Great Lakes Refugee Crisis - The Forgotten Years

The Forgotten Years

Despite the increasingly troublesome situation, the attention of the world turned elsewhere after the immediate crisis had ended. Funding levels for relief fell from the beginning of 1995. Hampered by lack of international interest and decreasing funds, the UN went from discussing methods of separating fighters from civilians or moving the camps farther from the border with Rwanda to increasingly desperate ideas, such as cutting off relief to the camps or a limited forced repatriation in clear violation of refugee law.

The Hutu militants in the camps were very aware that the camps provided both protection and resources for their military activities. They thus had an interest in keeping the camps where they were, in effect making the refugees semi-hostages. Rumors of Tutsi retributions and an impending second genocide also convinced many Hutu refugees that they should not return. The obvious candidate to impose order was the Zairean government of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. However, Zaire was a large and weak state, which did not have firm control of the eastern regions that were on the opposite side of the country from the capital. It has also been noted that Uganda and Zaire had unfriendly relations. Mobutu would not have been pleased by the emergence of a Rwandan government that was allied with Uganda and may have hoped that the Hutu militants could rid him of the new government of Paul Kagame. Documents belonging to Hutu fighters show that Mobutu allowed the militants to ship large amounts of arms into the country. The only other option with international credibility was a multilateral intervention led by the UN, but it quickly became clear that few nations were interested in what seemed certain to be a difficult and bloody operation in a remote African region.

As deadlock was reached in international political and military efforts to resolve the crisis, the tempo of attacks based out of the camps, mainly in Zaire, across the border into Rwanda increased. The RPF became increasingly vocal in its condemnation of UNHCR, which it saw as aiding its enemies, and demands that the attacks be stopped. Nevertheless, no action was taken.

The fact that the refugee crisis could not continue indefinitely was emphasized in January 1996 when Burundi closed the two camps within its borders and told the refugees that they should return to Rwanda. The refugees instead began to trickle across into Tanzania until Tanzania closed its Burundian border in April after its refugee burden reached 550,000. Burundi, then in the midst of a civil war, had been stressed by the demands of the refugees but was also influenced by a desire not to antagonize the new government of its neighbor to the north.