SOS Médias Burundi

Mahama, July 15, 2025 – The Rwandan government, in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has launched what it calls an « opinion poll » among Congolese refugees in the Mahama camp, in eastern Rwanda. The stated objective : identifying those who wish to return voluntarily to the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, for several opinion leaders in the camp, this operation is nothing more than a symbolic consultation intended to formalize the numerous clandestine returns already underway.

Last Wednesday, an extraordinary meeting was convened by the president of the Mahama camp, representing the Rwandan Ministry of Refugees. He was accompanied by police and immigration officials. On the agenda : announcing to community leaders the launch of a survey of Congolese refugees to « assess their willingness to return home. »

« According to the agreement signed between Rwanda and the DRC in Washington, the guns will fall silent in eastern Congo. Furthermore, the M23 and the DRC have agreed to a ceasefire and dialogue to resolve the conflict. It is therefore time for those who wish to return home, officially, supervised by the UNHCR and welcomed by the Congolese authorities, » explained the Rwandan government envoy.

The next day, UNHCR agents began traveling to several villages in the camp—including villages 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 16, 17, and 18, all located along the Akagera River—to conduct the survey.

A symbolic consultation to cover up illegal returns?

In mid-June, SOS Médias Burundi revealed in an exclusive investigation that more than a thousand Congolese refugees had discreetly left the Mahama camp to return to the DRC, without any official supervision.

These nighttime departures have intensified since the M23 armed group, affiliated with the Congo River Alliance (AFC)—a politico-military movement supported by Rwanda, according to accusations by Congolese authorities and UN experts—took control of the main cities of North and South Kivu, in the east of the vast Central African country. This phenomenon, although discreet, has continued regularly, outside of any official framework from the UNHCR or the Rwandan Ministry of Refugees (MINEMA).

« They will hold a symbolic consultation, then conclude that several Congolese wish to return. This will be a way of legalizing the clandestine returns already underway. We will then talk about voluntary repatriation, and the first departures will be concealed. No one will speak of it again, » analyzes a community leader from the camp.

But a central question remains : who will actually welcome these refugees in eastern DRC?

« These Congolese come from an area under the control of the M23 rebels. However, this administration is not recognized by Kinshasa. This suggests a deal between Kigali and the M23, because Rwanda’s real interlocutor should be the government in Kinshasa, » adds a Burundian intellectual living in Mahama.

A revealing profile of the departing people

The majority of those currently leaving the Mahama camp are women, children, and the elderly. Most of the young men are believed to have left much earlier, some to join the ranks of the M23.

« Some young people occasionally return to the camp to wash their Congolese military uniforms, which they dry in broad daylight, without any embarrassment, » reports a Burundian source in the camp.

Behind these departures lies a discreet but active network of Congolese « political mobilizers. » Unofficially recognized but tolerated, these individuals organize nighttime meetings where they register potential returnees and raise funds.

« They promise financial support once they return home. They assure them that the region is now peaceful, that the AFC and the M23 are rebuilding eastern Congo, and that the time has come to return, » confides a refugee who has attended several of these meetings.

Since January 2025, M23 troops, with the support of the AFC, have claimed to control the provinces of North and South Kivu. In their communiqués, they call on refugees to return to the region to « contribute to its reconstruction. »

The Mahama camp is now the largest in Rwanda. It hosts more than 76,000 refugees, including over 40,000 Burundians. For Congolese refugees, the climate is becoming increasingly uncertain, with incentives to return, latent threats, and a lack of security guarantees on the ground.