Attachments
1. INTRODUCTION
Displacement in the Great Lakes
This study considers the Great Lakes region as comprising the countries of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). With the exception of Tanzania, all of these countries have generated refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in significant numbers since their independence, and all have hosted refugees. The violence during colonial times, followed by conflicts after independence, created cycles of displacement that have devastated lives and livelihoods in the region for decades. While Uganda has long hosted significant numbers of refugees from the Horn of Africa (namely, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia), other Great Lakes countries have mostly provided shelter to refugees from within the region.
A pivotal moment in the region came following the end of the Cold War and the introduction of multi-party politics, with the Rwandan civil war (1990-1994) and 1994 genocide, the outbreak of Burundi’s Civil War (1993-2005) and the consequent first (1996-1997) and second (1998-2003) Congo wars. These interlinked crises generated violence and displacement on a massive scale and led to a series of aftershocks that are still evident in the region today, with displaced populations who are yet to find a stable place to call home. More recently, ongoing violent conflict in eastern DRC and the crisis in Burundi in 2015 have once again led to mass displacement across the region. The situation has been further compounded by the outbreak of civil wars in South Sudan (2013) and the Central African Republic (CAR, 2012), which have led to additional displacement within the region.
The net result is that millions remain displaced beyond the borders of their states but within the Great Lakes region.
These include more than 665,000 refugees from the DRC, 275,000 refugees from Burundi, and close to a million South Sudanese refugees, the latter hosted primarily in Uganda.2 Uganda remains the region’s largest refugee hosting country, with close to 1.5 million refugees, primarily from South Sudan. It is followed by the DRC, which hosts more than 500,000 refugees, mainly from Rwanda and CAR. Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi each host a smaller number of refugees from within the region.