Reference :
V-P-ZW-E-00120
Date :
31/08/2010
Caption :
Manicaland province, Tongogara refugee camp. Two ICRC employees go through Red Cross messages and tracing reuqests with the volunteer helper from the camp, Froduald and discuss pending tracing cases. Froduald is himself a refugee.
Confidentiality level :
public
Publication restrictions :
publication without restrictions
Description :
Tongogara refugee camp opened in February 1984 for refugees from Mozambique civil war. In the beginning of the 1990's it hosted up to 60,000 refugees from Mozambique (the camp is situated near the border with Mozambique in the Southeast of Zimbabwe). After the civil war ended in 1994, most refugees were repatriated.
Conflicts in the Democatic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Rwanda, Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda fuelled new influxes of the refugees from 1998 onwards.
Today, 3,200 people are housed at the camp, the vast majority having arrived from the DRC since 2005 and the increased violence in the East of the country (a few others are from Rwanda and Burundi, while a few of refugees from the above mentioned countries are still staying at the camp).
Since 2000, the ICRC is involves in re-establishing contact between people living in the camp and families they have been separated from. Refugees can exchange Red Cross messages with their relatives and can open tracing requests for relatives they have lost contact with.
A volunteer helper from the camp, a refugee himself, is acting as a representative for the ICRC. He is trained by ICRC staff, who follow up with his work from Harare, while they carry out bimonthly visits to the camp. The camp administration has provided an office for the ICRC, from where the volunteer can manage tracing activities.
During the visits of ICRC staff to the camp, they bring messages they received at Harare delegation for refugees in Tongogara and take messages collected from refugees in the camp by the volunteer. ICRC staff also regularly organizes presentation of ICRC tracing activities for newly arrived refugees.
The volunteer also makes regular trips to Harare to bring messages and take them to be distributed.
The volunteer's name is Froduald. He is a refugee from Rwanda. After spending years as a refugee in Zaire/DRC and Zambia, he arrived in Tongogara camp in 2003.
ICRC staff also give him further training and advices.
Original material :
digital
Resolution :
4200x2800
Orientation :
landscape
Colour/B&W :
colour
