COUNTRY:  BURUNDI.

Marguerite Barankitse’s World Refugee Day appeal — addressing the continued displacement of nearly half a million Burundians living in exile and insisting that prolonged displacement should not become a permanent condition — carries the authority of someone whose entire life has been a practical refutation of the idea that humanitarian crisis is an inevitable feature of the African landscape. Having built institutions that protected and educated children displaced by earlier cycles of Burundian violence, Barankitse speaks as a witness to both what displacement costs and what recovery can look like when resources, will, and institutional vision converge. Her argument — that refugees are not humanitarian cases to be managed but citizens whose future remains connected to Burundi’s national recovery, development, and social fabric — is not a rhetorical claim; it is a governance demand, one that challenges the country’s leadership to treat the reconciliation of its displaced citizens as a core national objective rather than a secondary humanitarian consideration.

The practical requirements of that objective are not reducible to repatriation logistics or refugee camp conditions, real as those are. Creating conditions that enable voluntary, safe, and dignified return requires addressing the political, institutional, and economic foundations of why people left — and of why, decades later, so many have not yet returned. Strengthening public institutions capable of delivering justice, security, and services; expanding economic opportunities in communities where returnees would settle; and fostering the political culture of inclusive coexistence that makes safe return a reality rather than an administrative declaration are all necessary components of a reconciliation agenda that cannot be outsourced to UNHCR or resolved through bilateral repatriation agreements alone. The 500,000 people living in exile across neighbouring countries are not an external problem — they are Burundian citizens whose exclusion from national life is itself a form of unresolved conflict.

Burundi’s refugee situation is a reminder that durable peace is inseparable from social inclusion and human security — that a country in which significant numbers of its citizens remain unable or unwilling to return has not resolved its conflict but merely managed it across a longer timeframe and a wider geography. As Burundi continues to consolidate its stability, integrating the experiences, aspirations, and knowledge of its diaspora and displaced populations into national development and reconciliation efforts is both a moral obligation and a practical resource. People who have lived across multiple countries, built skills and networks in difficult circumstances, and maintained their connection to a homeland that has not always protected them carry a form of social capital whose contribution to national recovery has been consistently underestimated. Barankitse’s plea is ultimately an argument that Burundi cannot be whole until all of its citizens have a place in it — and that building that place is not a humanitarian project but a national one.

Photo: AI-GENERATED.