BUJUMBURA, June 19 (Xinhua) -- At least 32,345 Burundian refugees have returned home from refugee camps in Tanzania since a meeting on repatriating Burundian refugees, an official of UNHCR in Burundi said Tuesday.
After the meeting that brought together officials from Burundi, Tanzania and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the end of March, some 32,345 Burundian refugees have by now returned to their villages from Tanzanian refugee camps, said Gogo Hukportie, representative of UNHCR in Burundi.
The reintegration of returnees in their home villages is being done normally and other UN agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Children's Fund are supporting the reintegration process, said Hukportie at a press conference organized in the context of the World Refugee Day, which will be celebrated on Wednesday in Kavumu refugee camp in Cankuzo province, eastern Burundi.
Hukportie indicated that the number of Burundian refugees currently living in exile in the Great Lakes region notably in Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and Uganda is estimated at 340,000.
"On top of more than 310,000 Burundian people who fled the country's 2015 crisis, there were others estimated around 30,000 who had fled the 1972 crisis. Tanzania alone hosts about 240,000 Burundian refugees," said Hukportie.
Burundi plunged into a crisis in 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run his controversial third term. His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup on May 13, 2015.
More than 400,000 refugees and asylum-seekers have fled Burundi since the outbreak of violence.