XIII. NUMBERS

Returnees from the First Wave of Refugees, 1959-1973

The Rwandan government has often presented the imidugudu policy as a reaction to a housing crisis of overwhelming proportions. It is certainly true that there were hundreds of thousands of persons needing shelter in late 1996, but Rwandan authorities have sometimes exaggerated the extent of the crisis. In a speech referred to below, for example, President Paul Kagame talked of four million people who needed to be settled. A realistic estimate of the numbers of homeless is relevant to assessing the context in which the government acted and its supposed justification for forcing people into imidugudu.

The government generally asserts that nearly 800,000 refugees of the first wave of departures-that is, those who fled between 1959 and 1973-have returned to Rwanda, virtually all of them by late 1996 or early 1997. This figure rests upon an undocumented government estimate of 600,000 returnees in 1994, to which was added 175,000 counted as returning by UNHCR in 1995 and 1996. Another 21,000 returnees were counted by UNHCR from 1997 to 1999, to bring the total to 796,000 at the end of 1999, a figure usually rounded up to 800,000.3

But experts from the U.N. Fund for Population and demographers from the Rwandan government National Population Office who prepared a socio-demographic survey at the end of 1996 commented that their data "would corroborate the view that some over-estimation of `old returnees' [i.e., those who left between 1959 and 1973] could have occurred."4 This comment drew little attention, which is remarkable given that these numbers have been used as the basis for allocating millions of dollars in aid. According to the survey, only 5.2 percent of Rwandans present in the country at the end of 1996, or some 321,000 persons, said they had been born abroad. In addition to these persons, the category of "old returnees" includes also those born in Rwanda who later became refugees and then came home. Unfortunately the demographers did not publish any statistics for this group, although they may have had them.5

Data on the number of Rwandans living outside the country just before the war, however, corroborates the suggestion that 796,000 is too high a number for the "old returnees." According to information from UNHCR, 379,000 Rwandans were refugeesoutside the country in 1990. Other data on the total number of Rwandans living in neighboring countries in 1992, both officially declared refugees (who would be counted by UNHCR) and others, puts that figure at about 600,000.6 Even if every one of these people had decided to return to Rwanda, the number would be nearly 200,000 short of the usually cited figure of 800,000 "old returnees."

Given these facts, the estimate of 800,000 should be regarded with some skepticism until the government conducts a reliable census and determines how many persons now living in Rwanda were refugees who left between 1959 and 1973.

Imidugudu Residents

It is important to know how many people live in imidugudu in order to assess the impact of this program on the lives of Rwandans, yet it is difficult to obtain reliable data on this subject. In late 1999, a study by UNDP together with the Rwandan government estimated that some 177,000 new houses had been completed in imidugudu since 1994 and that 134,024 of them were occupied.7

These figures may have been somewhat inflated. UNHCR, the most important source of aid, built or provided materials to build some 85,000 houses.8 In addition, UNDP supported the building of about 20 percent of the total, which indicates that the number built was some 108,000.9 In addition, some construction was financed directly by bilateral donors. Taking into account the fact that some houses were built outside imidugudu, we would conservatively estimate that some 100,000 houses were completed and occupied in imidugudu.

The UNDP-Rwandan government study concluded that about 117,000 households were living in imidugudu in unfinished houses or shelters roofed with plastic sheeting or grass. This figure did not include data from the prefecture of Ruhengeri, where information was not collected due to insecurity at the time of the study and where many were still in inadequate housing. In late 1999, for example, some 14,500 households in the single commune of Kinigi had moved into imidugudu and most of them were still in temporary shelters.10 Allowing for some exaggeration, a conservative estimate based on this datawould be that at least 125,000 households were then living in temporary shelters or unfinished houses in imidugudu.11

If 100,000 households were living in completed houses and another 125,000 were in temporary shelters or unfinished houses, this would mean that 225,000 households were in imidugudu at the end of 1999. Using the figure of 4.8 persons per household established by the 1996 socio-democraphic survey this equates to 1,080,000 people living in the settlements at that time.12 In the ensuing year, an undetermined number, but certainly thousands more, have moved to the settlements.

One expert on rural life using other data estimated that just under one million people had moved to imidugudu.13

Given the unreliability of date, it is currently impossible to arrive at an exact number of residents in imidugudu and even more impossible to be sure how many of them are living there against their will, but these figures give an idea of the scale of the numbers involved. At the least hundreds of thousands of people have moved to the settlements; at the least tens of thousands of them have been displaced against their will and many of those have been compelled to destroy their own homes.

3 Republic of Rwanda and United Nations Population Fund, Socio-Democraphic Survey 1996, p. 31; Government of Rwanda, Ministry of Lands, Human Resettlement and Environmental Protection, "Thematic Consultation," p. 2.

4 Republic of Rwanda and United Nations Population Fund, Socio-Democraphic Survey 1996, p. 31.

5 The report refers to its data on "previous residence" abroad, but does not publish any such data. Republic of Rwanda and United Nations Population Fund, Socio-Democraphic Survey 1996, p. 31. When contacted with a request for further information on these questions, the foreign expert who worked on the report replied only that these were "sensitive" issues.

6 André Guichaoua, "Vers Deux Générations de Réfugiés Rwandais," pp. 341 and 343, in André Guichaoua, Les Crises Politiques au Burundi et au Rwanda (Lille: Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, 1995). See also UNHCR, Refugees and Others of Concern to UNHCR, 1999 Statistical Overview, Table 11.7.

7 PNUD, Rapport, pp.6-8.

8 CCA Working Paper no. 3, note p. 3. UNHCR statistics are discussed below.

9 Human Rights Watch interview, Kigali, August 15, 2000.

10 PNUD, Rapport, p.8; Human Rights Watch interview, Kinigi, Ruhengeri, November 19, 1999; Government of Rwanda, "Thematic Consultation," p. 2.

11 To appreciate how conservative these estimates are, compare Rwandan government estimates. In January 2000, it said 625,000 persons (125,000 households) had been moved from camps to imidugudu in the the two northwestern prefectures and that some 163,000 persons (32,600 households) lived in completed houses, which would leave 462,000 persons (92,400 households) in temporary shelters for Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. According to the November 1999 data, Gisenyi represented only some 3,100 households of this total. CCA Working Paper, no. 3, pp. 8, 10.

12 Republic of Rwanda and United Nations Population Fund, Socio-Democraphic Survey 1996, p. 41. The relative numbers in finished houses, unfinished houses, or shelters will have changed since the data was collected in late 1999, but this will not have affected the total number of residents.

13 Human Rights Watch interview, Kigali, by telephone, September 11, 2000.