In a just completed re-registration exercise at Gihembe refugee camp, over 2500 congolese refugees have returned Rwandan national IDs allegedly having acquired illegally.
Late August United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partners including Rwandan government decided to carry out re-registration exercise to update refugee data base in the country.
As the process begun, officials discovered that some refugees had acquired Rwandan national IDs yet they can’t be both refugees and Rwandan nationals.
“We didn’t have refugee identity cards, some of us thought it wise to get Rwandan national IDs as we look for jobs because there is no way one can give you a job without any identification,” one of the refugees was quoted as saying recently adding that they had to disguise themselves as Rwandans since they spoke the same language.
Jean Claude Rwahama, the Director General in charge of Refugee Affairs in the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs, said that however that the government has also issued electronic refugee identity cards.
Rwahama says that the new issued electronic refugee cards enables them apply for jobs in any office given one’s competence.
Anouck Bronée External Relations Officer at United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says the re-registration process is now will be extended to Kiziba camp in Karongi District.
She how however couldn’t disclose the number of refugees registered so far in the Gihembe camp saying they are still cleaning the data collected.
Mid last month, Bronee said UNHCR had in verification exercise admitted at least 12289 refugees (meaning they had not yet completed all stages of the re-registration exercise), and 7419 refugees have completed all stages of the re-registration exercise.
She added that the exercise had been carried out in the usual arrangement of updating their data since they were working on the assumption that there were about 56000 refugees in Rwanda which would mean there could be much less than or more.
The exercise involved getting the numbers of refugees, biometric, information on families, and photographs compiling information related to every individual.
Kiziba camp re-registration exercise which is expected to begin next week, is also expected to be extended Nyabiheke camp in Northern Province.
The whole exercise is expected to be completed by the end of December and results will be announced probably January 2012.
Leave a Reply