One step towards the recognition of refugees being hosted in DRCongo: UNHCR and the Govenment makes a positive move

Towards the end of the war on statistics of Refugees who are being hosted in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the DRC Minister of Internal Affairs discussed with Filippo Grandi in Geneva.  It is now clear that DRC host more than 500,000 including those already registered and many others who are not yet registered.

As you may know, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian agencies in the world will bring to your attention a lot of information about Congolese refugees in neighboring countries and in the world, and a lot call for supporting humanitarian actions in order to help these refugees which is very fine. But at the same time UNHCR will never give a clear information about the exact number of refugees being hosted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, generally UNHCR claims that refugees are about 526,000 which highly low compared to what we are seeing on the ground.

With your support especially those who donated towards our various projects, we engaged on a four years advocacy since January 2021 up to now, making pressure on various actors to tell us exactly how many refugees are hosted in DRC. At first UNHCR opposed strongly our advocacy and we suspect her to connive with security services in order to threaten and arrest our colleagues who are advocating for the recognition of refugees, UNHCR also has been strongly opposed to the representation of refugees and Civil Society Actors from DRC in big events at International levels, and the last Global Refugee Forum was also another event which UNHCR deliberately excluded us from participating and also threated those who popularized this event. UNHCR in Goma supports the idea that refugees should leave DRC in order seek asylum in other countries, but we are strongly opposed to this because DRC has better opportunities for refugees than others countries.

In Geneva where he is attending the UNHCR Meeting the Democratic Republic of Congo Minister of Internal Affairs together with UNHCR managed to officially claims for the first time that DRC has more than 500,000 including those who are already identified and more who are not yet identified. So four years on the road now, we can speak almost the same language, but why should we wait for four years for UNHCR to speak the truth.

This is the very first step towards the recognition of refugees in DRC and the struggle continues at all levels, on one side more advocacy work should focus on UNHCR, the DRC Government, refugees and host communities and on the other side we should come up with programs and activities which promote dignity and protection to each refugee.

Lastly please also bear in mind that statistics of Congolese refugees in neighboring countries and in other countries in the world as published by UNHCR may not reflect the reality, thousands of those who are registered as Congolese refugees in many countries are not necessary Congolese. Some are from other countries, they come to seek asylum in DRC and then leave DRC towards other countries where they claim coming from DRC.