Burundi: seven years of refugee return

With the return of half a million refugees and the majority of the country's 375,000 internally displaced persons since then, the war-ravaged country of some eight million people has had to reintegrate about 10% of its population. Refugee return has taken place mostly to rural areas in border provinces, in a context of widespread poverty, lack of basic infrastructure and scarcity of land.

To gain better information on the situation of returned refugees, UNHCR set up a country-wide returnee monitoring scheme. This, and a number of assessments organised with partners, generated the following conclusions.