2400 Rwandan refugees repatriate eight months after cessation clause deadline

Speaking to IGIHE, the In Charge of Refugees at the Ministry of Disasters Management and Refugees, Jean Claude Rwahama said that the government has been receiving them, supporting implementation of the cessation clause for the Rwandan refugees of which deadline was December 31, 2017.

“Until this day (September 17), 2,400 people have repatriated. Many of them come from Democratic Republic of Congo but there are others who come from Congo,” he said.

Mr. Rwahama added that Rwanda has fulfilled all the requiremets in the implementation of the cessation clause and all the new repatriates receive a very warm welcome back in their mother nation.

Rwahama says that Rwanda does not know the exact number of its citizens who are still refugees.

“It is difficult to know them (Rwandan refugees) because we base on UNHCR numbers which I can say are not reliable because they also get them from host countries. Some countries may give exact numbers while others may not due to different reasons,” he explained.

For countries that provide unreliable numbers, Rwahama names DRC as an example. “They (DRC) say they have more than 24,0000 refugees but we received a larger number of repatriates from DRC. And there are places they don’t reach, including forests where they can’t establish the exact number of refugees who live there,” he says.

The Rwanda Refuge Cessation Clause was declared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) on June 30, 2013. However, the implementation was met by delays in repatriations which saw the December 2014 deadline extended several times until the new deadline was set on December 31, 2017.

In January 2018 as the implementation of the cessation clause was under way for the Rwandan refugees, Uganda announced it would not end the refugee status for the 18,000 Rwandan refugees who lived there, revealing that it had started the processes of offering them citizenship.

Rwanda made efforts in sensitizing its refugees to get back home and put in place means to provide passports for those who do have jobs in countries where they live on condition that they stay there as Rwandans in Diaspora instead of living there as refugees.