We are happy to be back home
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Muya Omari Luhizo, 62, with his wife and daughter before they were granted Tanzanian citizenship by the minister for Home Affairs, Mr Mathias Chikawe, at Chogo in Handeni District, Tanga Region, yesterday. PHOTOS | LUCAS LIGANGA
In Summary
- The Somali Bantu (also called Madow, Gosha or Mushunguli) are an ethnic minority group in Somalia who primarily reside in the southern part of the country, near the Juba and Shabelle rivers. They are descendants of people from various Bantu ethnic groups, most of whom were captured from southeast Africa and sold into slavery in Somalia and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia as part of the 19th century Arab slave trade.
- Bantus are ethnically, physically, and culturally distinct from Somalis, and they have remained marginalized ever since their arrival in Somalia.
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UNHCR UN Refugee Agency
Somali Bantu in Tanzania: A century-old cycle of displacement comes full circle
The local hairdresser in Chogo, Tanzania. Many hundreds of Somali Bantu refugees were granted Tanzanian citizenship in 2007 and 2008. The refugees currently living in Chogo began arriving in Tanzania in the early 1990’s.Their ancestors were originally from the Tanga province (Tanzania) and had been sold into slavery hundreds of years ago. All photos: UNHCR / Brendan Bannon
Local Integration: Local integration can be regarded as a process which leads to a durable solution for refugees. It is a process with three necessary interrelated dimensions:
First, it is a legal process, whereby refugees are granted a progressively wider range of rights and entitlements by the host state. Under the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention, these include, for example, the right to seek employment, to engage in other income-generating activities, to own and dispose of property, to enjoy freedom of movement and to have access to public services such as education. The process whereby refugees gain and accumulate rights may lead to the acquisition of permanent residence rights and ultimately to the acquisition of citizenship in the country of asylum.
Second, local integration can be regarded as an economic process. For in acquiring the rights and entitlements referred to above, refugees also improve their potential to establish sustainable livelihoods, to attain a growing degree of self-reliance, and to become progressively less reliant on state aid or humanitarian assistance. In accordance with these indicators, refugees who are prevented or deterred from participating in the local economy, and whose standard of living is consistently lower than the poorest members of the host community, cannot be considered to be locally integrated.
Third, local integration is a social process, enabling refugees to live amongst or alongside the host population, without fear of systematic discrimination, intimidation or exploitation by the authorities or people of the asylum country. It is consequently a process that involves both refugees and the host population.
The concept of local integration does not imply the assimilation of refugees in the society where that have found asylum. While the concept of assimilation is to be found in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the international community has always rejected the notion that refugees should be required or expected to abandon their own culture, so as to become indistinguishable from members of the host community. As one scholar has pointed out, integration is a more useful term than assimilation, suggesting as it does that refugees “maintain their own identity, yet become part of the host society to the extent that host population and refugees can live together in an acceptable way.”
Taken from: "The local integration and local settlement of refugees: a conceptual and historical analysis", Jeff Crisp ; Reearch Working Paper nr. 102
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Somali Bantus gain Tanzanian citizenship in their ancestral land
History has come full circle for refugee descendants of slaves who have received a fresh start in their ancestral homeland of Tanzania.
By: Brendan Bannon/Eveline Wolfcarius, ed. Kitty McKinsey/Leo Dobbs | 3 June 2009
In Somalia, Bantu children were denied education for decades, but this Somali Bantu boy, a new Tanzanian citizen, attends school in Chogo settlement in northeastern Tanzania. © UNHCR/B.Bannon
CHOGO, Tanzania, June 3 (UNHCR) - Some 300 years after their ancestors were taken from here to be sold as slaves, almost 1,300 Somali Bantu refugees are now full citizens of Tanzania.
A further 1,500 refugees in Chogo settlement, in the north-eastern coastal region of Tanga, are still in the process of getting naturalized.
Working and living alongside the local population, many of the Somali Bantu refugees and new citizens can trace their origins to this area of the country, from where their ancestors were transported as slaves. The refugees returned in the early 1990s fleeing civil war and the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime in Somalia.
Back then, tens of thousands of Somalis travelled on overcrowded and rickety dhows to the Kenyan harbour of Mombasa. A small group of refugees of Bantu origin made their way even further south, to Tanga, reversing the path their ancestors had taken more than three centuries ago.
Ramadhani Abdalah, a Tanzanian Zigua farmer, remembers very well the day the refugees arrived in Tanga.
“I heard about refugees before, but when they came, it was my first time to actually see a refugee,” he now recalls. “I was so surprised. They were talking in the same language as I do, Zigua, but they came from Somalia.”
Ramadhani lives in one of the neighbouring villages of Chogo settlement where he prepares land for planting. He is hired by a former Somali Bantu farmer and is paid 12,000 Tanzanian shillings (about US$9) for each acre of land he clears.
At first the government of Tanzania, with assistance from UNHCR, hosted the Somali refugees in Mkuyu camp, also in Tanga region. In March 2003, more than 3,000 refugees were transferred from there to Chogo, a newly-constructed settlement some 80 kilometres away, in a move towards naturalizing the Somali Bantus who wished to stay.
Upon arrival in Chogo, each refugee family received more than 2.5 acres (about one hectare) of land, to farm and to build a home. With the help of UNHCR, working with the Tanzanian authorities and the Tanzanian non-governmental organization, Relief to Development Society, a school, health centre and market were constructed.
