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U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2001 - Tanzania

Tanzania hosted approximately 540,000 refugees at the end of 2000: about 400,000 from Burundi, more than 110,000 from Congo-Kinshasa, nearly 30,000 from Rwanda, and about 3,000 from Somalia.

Tanzania also hosted 100,000 to 200,000 Burundians who fled to Tanzania in previous decades and continued to live there in refugee-like circumstances without official refugee status. The Tanzanian government claimed that this latter group totaled as many as 470,000 persons.

Tanzania expelled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of refugees and asylum seekers during 2000.

An estimated 100,000 new refugees fled to Tanzania from Burundi, Rwanda, and Congo-Kinshasa during the year. Some 230,000 new refugees have arrived in Tanzania during the past two years.

Refugee Protection

Although Tanzania has a long history as a relatively generous asylum country, refugee protection problems have worsened with the expansion of the refugee population during the past five years. Long-standing concerns about security in and near refugee camps intensified during 2000. Tanzanian citizens as well as international aid workers regarded the large refugee population as both a victim and a source of crime.

The overwhelming majority of refugees lived in an impoverished western corner of Tanzania, where local services were barely adequate even for local residents. The steady growth in refugee numbers "is taking place ... where the refugee fatigue is widespread and where the hostility toward the refugee population is intensifying," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated in July.

Aid agencies regularly expressed concern that the massive refugee population contained Burundian rebels. Refugees reported that rebel groups or other refugee leaders levied "taxes" against camp occupants. UNHCR warned repeatedly about the need to preserve "the civilian character" of refugee camps and opened a "separation facility" in June to separate combatants from genuine refugees. Rumors that Burundian government troops or mercenaries would attack the refugee camps in Tanzania heightened tensions during 2000, although the attacks did not occur.

Criminal elements among the refugee population committed murders, rapes, and armed robberies in refugee camps as well as against local citizens. Government officials reported that prisons were overcrowded with refugee criminals and that western Tanzania's judicial system lacked enough judges to process court cases in a timely manner.

Police arrested seven Burundian refugees in May for robbing a local hospital. "This is the first time refugees have attacked an institution," a local police chief stated. "It has caused fear among residents and patients." The authorities also detained refugees during 2000 when, facing food cutbacks in their camps, refugees without proper identity papers migrated to villages and towns in search of food or jobs.

Crimes inside refugee camps often went unreported. A well-known local Red Cross doctor who worked in the camps was murdered with his family. Refugee women were particularly victimized by crime. Up to a quarter of refugee women have suffered rapes or extreme sexual harassment, often at the hands of armed militia members and Tanzanian security personnel, according to aid workers. During the final nine months of 2000, refugee women reported 209 rapes, 64 attempted rapes, and 1,700 incidents of domestic violence, according to UNHCR.

"The available statistics on the number of ... refugee women subjected to domestic violence are unreliable and ... significantly understate the problem," a Human Rights Watch report in October concluded.

Aid workers placed more resources into legal, medical, and counseling support to victims of gender violence. Efforts to end impunity for sexual crimes suffered a setback during 2000 when a local court failed to reach a verdict against local citizens accused of raping 50 refugee women in a single incident in 1999. The case was still pending at year's end.

UNHCR struggled to address the full range of protection problems. The agency added field security officers and continued to provide financial and logistical support to local policing efforts. "The refugees face threats to their physical safety, mainly from criminal or politically motivated elements within the refugee community," a UN report stated late in the year.

Tanzanian authorities responded to security concerns by forcibly expelling refugees and asylum seekers from the country. UNHCR estimated that 400 to 700 forced repatriations, or refoulements, occurred during 2000. Government officials might have expelled hundreds of other asylum seekers without UNHCR's knowledge.

The forcible repatriations particularly targeted Rwandans and Burundians who had fled to Tanzania decades earlier and lived outside of camps, integrated into local villages. Under a new Tanzanian law that took effect in early 1999, refugees and asylum seekers were obliged to live in refugee camps. Those living outside of camps without identity cards were subject to expulsion in regular police security sweeps. Forced repatriations occurred "more or less daily" in the first half of the year as authorities prepared for a presidential election in October, UNHCR reported.

Many expelled refugees and asylum seekers became separated from their families and were given little or no opportunity to collect their possessions before departing. Authorities detained some individuals for up to a week before forcing them from the country. Several politically prominent persons expelled to Rwanda were subsequently arrested there. Officials also expelled 15 Ethiopian asylum seekers back to Kenya, their country of first asylum.

UNHCR protested the refoulements of the Burundians and Rwandans, and provided training workshops on international refugee law for more than 100 local government officials in the first half of the year. UNHCR reported that local government officials instigated most of the expulsions.

Refugee Aid

With a refugee population of more than a half-million, Tanzania hosted more refugees at the end of 2000 than any other country in Africa.

Most refugees lived in a 150-mile (250 km) string of camps and settlements in western Tanzania. The refugee population was nearly half as large as the western region's local population. Remote camp locations, poor roads, combinations of drought and heavy rains, budget constraints, security concerns, and rising tensions between local residents and refugees hampered humanitarian aid.

"These refugee areas have traditionally been among the poorest and most deprived areas of the country," UNICEF reported. The arrival of 100,000 new refugees during 2000 added to the humanitarian challenge. "Assistance and protection programs for refugees are being delivered in a more politically charged atmosphere," UNHCR warned.

