News / National
Rwanda refugees in Zimbabwe reluctant to returning home
06 Jul 2011 at 06:19hrs | Views
Refugees from Rwanda who settled in Zimbabwe are reluctant to return home despite efforts by President Paul Kagame's government to persuade them to return home.
Thousands of refugees who fled the 1994 genocide in Rwanda found refugee in Zimbabwe.
Rwanda last month sent a delegation that visited Zimbabwe's biggest refugee camp in Manicaland Province to encourage the refugees to return home.
Zimbabwe's Labour and Social Services minister Paurina Mupariwa told the refugees at the Tongogara refugee camp that it was now safe to return to their country.
"You would agree with me that there is no place like home and refugee life cannot continue forever," she was quoted as having said by the state owned Herald newspaper.
Mr Marcelline Hepie, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR) country representative, said more than a quarter of the 5,000 refugees in Zimbabwe originated from the Great Lakes region but the majority were not willing to return home.
He said despite the economic challenges Zimbabwe had experienced in the recent past the country had not closed its borders to asylum seekers.
Last month Zimbabwe said it had stopped accepting refugees from African countries because it can no longer cope with an influx of immigrants mainly from the Horn of Africa.
A senior immigration official Mr Evans Siziba accused the refugees of using Zimbabwe as a transit to neighbouring South Africa.
Thousands of refugees who fled the 1994 genocide in Rwanda found refugee in Zimbabwe.
Rwanda last month sent a delegation that visited Zimbabwe's biggest refugee camp in Manicaland Province to encourage the refugees to return home.
Zimbabwe's Labour and Social Services minister Paurina Mupariwa told the refugees at the Tongogara refugee camp that it was now safe to return to their country.
"You would agree with me that there is no place like home and refugee life cannot continue forever," she was quoted as having said by the state owned Herald newspaper.
Mr Marcelline Hepie, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR) country representative, said more than a quarter of the 5,000 refugees in Zimbabwe originated from the Great Lakes region but the majority were not willing to return home.
He said despite the economic challenges Zimbabwe had experienced in the recent past the country had not closed its borders to asylum seekers.
Last month Zimbabwe said it had stopped accepting refugees from African countries because it can no longer cope with an influx of immigrants mainly from the Horn of Africa.
A senior immigration official Mr Evans Siziba accused the refugees of using Zimbabwe as a transit to neighbouring South Africa.
Source - African Report
