Post-Genocide Migration: A Case of Rwandan Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The study explores the factors behind the increased post-genocide migration of Rwandans with emphasis on refugees and asylum seekers of Rwandan nationality living in Zimbabwe. Despite being hailed as a peaceful, stable and with a thriving economy, Rwanda has continued to see its citizens fleeing the country in search of asylum in neighboring countries and others have gone as far as Europe and America. While there has been the application of the cessation clause, in countries like Zimbabwe, DRC and Zambia, on Rwandan refugees who fled between 1959 and December 1998, the subsequent post-genocide migration becomes crucial to be understood and the factors behind it because if those to whom the cessation clause is being applied to are to be repatriated, there should be guarantee that the post-genocide migration drivers will not affect them. The human security concept is used as the conceptual framework that informs the research and the phenomenological research design was adopted to describe the migrants’ lived experiences. Participants were drawn from Tongogara refugee settlement and Harare because these are the two areas with the largest Rwandan communities in Zimbabwe. Findings have shown that these migrants left their country, Rwanda, due to various factors such as insecurity, poverty and persecution. This study, thus recommends that, if there is to be meaningful voluntary repatriation, there is need of political, social and economic reform in Rwanda.