Mulongwe (DRC) : unbearable conditions at Mulongwe refugee camp

For more than a month, Burundian refugees settled in the Mulongwe camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been warning about unbearable living conditions. Without food and material assistance, most Burundians recently transferred to this camp think of being repatriated. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

More than 500 Burundian refugees were sent to Mulongwe camp last June and July. They say they lack everything, an unbearable situation, according to those concerned.

“We have no food, no blankets, not even pans to cook anything with. The UNHCR hasn’t given us anything since we arrived here”, refugees complain.

Those concerned are made up of former occupants of the Kavimvira transit center (South Kivu in the east of the DRC) where they had just spent several months, even years. It is therefore recently that they were transferred to Mulongwe before officially obtaining the refugee status.

“Under normal conditions, the UNHCR should give us assistance. But we have not received anything”, angrily testifies a certain Bahati, a father.

He adds that he and his peers spend the day ‘begging or stealing’ to ‘support our families’.

Following the situation, some refugees believe that “we will have no choice but to return home”.

During his last visit to Lusenda and Mulongwe camps in early July, Barry Abdoulaye, head of the UNHCR in eastern Congo said that the problems faced by refugees are a consequence of the Covid-19 crisis.

According to figures from the UNHCR and the National Commission for Refugees in the DRC, Mulongwe is home to more than eight thousand Burundian refugees.