Mahama (Rwanda) : an alleged dual nationality that puts several Burundian refugees in a bind

At the Mahama refugee camp, more than a hundred Burundian asylum seekers hold a Rwandan identity card, which automatically gives them the nationality of this country. Many of them got it either through fraud or through family affiliation. Today, they live in poverty and have no assistance because, in principle, they are not refugees. They call for help. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The story dates back to 2019. The government of Rwanda carried out a large-scale census of all refugees, an activity that involved immigration services, the national identification service, the ministry in charge of refugees and the UNHCR.

“There were already those who were caught with Rwandan identity cards even though they had declared themselves Burundian refugees. A complicated situation because Rwanda’s IDs are traceable because they are computerized before being issued by base cells. So, the government wanted to sort of do its investigations to find out about the situation”, explains one of the refugee leaders in Rwanda.

As a result, at the Mahama camp, there are people who are at the same time recognized by the Rwandan identification system, and who also have a refugee status.

“The first category is made up of Burundians who believed themselves to be clever, who deceived the vigilance of local authorities and who perhaps even paid bribes so that they would be recognized as residents in this or that cell. The objective being to have identity cards to work as a Rwandans”, explains our source, adding that this situation was somewhat frequent in 2015.

Thus, the children who are born in this category are automatically Rwandans, which means that the number increases from year to year, observe Burundian refugees.

Proximity to the border also plays a big role.

“The second category is made up of Burundians who lived in the border districts with Rwanda, mainly in the Kirundo province (northern Burundi). They fled even though they had taken out Rwandan identity cards long before 2015”, explains our well-informed source.

Others, no less numerous, are Rwandans born in Burundi.

“They are descendants of Rwandans who took refuge in Burundi. So, they did not return with the others and founded homes in Burundi. When we fled, some came with us and as their parents are Rwandans, they too automatically become Rwandans”, we learn.

The last category is that of Burundians who have spouses of Rwandan origin.

“These too, according to the family code in Rwanda, they are considered Rwandans”, as our sources at Mahama camp affirm.

The exact number of all these “false Rwando-Burundians” who live in the Mahama camp in the east of the country is not made public. But local leaders who regularly receive their complaints say that there are more than a hundred.

Repercussions

This census result has serious consequences on living conditions.

“No assistance in currency or food because we are not recognized by the UNHCR system as Burundians who have fled. We are not somehow refugees. We are listed in litigation and we are unhappy here at camp. We demand that Rwanda accepts that we hand over its identity cards and that we remain Burundians”, they declare.

Solutions

To try to resolve this problem, the disputes department of the ministry in charge of refugees makes quarterly or six-monthly visits to the Mahama camp, but as the files are more numerous day after day, decision-making is slow.

“The situation is so complicated because sometimes the decision that is made is to prove that we are really Burundians with updated birth certificates. How can we have these documents which are issued in the districts in Burundi, we who are in the Mahama camp? We are asking for a sort of general amnesty”, insist those concerned.

Burundian refugee leaders want this issue to be analyzed at the highest level of the institutions in charge of refugees in Rwanda and for it to be definitively resolved because “it violates the rights of refugees down to children who have not done this choice.”

The Mahama camp hosts more than 55,000 refugees, mainly Burundians, the rest being Congolese.