Migration in Burundi: History, Current Trends and Future - MGSoG ...

4.2 Current international Burundian migration
Burundi has been both a migrant-receiving and migrant-sending country. In 2009,
however, the number of Burundian refugees residing in other countries exceeded the
number of refugees the country hosted. Table 7 presents the migration status of Burundi
for the year 2009. As this table shows, Burundi currently hosts over 20,000 refugees and
over 5,000 asylum seekers. More than 280,000 refugees from Burundi live in other
countries. A large number of Burundi’s refugees have already returned to the country:
more than 95,000 people had returned to Burundi by January 2009. It is important to
note Burundi’s high number of IDPs, a topic that will be discussed in the section on
internal migration in Burundi. The next sections discuss Burundi’s migration status in
more detail.
Table 7: Migration In and From Burundi: 2009
Category Number
Residing in Burundi
Refugees 21,093
Asylum Seekers 5,269
Returned Refugees 95,389
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) 100,000
Returned IDPs 0
Stateless Persons 0
Various 0
Total Population of Concern 221,751
Originating from Burundi
Refugees 281,592
Asylum Seekers 6,645
Returned Refugees 95,389
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) 100,000
Returned IDPs 0
Various 0
Total Population of Concern 483,626
Source: UNHCR, January 2009.
4.2.1 Burundi as a refugee-sending country
Table 8 shows the number of Burundian refugees as of October 2009. 6 As described
earlier Tanzania currently hosts most of Burundi’s refugees as a result of the 1972 civil
conflict. This number has drastically decreased over the years, however. The
International Crisis Group (2003) reports in 2003 that more than 800,000 Burundians
were hosted by Tanzania at that time: 500,000 refugees were living in refugee camps in
6 The numbers in this table slightly differ from the ones presented in Table x. This is due to the fact that
the numbers presented in Table x are from October 2009, and the ones in Table x from January 2009. In
the meantime, many Burundian refugees have returned from Tanzania.
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