Read the full story

(IRIN) – All Pherebonia Nyiramatabaro, 85, wants is land where she and her 15-year-old grandson can grow a few crops. Nyiramatabaro, living in a two-roomed hut in Juru A camp in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, southwestern Uganda, is one of thousands of Rwandans hit by a Uganda government directive barring refugees from cultivation.

Under a pact between the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, Rwandan refugees were given until August 2009, with a month’s grace, to voluntarily repatriate. Only a few thousand left, however, and many returned to the camps, claiming they had not “been well received at home”. Officials of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Uganda say the Ugandan government has agreed to revisit the decision barring Rwandan refugees from land cultivation. However, the directive is still in force.

Nyiramatabaro is one of those who refused to leave for Rwanda. “At my age and after all my children have died, what or who am I going back to Rwanda for? I fled my home in Butare [province] in 2002 when I could no longer stand the hostility; I walked all the way to Tanzania from where we later walked to Uganda; I have no intention of ever going back to Rwanda

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88483

For the second time this week, the United Nations refugee agency today warned more than 2,000 Congolese in Burundi not to return to the strife-torn east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which they fled during ethnic fighting in 2004.

The latest warning from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) follows an incident yesterday when more than 400 Congolese from the recently closed camp in Gihinga, central Burundi, were stopped from entering their country by DRC immigration officials.

“UNHCR has repeatedly urged the refugees not to go back to their native South Kivu province in DRC for the moment, stressing that that under the prevailing security conditions neither the Government authorities nor UNHCR would be in a position to guarantee their safety on return,” agency spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told a news briefing in Geneva.

DRC immigration services said their actions were based on security concerns for the group. The refugees had boarded 11 trucks provided by Burundian government yesterday morning, leaving behind another group of some 500 refugees waiting for their turn to go home. When they reached the border they found it closed and the Burundian authorities took them back to Gihinga.

Read more – http://www0.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32486&Cr=democratic&Cr1=congo