There has been a long history of Congolese migration across Lake Tanganyika, which has an average width of only 50 kilometers. For many years, Congolese have moved across the lake for commercial reasons, selling produce or seeking employment and livelihood opportunities in the Kigoma region. Large numbers of Congolese fishermen have settled along the Tanzanian shore of the lake, inte-grating with the local population. 4 Today the Tanzanian side of the shore is lined with Congolese fishing communities that have been present for several genera-tions. The Congolese community has generally been accepted by the local popu-lation, which has sometimes shared an ethnic background such as Nyamwezi or Sukuma that transcends state boundaries.
Since the late 1990s, however, the profile and scale of arrivals across the lake have changed dramatically. Most obviously, a large population of Congolese ref-ugees fled the two Congo Wars in South Kivu between 1996 and 2003. The move-ments that took place during the wars were classic refugee movemove-ments, based mainly on flight from persecution and conflict. Both conflicts had their origins in the 1994 sudden influx of Hutus into the DRC in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. The exodus of Hutus associated with the previous regime exacerbated a range of political conflicts, based partly on Hutu-Tutsi divisions in North and South Kivu. In South Kivu, the Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsi indigenous to South Kivu) suffered particular persecution as a result of the political manipulation of Hutu-Tutsi differences (Lemarchand 2004, 62).
The First Congo War (September 1996–May 1997) can be traced to the conse-quences of the Rwandan genocide. In 1996, the Hutus in exile—backed by DRC president Mobutu—carried out a series of cross-border raids against Rwanda.
In response, the new Rwandan government supported a rebellion by the AFDL (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaire), mainly consisting of Tutsi Banyamulenge from South Kivu and headed by ethnic Congo-lese Laurent Kabila for reasons of legitimacy (Akokpari 1998, 216). With support
from Rwanda and backed by most countries in the region, Kabila managed to reach Kinshasa, where he overthrew Mobutu in May 1997 (Lemarchand 2004, 62; Emizet 2000, 168). The conflict led to massive population displacement in the eastern DRC, notably in South Kivu (Talley, Spiegel, and Girgis 2001, 412).
Many fled to Tanzania, where they were offered assistance in the Lugufu refugee camp, established in February 1997 for an initial 32,000 refugees. Of this group, a significant proportion were persecuted Banyamulenge, mainly from the Uvira and Fizi districts or from Bukavu across Lake Tanganyika (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010, 72–79). More than 10,000 of these refu-gees repatriated to South Kivu in September 1997, once conditions improved, leaving 10,500 behind in Lugufu.
The Second Congo War (August 1998–June 2003) was triggered by then president Laurent Kabila, who recognized that he had become too dependent on Rwanda and then chose to distance himself from Kigali, expelling the Ban-yamulenge from the government and initiating an anti-Tutsi campaign across the region (Lemarchand 2004, 62). In response, Rwanda and Uganda launched another proxy rebel movement, the RCD (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie). However, this time, without the clear common enemy of Mobuto and an obvious Rwandan-Ugandan invasion, most other states of the region sided with Kabila. The assistance to the government by Angolan and Zimba-bwean troops proved to be decisive for the course of the war, which soon be-came static. On the local level, the Congolese army (FAC) joined forces with the Hutu génocidaires (FDLR) and local militias (Mai-Mai) to fight against the Rwandans (RPF) and the RCD. There were significant massacres and human rights atrocities on both sides (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010, 177–178). Much of the worst fighting in South Kivu took place in the Fizi region between pro-government Mai-Mai groups and RCD rebels.
A significant number of civilians were displaced, and many fled to Tanzania beginning in January 1999. Around 55,000 had arrived in Lugufu by June 1999, with 1,000 per day coming in at the peak of the influx (Talley, Spiegel, and Girgis 2001, 413).
