For decades, Rwanda has been hosting refugees from the DRC and other African countries. The majority of the refugees are hosted in five camps -- Gihembe, Kigeme, Kiziba, Mugombwa and Nyabiheke. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees is an important partner. In 2015, UNHCR's Rwanda operation will support 50,000 refugees who fled the DRC in the mid-1990s, and over 30,000 who have fled from eastern DRC since April 2012. In recent days, instability in Burundi has resulted in over 26,000 additional refugees flooding the Rwandan border and taxing resources in a small, densely populated country that is itself still recovering from the 1994 genocide.
See the UNHCR page for more background.
The UNHCR has produced an informative video on surface life in the camps, but there is little insight into the depths of despair experienced by people who just want to return to their homeland. Displacement has become generational -- hope a non sequitur.
Gihembe camp is built on 40-hectares (99 acres) of land, and supports about 3,500 households.
As of 2014, the total population of refugees in the Gihembe camp is 14,708. 99.9 percent are Congolese nationals originating from the North and South Kivu Provinces of Masisi, Rutshuru and Kalehe Territories, and also from Katanga and Oriental Provinces.
Children below 18 years old represent 51.2 percent of the total population; women and girls represent 55 percent, and five percent are elders.
MIDIMAR representative, David Rwanyonga, counseled the refugees not to despair but have courage, since "life has to continue."
MIDIMAR is the Rwanda disaster management agency and coordinates refugee affairs.
So, we are left with some hope and the reality that 14,000 people just want to go home to their fertile valleys. It is one thing to be displaced within your own country, and quite another to be part of a generation forced to flee from country, home and history.
Yes, hope does spring eternal, but the Banyamulenge and other Tutsi refugees do not have the luxury of eternal life in this world.
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Also posted at Huffington Post
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