Tanzania

Abstract

Soon after achieving independence in 1962, Tanzania established a reputation as one of the most hospitable countries of asylum in Africa, if not the world. Through the 1960s and 1970s, it hosted tens of thousands of refugees fleeing both wars of national liberation in Southern Africa and post-colonial conflict and repression in neighbouring states. Tanzania provided refugees with land, and refugees were encouraged to achieve self-sufficiency, with many entering the country’s workforce. This reputation changed dramatically in the context of renewed conflict and genocide in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. Tanzania received hundreds of thousands of refugees from Burundi and Rwanda in 1993 and 1994. In response, and in advance of the country’s first multiparty Presidential elections, Tanzania ended its long-standing ‘open-door’ asylum policy by closing its border with Burundi in March 1995 and by expelling the overwhelming majority of Rwandan refugees from its territory in December 1996.