Rwanda celebrates refugees’ resilience

Today Rwanda joins the rest of the world to mark the annual World Refugee Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world. At the national level, the day, which is observed annually on June 20, will be held in Kigeme camp, Nyamagabe District but smaller events will be organised in other camps across the country. Kigeme, which hosted Burundian refugees until 2009, was reopened and expanded in 2012 to accommodate recently arrived refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Today, it is home to about 18,000 refugees who fled war in their home country. It will be marked under the theme: “One family torn apart by the war is too many.” At the occasion, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will hand over to the Government 62 class-rooms and 130 pit latrine constructed in Kigeme and Gasaka sectors. The class rooms will benefit up to 5, 170 refugee children and 2,143 children from the host community, according to Frederic Ntawukuriryayo, the Public Relations and Communications Officer at the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR). The day will also be an occasion to hand over birth certificates to children born in the camp. “When this camp was set up last year, the country was in a state of emergency to host the many refugees who had just crossed the border. The situation was a bit difficult. We did not have enough accommodation to host them, no schools for children and no medical facilities. New-born children were also not registered,” Deogratias Ntirenganya, Kigeme camp Manager told The New Times in an interview yesterday. “But a year after the camp was created the situation has improved tremendously. We have classrooms, a well-equipped health post, water facilities and strong housing facilities for refugees among others.” Need to go home Benjamin Karembera, the representative of refugees said, the situation and living condition are quite good but “What we want is just to go home.” A number of refugees interviewed expressed the need for the conflict in their home country to end so as to allow them to return back. Nyirakamana Mukakigeli, a refugee, said she is always dreaming of when she would get the opportunity to return home. “The only thing that we need right now is to go back home,” she said. “Apart from the sun and the difficulties that come with being a refugee, we are otherwise adapting to life. We hope that one day we will be allowed to return home,” said Rwakadigi Bagina, another refugee. Tens of thousands of Congolese refugees crossed the Rwandan border seeking a safe haven after heavy fighting erupted mid-last year between mutinous soldiers, who later formed the M23 rebel group. Following the influx of refugees, the Government of Rwanda in partnership with UNHCR and other partners set up Kigeme camp which hosts the refugees. The rebel group and the Kinshasa Government are now engaged in political negotiations in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Increasing number of refugees Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said that the number of refugees around the world continue to increase. In its annual Global Trends report, released yesterday, UNHCR warns that more people are refugees or internally displaced than at any time since 1994, with the crisis in Syria having emerged as a major new factor in global displacement. The report, which covers displacement that occurred during 2012, based on data from governments, NGO partners, and the UN refugee agency itself, shows that as of the end of 2012, more than 45.2 million people were in situations of displacement compared to 42.5 million at the end of 2011. War remains the dominant cause, the report says. “These truly are alarming numbers. They reflect individual suffering on a huge scale and they reflect the difficulties of the international community in preventing conflicts and promoting timely solutions for them,” said António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees and head of UNHCR.

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Rwanda celebrates refugees’ resilience