African Unification Front
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May 2001
Pictured Below: Benaco Camp, Tanzania, one of the world’s largest refugee camps with a population of more than 200,000 people. (UNHCR / C. Sattlberger)
 An average of 3,500 refugees have been entering Tanzania each month since January, though refugee camps in the country are faced with acute food shortage, the official Daily News reported Friday.
Most of the refugees have entered the country from Burundi while others from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), officials with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were quoted as saying. They warned that Tanzania should expect more and more refugees given the deteriorating situation in Burundi, noting the influx also means increased burden to the refugee agency which has for years been under financial stress. Meanwhile, there are reports of increased food crisis at refugee camps in western Tanzania.
Early this month, the World Food Program (WFP), which is in charge of providing food to refugees, repeated an appeal to the international community for about 95 million U.S. dollars in assistance to feed refugees, displaced people and those drought-affected in the Great Lakes region. Food rations to more than 500,000 refugees in Tanzania has been reduced by 20 percent since last November due to lack of fund in the U.N. food program. Some of the hungry refugees had to leave their camps to look for food at neighboring villages, thus leading to confrontations or even armed fighting with local people. Tanzania is the country most seriously affected by refugee flows in the Great Lakes region.
According to the latest statistics from the UNHCR, by March this year, about 528,000 refugees were assisted by the agency in Tanzania, including 380,000 Burundians, 115,000 Congolese and 28, 000 Rwandans among others.
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