photo credit: Refugees International
10/31/2005

Rwanda currently hosts 43,500 refugees, most from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, living in camps. Although Rwanda has worked hard to accommodate refugees, the camps are full. In April of this year the UN High Commissioner for Refugees opened a new camp for Congolese who had been living for months in transit centers, dangerously located close to the Congolese border on a small, steep, rocky piece of land designated by the Rwandan government. Because 4,644 people live on 37 acres, the shelters are crammed close to each other. The government of Rwanda wants to establish another new camp on a similarly steep, rocky hill nearby and to fill it with new refugees, as well as some or all of the 17,500 refugees at an existing camp in Byumba, but the UNHCR is resisting.