"I would rather die before I returned to Burundi."
For years, Burundian refugees living in Tanzanian camps have faced coercion by the Tanzanian authorities to return home to where they risk crushing poverty, government persecution, and the potential violence of local land conflicts.
Now, yet again, the Tanzanian government is ramping up efforts to push the remaining 142,000 Burundian refugees out of the country, with officials warning that the last two camps - Nduta and Nyarugusu - will be closed in the coming few months.
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The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, frames the process as "voluntary returns". But they are anything but. The classification of "voluntary" is a fig leaf for the Tanzanian government to cynically hide what is effectively a policy of refoulement, or forced repatriation.
It is reminiscent of 2012-2013, when the authorities shuttered the Mtabila camp. The Burundian civil war had ended, but many Burundian refugees did not feel safe returning. Despite these fears, Tanzania expelled 37,000 refugees, burning their homes and forcing some on to buses at gunpoint.
The situation is urgent once more. We are calling on Tanzania to reverse its current course, and for UNHCR to cease any complicity in the unsafe and potentially disorderly return of Burundians.
A history of abuse
Most Burundian refugees in Tanzania fled in 2015 when Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would seek a controversial and potentially unconstitutional third term. It led to massive protests and a violent government and allied militia crackdown.
Hundreds of thousands fled, primarily to Tanzania. Most of these refugees had already lived in Tanzanian camps in the 1990s and 2000s during the Burundian civil war but struggled to find safety and economic stability under Tanzania's strict encampment policy.
For some, this was the second, third, or even fourth time they had been forced to flee their homes.
Tanzanian President John Magufuli came to power in 2015 on a xenophobic "Tanzania first" platform. His anti-refugee policies - designed to encourage returns - included defunding humanitarian programmes, destroying vital camp markets and economies, closing schools, and deploying security agents to abduct and allegedly torture Burundians.
Refugees who repatriated during this period generally struggled to settle safely back in Burundi. They had lost their homes, and livelihoods were hard to establish. They also risked being targeted by those who took over their land in their absence, and the ruling party's feared youth militia, the Imbonerakure.
Efforts to reintegrate them - sponsored by the government and international aid - often proved too little and ill-conceived.
Tanzania's current government of President Samia Hassan is upping the pressure once more. In May last year, UNHCR and the home affairs ministry conducted a household-level "return intention" survey - applied only to Burundian refugees in the country.
The results have not been made public, but signs soon went up in the camps warning that all Burundians should prepare themselves to "voluntarily" return. However, many refugees told us the exercise was a sham, and that their protection concerns had been ignored.
Yet the authorities appear determined to close the remaining two camps. In the past several weeks, refugees' homes have been systematically destroyed, with reports of arbitrary arrests, the confiscation of property, and the deletion of people from food distribution lists.
In a statement on 1 January, a coalition of local refugee rights groups condemned what it described as the "coercive pressure aimed at forcing Burundian refugees to register for return to Burundi, in clear violation of the principle of voluntary, safe, and dignified repatriation".
The coalition also called out UNHCR for its "silence", accusing it of "ignoring the fate of high-risk refugees, including political opponents, former military personnel, and human rights defenders, who face grave danger if forcibly returned".
UNHCR has not declared Burundi safe, but says it is committed to facilitating the return of up to 3,000 individuals a week - a rate likely to be inherently disorderly. The agency insists repatriation will be conducted "in full respect of the principles of voluntariness, safety, dignity, and international protection standards".
However, Barbara Bentum-Williams Dotse, UNHCR's country representative, seemed to contradict those principles during a visit to Nduta camp in October. "More than 97% of Burundian refugees have no valid reasons to maintain their exile status and must therefore return willingly or forcibly," she was quoted as saying.
George Simbachawene, Tanzania's home affairs minister, has underlined the finality of the government's position. "Given that Burundi is safe and the circumstances that compelled [people] to flee no longer exist," the emphasis needs to shift to the "modalities and orderly procedures for their repatriation", he said in a UNHCR press release.
Yet despite the hardships of camp life, and the dependency on an underfunded aid system, refugees we have spoken to have repeatedly rejected the idea that Burundi is secure and that return is desirable. "I would rather die before I returned to Burundi," one man explained.
A "desperate situation"
Burundi's authoritarian regime is notoriously intolerant. In October, the UN's special rapporteur condemned the ongoing "extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, torture, and sexual and gender-based violence" by the ruling party.
Between January and August 2025, the NGO network SOS-Torture documented 26 cases of enforced disappearances, which it said was "part of a strategy of repression aimed at silencing" dissent. Refugees who have criticised repatriation would also likely be viewed as disloyal and suffer the consequences on their return, rights defenders warn.
Tanzania itself is going through a tumultuous time. Following elections in October, the government has engaged in a violent and systematic crackdown on opposition voices in which hundreds, if not thousands, have been killed. Refugees are ensnared in these broader dynamics - part of a regional pushback against "Western" rights agendas.
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Globally, we have entered an era that political scientist Nanjala Nyabola has described as "the end of asylum". Tanzania is not alone in failing to uphold international law: More powerful nations such as the United States are actively destroying those same codes, while at the same time gutting aid budgets.
However, that cannot stop us from calling attention to what is going on in Nduta and Nyarugusu camps. Burundian refugees remain in a desperate situation. They are too scared to return home, but are unsafe - without adequate food, shelter, or protection - in a country that purportedly provides them with asylum.
Creating the conditions that will enable return to be a sustainable option will take considerable effort, political will, and resources.
In the meantime, we urge leaders in the international humanitarian community, African regional governments, and intergovernmental organisations to pay attention to what is happening in Tanzania. This means public denunciation of violence towards refugees, and diplomatic advocacy to make clear the destabilising potential of a mass return.
Rather than facilitating forced removal under the guise of voluntary repatriation, we also urge UNHCR to take a stronger line in holding the Tanzanian government to account.
Edited by Obi Anyadike.
