Rwanda hosts about 127,340 refugees and other persons of concern living in camps and urban areas, as of June 30, 2022. The vast majority of the population are refugees originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (60.3%) and Burundi (39.2%). The refugees are mostly based in five (5) refugee camps, after the closure of the former Gihembe camp in October 2021: i) Mahama with 57,933, ii) Kiziba with 16,513, iii) Kigeme with 14,491, iv) Nyabiheke with 13,781, and v) Mugombwa with 11,304. These camps and the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) Centre are, respectively located in Gatsibo, Karongi, Nyamagabe, Gisagara, Kirehe and Bugesera districts.
The Congolese refugee influx in Rwanda is a result of the political and ethnic conflict which emerged in the Great Lakes Region during the 1990s and has caused an exodus of refugees from the DRC into Rwanda. An influx of refugees from Burundi arrived in Rwanda in April 2015 in the wake of political instability and violence, which escalated following presidential elections. In August 2020, UNHCR and the Government of Rwanda started the voluntary repatriation of Burundian refugees living in Mahama camp. As of June 30, 2021, a total of 30,001 Burundian refugees from Mahama camps and urban settings have been repatriated.
This data mapping document for the UNHCR Rwanda Operation providesan overview of the assessment registries, web portal listings and a comprehensive data collection effort to date (June 2022) of POCs in Rwanda. This document is intended to serve as a reference, to provide statistics and evidence to inform policy and programming as needed, to a wider audience consisting of government actors, humanitarian, and development partners, workingfor the POCs in Rwanda.
Most of the above assessments are carried out for internal or organization-specific purposes.
The lack of harmonization across datasets often leads to difficulties in cross-imputation across the available data. This data mapping exercise will identify key internal and external datasets and assessments being carried out in Rwanda refugee contexts to enable future data mining from this collection of data efforts across sectors.
Source: UN High Commissioner for Refugees