The Lusaka Peace Agreement in July 1999 led to a commitment by the primary states to end the war. However, implementation was stalled by foreign armies that continued to benefit from mineral wealth extraction and the ongoing role of transnational rebel groups. In December 2002, a peace agreement among the main rebel groups led to an interim power-sharing arrangement and a commit-ment to hold national elections within two years (Whitaker 2003, 216). By the time the Second Congo War came to an end, there were around 150,000 Congo-lese in the Lugufu I and II camps and the Nyarugusu camp in Kigoma. Interviews in the camps reveal that nearly everyone still in the camps a decade later had
TANZANIA 121
arrived in either 1997 or 1999 and had fled the Fizi district, particularly the areas around Uvira and Baraka, where fighting had been most intense. 5
The war in the DRC officially ended on June 30, 2003. Until that point, the causes of flight are relatively clear-cut and broadly fit the 1951 convention and its 1967 protocol’s definition of a refugee. After 2003, however, those who have left have done so for a variety of reasons linked to state fragility rather than persecu-tion or generalized violence. They more closely fit the category of survival mi-grants than refugees. This is partly because of the conceptual gap in the refugee definition, discussed earlier, but also due to the perception of violence in DRC. As Séverine Autesserre describes, the country was officially declared a postconflict country during the transition, a designation that ignored the ongoing violence at the local level that often maintained the terror of the war years (Autesserre 2006, 3; 2010, 65–83). Fixed on the postconflict framework, international ac-tors wanted to move on with the peace agenda, which meant repatriation of the refugees and preparation for national elections (Autesserre 2010, 100). A Tripar-tite Agreement on Repatriation was concluded between the DRC, Tanzania, and UNHCR in 2003, and in 2005, returns were initiated from Kigoma to Uvira and Fizi, coordinated by UNHCR in Bukavu. Despite occasional pauses in tion during periods of escalation of violence and insecurity, the start of repatria-tion was an acknowledgment that those leaving South Kivu, for the most part, no longer fell within the refugee definition.
Even with the war officially over and repatriation under way, instability and fragility continued in South Kivu. High levels of malnutrition and disease meant that civilians continued to die every day. Poverty rates in the Kivus are higher than national averages, school attendance rates for primary schools are low, ma-ternal and infant mortality rates are high, and there are inadequate health ser-vices (1 doctor per 27,700 inhabitants across South Kivu) (Jacquemot 2010, 7).
With a weak state and the absence of security, there were continued reports of massacres, cannibalism, rapes, looting, extortion, and other serious violations of human rights committed by various armed groups (Autesserre 2006, 2). Rwanda continued to carry out hit-and-run operations in the border regions, maintain-ing its presence in the Kivus. Meanwhile, the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda)—based on the remnants on Hutu refugees who arrived in 1994—continued to operate out of South Kivu, contributing to instability and sporadic attacks on civilians (Rafti 2006, 7). South Kivu, with its varied for-est landscape, its natural resources of gold, cassiterite, and coltan deposits, and the absence of central state control, provided a safe haven where the FDLR could operate embedded among the civilian population (Rafti 2006, 12).
The FDLR, the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai-Mai militia created by the local population have been a source of
sporadic human rights violations, occasionally seizing land, occupying property, setting up roadblocks to extort money, or plundering mineral wealth (Jacque-mot 2010, 6; Fanning 2010, 37). All armed groups including the national army have regularly engaged in extreme violence against civilians in remote areas of South Kivu such as the Kahuzi Biega Park (Rafti 2006, 15; Stearns 2011). One of the most extreme features has been widespread sexual violence. According to a report by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (2010, 39), there has been a “normalization of rape among the civilian population” in South Kivu. Local health center data suggest that an average of forty women per day are raped in South Kivu, 6 and there is almost total impunity regarding that crime. 7 A culture of blurred lines of consent has been emerging in which women are seen as the property of the husband’s family or become property of the community if the husband dies or leaves (Rodriguez 2010; IRIN 2011; Holmes 2010, 4).