Government officials expressed concern about deforestation and other environmental damage caused by the growing refugee population. Local residents and aid workers noted that humanitarian assistance, despite its inadequacy, provided refugees with better nutrition than many local residents enjoyed. Health surveys indicated that Tanzanian children in the region suffered higher rates of sickness and death than did refugee children, according to UN relief workers.

"This flood of humanity has seriously strained Tanzanian government resources and burdened host communities," Refugees International reported in early 2000. "The imbalance in resources available for refugees and Tanzanians is seriously straining relations between the two communities and eroding support within Tanzania for hosting refugees."

Refugee camps were large and overcrowded. Aid agencies opened new camps in late 1999 and late 2000, but the new sites quickly filled and more new camps were still needed. The logistics of providing relief supplies to the camps were daunting. Some camps, for example, lacked adequate water supplies and relied on daily water deliveries by large tanker trucks.

Refugees subsisted on reduced food rations for most of 2000 because donor countries provided insufficient amounts of food relief. Refugees received only 60 percent of normal food rations for part of the year, and 80 percent rations the rest of the year.

Food cutbacks affected refugees' security. "There are growing fears of lawlessness as hungry refugees are left to forage on their own in surrounding communities," UNHCR reported. "Some refugees are selling off belongings like plastic sheeting or hoes in order not to go hungry." Food cutbacks also convinced some frightened refugees that the international community was preparing to force involuntary repatriations.

Budget shortfalls for UNHCR and about 15 other humanitarian agencies forced curtailment of numerous assistance programs besides food. By October, UN agencies received less than half of the funding they requested. The budget constraints allowed fewer road repairs, causing disruption of aid deliveries and deterioration of truck fleets. "Trucks and light vehicles often spend more time in the workshop than in the field," the International Federation of the Red Cross complained.

UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee managed to expand a program to care for victims of gender violence. Aid agencies also constructed health clinics and new schools, planted new trees to alleviate deforestation, and worked to expand water systems for the growing refugee population.

Although mortality rates in refugee camps were within normal ranges, malaria and HIV/AIDS were major health problems. Refugee camps contained 65 schools attended by 107,000 students, but with only one teacher per 88 students.

Refugees from Burundi

Approximately 80,000 new Burundian refugees fled to Tanzania during 2000, joining more than 300,000 other Burundians who fled there during the 1990s to escape warfare and human rights atrocities in their own country. Nearly half of the new arrivals entered Tanzania in the first two months of the year.

Some 140,000 new Burundian refugees have arrived in Tanzania during the past two years. Many of them reported that Burundian government troops at the border attempted to block their escape.

Aid workers officially recounted the growing refugee population in mid-year to weed out fraud and double-counting in assistance programs. The recount exercise reduced the official number of Burundian refugees by tens of thousands. Some 24 percent of Burundian refugees living in 10 camps were women, 22 percent were men, and 54 percent were children. About 3,000 were unaccompanied minors.

Thousands of Burundian refugees settled into a new camp, Karago, that opened in late 2000. UNHCR continued to press Tanzanian authorities for permission to transfer larger numbers of Burundian refugees from the Kigoma Region to the Kagera Region to alleviate overcrowding. Tanzanian officials, however, largely resisted the plan.

Despite dangerous conditions in Burundi, several thousand Burundian refugees voluntarily repatriated during 2000.

In addition to 400,000 Burundian refugees, huge numbers of Burundians have lived for decades in Tanzania without assistance. This "refugee-like" population numbered anywhere from 100,000 to 400,000 during the year, according to various estimates.

Refugees from Congo-Kinshasa

Some 110,000 refugees from Congo-Kinshasa (also known as Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire) lived in Tanzania at the end of 2000, including about 10,000 new arrivals during the year. The refugees were fleeing warfare in their own country.

Many of the refugees reached Tanzania by boat across Lake Tanganyika. Most new refugees during 2000 arrived in good condition, but outbreaks of measles and cholera briefly struck the two overcrowded camps for Congolese refugees, Lugufu and Nyaragusu. A new camp, known as Lugufu II, opened late in the year after a long delay. The new camp will eventually accommodate up to 30,000 occupants.

Aid agencies conducted a re-registration exercise in the camps to crack down against refugees who were receiving extra food rations because of erroneous registration records.

After an authorized visit to the camps by Congolese government officials, 2,000 refugees registered to repatriate. They remained in Tanzania at year's end, however.

Refugees from Rwanda

Nearly 30,000 Rwandan refugees lived in Tanzania at the end of 2000, including almost 8,000 new arrivals during the year. The refugees fled political and ethnic tensions in Rwanda, including allegations of arbitrary arrests.

Government officials screened newly arrived asylum seekers at Mbuba transit center. The National Eligibility Commission granted refugee status to virtually all new Rwandan asylum seekers during the year. Most newly recognized refugees moved into established refugee camps. Thousands of refugees who arrived many years ago have settled into local villages. Refugees in villages were vulnerable to expulsions during police security sweeps. (See Refugee Protection above.)

Nearly 2,000 Rwandan refugees voluntarily repatriated during the year, according to UNHCR.

Refugees from Somalia About 3,000 Somali refugees continued to live at Mkuyu settlement in eastern Tanzania. Most fled to Tanzania in the early 1990s to escape civil war in Somalia.

Virtually all Somali refugees depended on food aid. UNHCR and Tanzanian officials agreed in 1999 to establish a new site where Somali refugees could support themselves through farming. The new site was not yet prepared by the end of 2000, however, in part because of UNHCR budget constraints.