Great Lakes: Year in Review 2005 - Returnees and refugees

NAIROBI, 9 January 2006 (IRIN) - Some armed conflicts in the Great Lakes region continued to simmer throughout 2005, but overall there was less violence than in previous years, which encouraged many displaced people to return home. Burundians were the largest group of displaced people to repatriate. With a peaceful transition to an elected government in 2005 following the country’s 12-year civil war, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) assisted around 60,000 of the 400,000 Burundians living in Tanzania to return home, and more are expected to follow. With armed conflict ending in many parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), some of the 155,000 Congolese refugees living in Tanzania started going home. In November, UNHCR launched a ferry service for returnees across Lake Tanganyika. Some of the 4.5 million people displaced within the DRC also returned home, many travelling hundreds of kilometres in UN boats along the Congo River. In July, a boat brought almost 900 people to Kisingani, capital of Oriental province, from Mbandaka, capital of Equateur province, to which they had fled seven years earlier to escape fighting. UNHCR also provided motorised canoes so that the first of 57,000 refugees who had fled to the Republic of Congo (ROC) and Central African Republic (CAR) could cross the Obangi River to their homes in Equateur province. Some 300 soldiers of the former Zairian army, who had fled to ROC five years earlier, also returned to Kinshasa with their families in November. Various armed conflicts continued in the east of the DRC, which borders Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. The UN Mission in DRC (MONUC) started supporting Congolese army operations in 2005 to disband some of the Congolese militias and Ugandan and Rwandan rebels based in DRC. Some Rwandan rebels who had been living in eastern DRC since the 1994 Rwandan genocide began returning home. One group has been the Rwandan Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), which has 8,000 and 10,000 fighters near the border with Rwanda, according to MONUC. Although the Hutu group opposes what it says is a Tusti-dominated government in Rwanda, FDLR leader Ignace Murwanashyaka declared in March that the group would disarm and return home. MONUC created three centres near FDLR bases in North Kivu and three in South Kivu where the fighters could assemble for demobilisation. The results had been disappointing, according to MONUC. Since March an average of only 60 to 70 FDLR combatants have come to the centres each month. Many observers say that hardcore members of the FDLR, who would likely face charges of genocide in Rwandan courts, are still unlikely to return voluntarily. The government of the DRC set a deadline of 31 September for all foreign, armed groups to disarm and leave the country. After the deadline, the army began attacking the bases of some of the smaller armed groups, with logistical support from MONUC. The DRC army launched a UN-supported operation in October to oust Ugandan rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who had crossed into northeastern DRC from southern Sudan in September. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had threatened to invade DRC to force the LRA out if the DRC did not do it first. In late December the army also launched a UN-supported operation against two other Ugandan rebel groups who for years had been based in northeastern DRC near the Ugandan border. MONUC said fighters on both sides were killed, including two rebel leaders and a UN peacekeeper. So far the DRC army has not risked confronting the larger force of FDLR rebels, even though Rwanda has also threatened to invade the DRC if the FDLR troops are not disarmed. Those battles are expected to take place in 2006. New refugees The largest new refugee population in 2005 in the sub-region came from Central African Republic. Although the country returned to democratic rule in 2005, more than 10,000 people started fleeing to southern Chad in June following attacks near the border by unidentified armed groups. During 2005, various waves of refugees fled fighting in eastern DRC to Uganda and Burundi. In February tens of thousands of people were displaced by fighting in the DRC's Ituri district, many crossing Lake Albert into eastern Uganda. Two hundred kilometres south, more than 8,000 Rwandans fled into Burundi in early April, claiming they were being persecuted by local gacaca courts, traditional tribunals which began operating nationwide in 2005 to try the cases of up to a million people accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide. Burundian authorities initially accepted the asylum seekers. Following a meeting with Rwandan authorities in June, however, Burundi decided to brand them “illegal migrants” and forcibly return them to Rwanda. UNHCR said around 5,000 asylum seekers were deported, while others went into hiding. Some of the deportees have since returned to Burundi. The Burundian government has since agreed to review the cases of the Rwandans individually.