At certain times there have also been spikes in more generalized violence.
In 2009, for example, repatriations were suspended during a joint Congolese-Rwandan military mission against the FDLR. This surprising cooperation was based on a secret agreement between President Joseph Kabila of the DRC and Pres-ident Paul Kagame of Rwanda, the arrest of Laurent Nkunda, leader of the rebel group National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), on January 22, 2009, and subsequent integration of the CNDP into the national army. This led to the so-called Kimia II mission, in which both countries, together with the UN peacekeeping force MONUC, chose to aggressively pursue the FDLR. A scattered FDLR withdrew farther into the bush, exacerbating violence along its way.
Consequently, even though the war ended in 2003 and repatriations began in 2005, South Kivu has been extremely fragile and insecure for the civilian popula-tions. While South Kivu’s coastline along Lake Tanganyika—around the towns of Uvira and Fizi, for example—has been relatively secure over the last decade, just 100 kilometers farther inland, the province has had an almost total vacuum of political authority. There are almost no roads or infrastructure, very limited livelihood opportunities outside the rebel-controlled mining areas, and an envi-ronment of impunity. 8 It has been characterized by extreme state fragility.
In this context of insecurity, people have continued to cross Lake Tanganyika, many of them fleeing basic rights deprivations within South Kivu. Most have taken informal routes, and so they have not entered the asylum system or led to an increase in refugee numbers. 9 In the words of one UNHCR employee, “the Congolese don’t take the formal routes. They are not claiming asylum. . . . Since I have arrived in Kigoma, only six to seven families have sought asylum, but there are others coming. . . . We know that people are crossing the lake all the time.” 10 They have come with a variety of motives. As noted by the UNHCR representa-tive, “there have been several kinds of movement, from those looking for security,
TANZANIA 123
to Congolese fishermen who have settled on the coast of the lake.” 11 They have adopted a variety of strategies in Kigoma. Because of the response of the Tan-zanian government—of mainly rounding up, detaining, and deporting new arrivals—many have bypassed the asylum system and instead integrated among the Congolese fishing communities present along the lake 12 or even secretly em-bedded themselves with relatives in the refugee camps without registering. 13
With the change in circumstances in South Kivu, the view taken of the refu-gees in the camps has also changed. By 2009, all the Congolese in the camps were incorporated in the Nyarugusu refugee camp. And while they are recognized to have originally fled conflict in the late 1990s, there is a widely held assumption that they are now mainly outside their country of origin for a set of reasons that fall outside the refugee definition—notably because of disorder and violence and the absence of infrastructure. As the head of the UNHCR Field Office in Kigoma stated: “Many are staying on for economic reasons because their subsistence is provided. They are sending their children for education, health care, jobs, food, which would not be possible in the DRC.” 14
It seems clear that the circumstances in South Kivu have changed since the first decade of the 2000s such that people have not primarily faced threats that fall within the refugee regime. However, there has been an acknowledgment that even for refugees recognized in the 1990s, the new circumstances of fragil-ity and lack of economic opportunfragil-ity are themselves serious threats that might require some kind of protection. The head of the Kasulu Field Office articulated this clearly: “The reasons why they left may not exist anymore but the general situation—e.g., health and education—and the constant fear makes me agree that those that stay, have to stay.” 15 This statement represents an acknowledgment that while the refugees may have left persecution and conflict in the late 1990s, today the main threats to rights in South Kivu are of a different nature—yet might justify ongoing protection. Interviews with refugees similarly confirm this view of the change in reasons for remaining outside South Kivu. Mandeleo, a refugee in his late twenties in Nyarugusu, said: “I cannot go home. There is violence and conflict. But the main reason is that there is no food there; I cannot grow any-thing. There is no commercial activity or work. So I will take UNHCR advice, and UNHCR says it is still not safe to go back. Life in the camps is hard, but there are no options. I have been here since 1997. I’d like to go back, but it is not possible.” 16