Rwandan refugees who fled 1994 genocide return from Congo

Rwandan refugees who had been living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since fleeing the 1994 genocide were finally repatriated to their native homeland on March 17.

According to the Associated Press, the majority of the returning refugees were women and children, with around 360 of them crossing the Rwandan border on buses provided by government authorities.     

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),  the organization that coordinated the repatriation, said its goal was to eventually help over 2,000 Rwandan refugees in the eastern Congo  resettle. 

Speaking about the repatriation , Prosper Mulindwa, mayor of the town of Rubavu, said that the country was “happy to welcome our compatriots,” adding that in the future they would be a “valuable workforce” for Rwanda’s development and economy.  

The refugees were among the hundreds of thousands of Hutus who fled Rwanda for the Congo  during the 1994 genocide, which resulted  in the deaths of up to a million Tutsi and moderate Hutus.

While many of the refugees returned to Rwanda after the genocide ended, others  chose to stay–either having started new lives in the Congo or being unable to make the journey back home.  

 For over a decade a three-way agreement between Rwanda, DR Congo and the UNHRC has enabled the repatriation of just over 100,000 people from eastern Congo to Rwanda, with more than 1,000 people returning in 2025 alone.

The latest repatriation follows the draft signing of a peace deal between Rwanda and Congo that could help end the ongoing conflict between the Congolese government and the M23 rebel group.  

As previously reported by Maghrebi, the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group has made sweeping advances in eastern Congo in recent months, including the capture of the key city of Goma in January.  

The negotiations and draft agreement have been described as an “important step” towards  peace in the region by Massad Boulos, senior advisor to US President Donald Trump on Africa and the Middle East.

Associated Press/Maghrebi