POUL DUE JENSEN FOUNDATION WATER Nyarugusu refugee camp hosts more than 153,000 Congolese and Burundian refugees. Photo: Water Mission The world’s biggest humanitarian crisis is a forgotten disaster In Western Tanzania, about 40 kilometres from the border with Burundi, lies Nyarugusu Refugee Camp. The camp is home to over 153,000 Congolese and Burundian refugees. Since 2015, Water Mission has provided sustainable access to safe water in the camp, and shown the international community how to improve living standards dramatically. Today, we’re on a Skype connection with Will Furlong, Water Mission’s Regional Director in Tanzania, to learn more about the situation in Nyarugusu and the other camps nearby. Will talks to us from the shade under a tree near the solar arrays at Borehole 3 in the Burundian section of Nyarugusu Refugee Camp. It’s early November, the rain season has started, and women are planting maize in the fields not far away. Massive expansion Since 2015, Nyarugusu has almost doubled in size because of political unrest in Burundi, making thousands of refugees cross the border from Burundi into Tanzania. In 2015 alone, 122,000 Burundian refugees arrived in Western Tanzania, and many of those were sent to Nyarugusu to join 80,000 refugees from Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who had lived in Nyarugusu for over 20 years. “UNHCR with permission of the Tanzanian government began putting refugees in the camp in open land. It’s a large open space, but there was no 12
Download PDF file
Cookie policy