4 December 2007
Bujumbura — 80 percent of Burundians who fled to Tanzanian in 1972 prefer to be naturalized Tanzanians rather than be repatriated to Burundi as was disclosed during the 12th tripartite meeting Burundi-Tanzania and UNHCR. This meeting is aimed at assessing the results of the repatriation process.
During this meeting, it was agreed that all Burundian refugees will have to leave Tanzania before the end of June 2008. More than 350,000 Burundian refugees have been repatriated since 2002, according to the figures put forward by the UNHCR. A great number of these returnees came from Tanzania.
Burundian refugees who fled to Tanzania in 1972 are still reluctant to return home. The few who return home meet the problem of the knowing where they came from and/or find their land already occupied by other families. The Tanzanian Interior minister says that all the hindrances to repatriation are no longer existent in Burundi. Tanzania has already curtailed the number of refugee camps within its borders: only three camps remain. Tanzanian forced repatriation over the last severals months and families of refugees were separated.
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