22/7/2005
Refugees Begin To Return To North-Eastern DRC As MONUC's Operations Succeed

The 15,000 strong MONUC, the UN's peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo, appear slowly to be getting the better of the armed militias that have for so long brought havoc and mayhem to the north-eastern regions of the DRC. As a result displaced families are beginning to return to their homes and aid agencies can start to deliver much needed assistance.

Backed by air power MONUC launched a major new operation, code-named "Thunder Storm," against Rwandan Hutu militia this week, burning their brigade headquarters. It was the third such initiative in little more than a fortnight. Rwandan Hutu rebels have been active in the jungles of the eastern DRC since Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which they killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. They are still harassing local communities, having failed to disarm and return to Rwanda as their leaders promised during peace talks in Rome at the end of March.

Partly as a result of such strikes some of the 65,000 civilians displaced during the recent fighting have slowly been returning to the area. Meanwhile, refugees are returning of their own volition to the DRC from Tanzania, paying captains of overloaded, barely seaworthy open wooden boats, $10 per person for the 15-hour journey from Tanzania across Lake Tanganyika to beaches and ports on the Congolese side, say the UN's refugee agency UNHCR. The agency is not promoting such returns, however, believing that the situation in the DRC is still too unstable.

“The return of so many in recent days in such difficult circumstances is both an expression of faith in the nascent peace in a long-unstable region, and also a result of unfortunate cuts in assistance in the camps in Tanzania,” the agency's spokesman, Ron Redmond, told a news briefing.

He said numbers had ballooned with the end of the school year in the camps in western Tanzania, with 200 returnees going back in just two days last week compared with previous monthly totals of between 370 and 1,100. Some 153,000 Congolese have fled to Tanzania since fighting erupted in South Kivu province in 1996.

Returning refugees say they waited for their children to end the school year and now want to get home and register them for schools in DRC. They also say that the present dry season, is a good time to rebuild their homes, most of which were destroyed in the fighting. Another factor is that they want to register to vote in upcoming national elections as part of the transition to full democracy in DRC after years of civil war.