Nyarugusu refugee camp is one of the largest and best-known

refugee camp A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced peo ...

s of the 21st century, with around 150,000 refugees. It is located in the western province of

Kigoma Kigoma is a city and lake port in Kigoma-Ujiji District in Tanzania, on the northeastern shores of Lake Tanganyika and close to the border with Burundi and The Democratic Republic of the Congo. It serves as the capital for the surrounding Kigoma R ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...

, about 150 km east of

Lake Tanganyika Lake Tanganyika () is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world, the second-largest by volume, and the second-deepest, in all cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake. ...

. The camp was created by the

UNHCR The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...

and the Tanzanian government in 1996 after an estimated 150,000 Congolese

refugees A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

from the eastern

Sud-Kivu South Kivu (''Jimbo la Kivu Kusini'' in Swahili), (french: Sud-Kivu) is one of 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Bukavu. History South Kivu Province was created from Sud-Kivu District in 1989, when the exis ...

region of the

DRC The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

crossed the border into Tanzania escaping

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. Many Congolese refugees remained in the camp for decades, although the population of the camp was reducing prior to 2015. However, in 2015 over 110,000 Burundian refugees arrived in Tanzania to escape riots and civil unrest in

Burundi Burundi (, ), officially the Republic of Burundi ( rn, Repuburika y’Uburundi ; Swahili language, Swahili: ''Jamuhuri ya Burundi''; French language, French: ''République du Burundi'' ), is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the ...

. These refugees went to Nyarugusu until the Tanzanian government allowed Burundian refugees to go to other camps. Approximately 65,000 Burundian refugees remain at Nyarugusu, while 55,000 are at Nduta refugee camp, and another 19,000 are at Mtendeli refugee camp.

References

Refugee camps in Tanzania 1990s establishments in Tanzania Populated places established in the 1990s {{tanzania-geo-stub

See also

References