04/28/2006

Contacts: Andrea Lari and Rick Neal
ri@refugeesinternational.org or 202.828.0110

Refugees and internally displaced people are returning home in South Kivu Province of the Congo, but face enormous difficulties: basic assistance and services in their communities are minimal or nonexistent. Donors and humanitarian agencies must coordinate their interventions, especially to provide the seeds and tools essential for self-sufficiency, and increase community capacity to absorb returnees.

The southern part of South Kivu, like other parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was engulfed in the 1998 - 2002 conflict. Civilians were caught up in the fighting between the Rwanda-backed RCD (Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie) and local Mai-Mai militia, and targeted by the Rwandan army during its occupation of the area. From Uvira southwards, hundreds of thousands abandoned their homes. Those living close to Lake Tanganyika crossed over and sought safety in Tanzania, gaining refugee status, while others scattered to the west, depending on residents of remote villages (often recently displaced themselves) for land and shelter.

The gradual improvement in security following the withdrawal of the Rwandan army and the disengagement of Mai-Mai militia has now allowed some of the 153,000 Congolese refugees in Tanzania to return. From January 2004 to October 2005, roughly 20,000 returned on their own; since then, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has facilitated the trip back with transportation and direct assistance for over 12,000 more. Nine hundred to 1,000 refugees return each week by boat through the port of Baraka; after registering and receiving a return package at the transit center there, they are trucked to drop-off points further inland. For many, that is where assistance ends and difficulties begin.

Many returnees do not manage to reach their villages of origin, becoming de facto displaced, forced to stay with relatives or residents who agree to take them in.  Some choose to stay in Baraka or other towns; others search for shelter near drop-off points after the UNHCR trucks depart. Some families sell their cooking utensils or other parts of their return kit to pay for onward transportation to their village. The food ration distributed by UNHCR also runs out very quickly. A recently returned woman told Refugees International, "The three-month food ration we received lasted only for a few weeks. We needed to share it with those who are hosting us."

Even for those who reach home, however, the returnees have little to help them restart their lives and become self-sufficient.  In an area where 90% of the population is rural and the main economic activity is agriculture, there is no comprehensive effort to supply refugees with seeds and tools.  Non-governmental organizations are implementing some food security projects in the area, but the intervention has been piecemeal and far below the level of assessed needs. The return kits distributed by UNHCR do not include seeds and tools, contrary to what was proposed in the revised supplementary appeal for 2005 and 2006. Despite a return process planned well in advance, donors and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have not been able to meet this critical need, leaving many returnees dependent on food assistance until the next harvest towards the end of 2006.

Helping returning refugees and managing the process of return has been far easier, however, than responding to the needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs). Often living in remote areas, humanitarian groups have been unable to assess conditions, first due to security concerns and now to logistical constraints. Nevertheless, preliminary results from a recent survey commissioned by UNHCR indicate the presence of around 300,000 IDPs, of whom 60% have already returned to their villages. Around 60% of villages do not have access to clean water, while in 70% of the surveyed areas villagers do not have access to medical care. Where they exist, health centers lack medical personnel and basic medicines. The situation in the education sector is less disastrous, although some half of the children of school age does not attend primary school. Clearly, conditions in areas of return are precarious for residents and displaced alike.  Still, the displaced have particular needs related to shelter and protection that are being ignored.

The lack of basic services revealed by the survey in communities throughout the southern half of South Kivu also points to a dangerously low capacity to absorb large numbers of returning refugees and IDPs. In an area that experienced communal and tribal violence during the war and where security remains tenuous, this weak absorption capacity could easily lead to increased tension and conflict. Refugees International interviewed a 20-year old refugee who said, after coming back from Tanzania on his own, "I came this January with my family and I did not get any assistance. Only those living in the camps are helped, but we all need the same things here." After returning, refugees and IDPs also find their houses destroyed or occupied by others. In some cases, houses and land have been sold through the complicity of family members or local authorities.

The scarcity of available resources and the lack of basic services will put extreme pressure on the current capacity of communities to manage and resolve conflict. Monitoring of the situation, though, is incomplete due to the fact that UNHCR is just now deploying protection officers to the area. Unless returnees and local residents feel that external assistance is provided based on need, regardless of status or origin, the efforts of the humanitarian community could lead to renewed conflict.

In a context of widespread vulnerability among both returning groups and local residents, it is imperative that every intervention be planned and implemented in a coordinated way. This is particularly important for donor agencies such as the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM); the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA); and the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO). In fact, Refugees International learned that despite the willingness and potential capacity of UNHCR to organize multi-sectoral reintegration activities through a community-based approach, donors (worried about high overhead costs and efficiency) told the agency that it should focus only on bringing refugees back from Tanzania. 

In this context, non-governmental organizations are expected to make improvements to water, sanitation, education, and agriculture in the communities of origin. This expectation, however, is far from being fulfilled, as donors are not coordinating amongst themselves nor with the UN to meet needs in a comprehensive way. The problem is compounded by the fact that attention in South Kivu focuses on the northern area around Bukavu, the provincial capital and the setting for serious threats to peace and stability in the area, allowing problems in the south to fester.

The new UN-led cluster approach is a potential solution to these challenges. Devised to provide a better mechanism to address the humanitarian needs of vulnerable groups, UNHCR and UNDP co-chair the return and reintegration group. Unfortunately, little work has been done on this cluster so far, and the introduction of the overall cluster approach in the DRC (one of three pilot countries, along with Liberia and Uganda) has been slow. UN and NGO staff feel that it has been imposed by Geneva and New York, with little input on their part, and field expertise is not always acknowledged by the experts sent to start the process.  Nevertheless, the cluster mechanism may serve to develop a coordinated response of all humanitarian actors intervening in the area and provide a forum that includes local government officials and civil society.

Refugees International therefore recommends that:

• Donor countries provide resources to both UNHCR and its non-governmental implementing partners to increase immediately initial reintegration activities for returning Congolese.
• UNHCR, together with UNDP, speed up the rollout of the Return and Reintegration Cluster, and prepare a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to address the needs of returning refugees and IDPs.
• UNHCR ensure that the planned deployment of protection personnel to Baraka take place immediately, to monitor needs in areas of return and address incipient conflict and tensions.
• The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initiate a general distribution campaign of agricultural tools and seeds in areas of returns in preparation for the next planting season in September 2006. Repatriation kits should be provided with the same tools.
• The governments of Tanzania and the DRC (in particular the Commission nationale pour les refugies), considering the limited capacity of absorption of return areas, should not push UNHCR to increase the number of returning refugees.

Advocates Andrea Lari and Rick Neal assessed the situation in South Kivu in early March.