The refugee status for Rwandans will be removed on December, 31, 2017

This has been decided upon by the Cabinet meeting gathered yesterday. The Minister in charge of refugees and disaster management Seraphine Mukantabana informed the ministers that the decision to close the refugee status to all Rwandans residing in different countries was taken during the Ministerial international conference held in Geneva at the HCR headquarters.

The officials in the conference assessed the root causes that might have hindered the refugees from repatriating. This enabled them to set adequate measures and means to carry out that action more efficiently in the stated calendar.

In the recent past, Rwanda has informed all concerned refugees who fled between 1959 and 1998 to be back home not later than June, 2013 as their refugee status was due to end at that date.
However, some of them still reside in different countries as refugees.

The decision from Rwandan officials to repatriate all its citizens in foreign nations incited seven countries to inform all Rwandan refugees to willingly repatriate.

These countries include Burundi, Burkina Faso, Congo-Brazzaville, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Zambia.
However they are other countries that hesitate to implement that decision that was endorsed by the UNHCR.

Resulting from that decision, 25 thousand Rwandan refugees repatriated including the ones who recently were chased away by the Tanzanian authorities.

Minister Seraphine Mukantabana told the cabinet that the repatriation process of refugees will end on December, 31, 2016 as convened by the Ministers who attended the Geneva conference.

UM– USEKE.RW