Burundi - Internally displaced

2020

In 2020, UNHCR through its leadership of the Protection Sector Group (GSP) collaborated with a range of partners including UN agencies in its monthly meetings and participated in the Government of Burundi’s Plateforme Nationale (National Platform), to support it in its request for assistance and to find durable solutions to the problems of the IDPs who had to abandon their homes in Gatumba, Mutumbizi, Bujumbura Province, due to flooding in April and May and November and December 2020. UNHCR through the GSP provided a protection voice to advocate to the Government of Burundi and some UN agencies not to oblige the flood victims in the IDP sites of Gatumba to accept demands to leave the sites and be relocated to alternative places without any consultation or respect of their basic human rights.

With UNHCR’s stepped up engagement to internal displacement and the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNHCR Burundi’s twofold IDPs Solution Strategy 2019-2020 had to be modified. Its strategy aimed to: (1) support the introduction of a law and policy framework for IDPs’ protection, and durable solutions to their internal displacement; and (2) strengthen the humanitarian coordination for enhanced partnerships towards a reduction and prevention of internal displacement increase capacity-building to better respond to emergencies. The UNHCR-led Protection Sector Group (GSP) coordinated protection activities by partners to support the host Government in its response to the threat of COVID-19 to the IDP populations. Until the May 2020 elections, the Government tended to downplay the threat of COVID-19 and to consider it to be an external phenomenon which could be kept at bay by closing the borders. The new government which emerged after the May 2020 has taken a more internationally mainstream approach to prevention and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNHCR also coordinated work by partner agencies and local NGOs to sensitize IDPs and vulnerable host populations about handwashing, the use of masks and social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

UNHCR continued its coordination role at various levels of the humanitarian structure of the country. UNHCR was the co-lead together with IOM of the CCCM/NFI/Shelter Sector. However, UNCR was unable to provide regular representation in the CCCM/NFI/Shelter Sector due to a lack of staffing. UNHCR was represented in the GSP four times a year at the Humanitarian Country Team, presenting an analysis of protection issues involving IDPs and towards ensuring that protection underpins decision-making at policy level.

UNHCR also worked to strengthen coordination and partnerships by cooperating fully with the ProCap (high level protection capacity mission) which took place in Bujumbura in November and December 2020, to strengthen international humanitarian protection work for the Affected Persons and actively contributed to the ProCap’s road map for strengthening protection, adopted in 2020.