rations – peas, maize and cooling oil - they received from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, when they arrived were almost finished.
Aid packages
UNHCR public information officer Bernard Ntwari said each returnee received a six-month relief aid package as well as non-food items such as plastic covers, blankets, hoes, jerry cans and soap.
"Some of these returnees arrived this year in August, September or October; they, therefore, still have their food aid," Ntwari said. "For those who arrived before, PARESI [the Programme de Reintegration des Sinistrés, within the Ministry of National Solidarity] will treat each case on an individual basis.
"But after six months, UNHCR does not provide food assistance to returnees any more," he added.
He said UNHCR was collaborating with PARESI to work out a plan to resettle landless returnees.
"They [PARESI] are considering if it would be easier to resettle them in the already existing peace villages or build new ones near their homes," Ntwari said.
However, he stressed that even if food aid stopped after six months, the refugee agency worked with its local partners, such as Iteka - a human rights group - to monitor the situation of returnees. He added that one of the important tools for their protection was the identity card that each returnee received upon arrival.
A delegation from the Ministry of National Solidarity visited Gihanga on 23 October to assess the returnees' needs and promised that relief aid would be sent to the families "in days to come".
Peace village
Chantal Hatungimana, the director of the Repatriation Department, said the delegation had noted that the returnees needed plastic sheeting for shelter as well as mosquito nets.
Regarding food aid, Hatungimana said those who came a month ago had benefited from a six-month package. "But those who came earlier have finished their stock," she said. "We will report to the ministry so that food aid can be distributed to the repatriates as soon as possible."
Hatungimana said the Gihanga communal administration had pledged to allocate land for the building of a peace village for the landless returnees.
The few returnees who have so far managed to identify their land say they found public buildings on them.
"My land is occupied by churches and schools," Vianney Gahungu, 65, said. "I hear the remaining part of my land is soon to be taken by other people."
Gordien Kanjori, Gihanga administrator, said he had been helping some of the returnees to find shelter in other households and in communal buildings, as well as donating land for them to build huts.
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