Assessing the Impact of the Rwandan Refugee Crisis on Development Planning in Rural Tanzania, 1994-1996

It is generally recognized that refugee movements are related to development policy in the worlds poorest countries. In particular solutions to refugee crises are regarded as rooted in the re-integration of refugees voluntarily into their own societies or that of a host country. For these reasons efforts at refugee resettlement and integration became closely tied to development assistance programs in the 1980s. However this situation changed with the Rwandan refugee crisis of 1994-96. Explicit policies emerged separating refugee from development assistance programs. The implications for a local population resulting from the separation of development and in Ngara Tanzania are examined in this paper. Ngara hosted over 400000 Rwandan refugees in 1994-96 and refugee programs costing hundreds of million dollars were mounted. Because of the relief only policy much of this expenditure was on semipermanent infrastructure institutions and programs without regard for local development planning. (authors)