IASC Weekly Meeting: Refugees and local integration in Tanzania
Geneva
Meeting Documents
1. Refugees and local integration in Tanzania
Mr. Guido Ambroso, Senior Programme Evaluation Officer, UNHCR Geneva, will brief on refugees and local integration in Tanzania. The presentation will focus on the progress achieved and remaining challenges in implementing a strategy, which the Government of Tanzania and UNHCR agreed in 2008 to find a comprehensive solution for a group of some 220,000 Burundian refugees who had been living in settlements in Tanzania since 1972 and who were largely self-sufficient but still had the status of refugees over three decades later.
Presenters
Background
The innovative element of the strategy was that it included not only the possibility of voluntary repatriation, the classic durable solution for refugees, but also legal naturalization and socioeconomic integration in Tanzania, which globally is the least practiced of the three durable solutions for refugees (the 3rd being resettlement to a 3rd country). To date 162,000 refugees from this group of some 220,000 Burundian refugees have been legally naturalized Tanzanian. Guido Ambroso was Senior Programme Officer for UNHCR in Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, from June 2008 until January 2011. He worked on the repatriation of camps-based refugees and local integration for settlements-based refugees.
2. AOB