Since 2005, the new citizens and the 1,500 refugees awaiting citizenship have been supporting themselves and living together with the surrounding communities.
Haji Sefu Ali, one of the elders in Chogo, proudly shows off his farm. “In Chogo, we have named the villages after places in Somalia,” he says. “We are tilling land, raising cattle and chicken and are taking care of ourselves.”
Life has been a struggle, adds Fatouma, his neighbour and a grandmother of three, but “today, we are citizens of Tanzania. My granddaughters could even become president one day. In Somalia, for a Bantu, that would not be possible.”
By Brendan Bannon and Eveline Wolfcarius
in Chogo, Tanzania
History has come full circle for refugee descendants of slaves who have received a fresh start in their ancestral homeland of Tanzania.
By: Brendan Bannon/Eveline Wolfcarius, ed. Kitty McKinsey/Leo Dobbs | 3 June 2009
In Somalia, Bantu children were denied education for decades, but this Somali Bantu boy, a new Tanzanian citizen, attends school in Chogo settlement in northeastern Tanzania. © UNHCR/B.Bannon
CHOGO, Tanzania, June 3 (UNHCR) - Some 300 years after their ancestors were taken from here to be sold as slaves, almost 1,300 Somali Bantu refugees are now full citizens of Tanzania.
A further 1,500 refugees in Chogo settlement, in the north-eastern coastal region of Tanga, are still in the process of getting naturalized.
Working and living alongside the local population, many of the Somali Bantu refugees and new citizens can trace their origins to this area of the country, from where their ancestors were transported as slaves. The refugees returned in the early 1990s fleeing civil war and the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime in Somalia.
Back then, tens of thousands of Somalis travelled on overcrowded and rickety dhows to the Kenyan harbour of Mombasa. A small group of refugees of Bantu origin made their way even further south, to Tanga, reversing the path their ancestors had taken more than three centuries ago.
Ramadhani Abdalah, a Tanzanian Zigua farmer, remembers very well the day the refugees arrived in Tanga.
“I heard about refugees before, but when they came, it was my first time to actually see a refugee,” he now recalls. “I was so surprised. They were talking in the same language as I do, Zigua, but they came from Somalia.”
Ramadhani lives in one of the neighbouring villages of Chogo settlement where he prepares land for planting. He is hired by a former Somali Bantu farmer and is paid 12,000 Tanzanian shillings (about US$9) for each acre of land he clears.
At first the government of Tanzania, with assistance from UNHCR, hosted the Somali refugees in Mkuyu camp, also in Tanga region. In March 2003, more than 3,000 refugees were transferred from there to Chogo, a newly-constructed settlement some 80 kilometres away, in a move towards naturalizing the Somali Bantus who wished to stay.
Upon arrival in Chogo, each refugee family received more than 2.5 acres (about one hectare) of land, to farm and to build a home. With the help of UNHCR, working with the Tanzanian authorities and the Tanzanian non-governmental organization, Relief to Development Society, a school, health centre and market were constructed.
Since 2005, the new citizens and the 1,500 refugees awaiting citizenship have been supporting themselves and living together with the surrounding communities.
Haji Sefu Ali, one of the elders in Chogo, proudly shows off his farm. “In Chogo, we have named the villages after places in Somalia,” he says. “We are tilling land, raising cattle and chicken and are taking care of ourselves.”
Life has been a struggle, adds Fatouma, his neighbour and a grandmother of three, but “today, we are citizens of Tanzania. My granddaughters could even become president one day. In Somalia, for a Bantu, that would not be possible.”
By Brendan Bannon and Eveline Wolfcarius
in Chogo, Tanzania
NEWS
Refugees to call Tanzania home
PRINTRATING
Refugees at a camp. Tanzania has given citizenship to refugees who had lived in the country for several years. Photo/FILE
By ERIC KABENDERA The EastAfrican
Posted Saturday, June 7 2014 at 15:26
IN SUMMARY
Tanzania’s Ministry of Home Affairs has granted citizenship to 3,000 people who were originally Tanzanians but were captured by Arab slave traders centuries ago and sold to Somalia. They returned following the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia.
The ministry has also granted citizenship to 162,256 Burundians who migrated to Tanzania in 1972, ending a decade long confusion over their status. However, the government is facing a dilemma over whether to relocate them to other parts of the country or keep them in Tabora where they have lived for 40 years.
The UN refugee agency had advised that the refugees be distributed to 52 districts countrywide. However, the relocation came to a halt when some of the areas earmarked asked for money to establish development projects to support them and others rejected the idea due to security concerns.
The Bantu-Somalis are ethnically from the Wazigua tribe from northeast Tanzania. Centuries after their ancestors left Tanzania, they retraced the route they took as slaves.
At a meeting with the former refugees to grant them naturalisation certificates in Tanga, the Minister for Home Affairs Mathias Chikawe said some 150 Somali-Bantu refugees had opted out, hoping that the situation in Somalia would stabilise and they could return.
“I call upon the refugees granted the citizenship to refrain from being persuaded by terrorists to participate in terrorism,” Mr Chikawe said.
The process to grant citizenship to Somali-Bantus was put on hold in 2010 after the government discovered that the process was marred with corruption.
The refugees who rejected citizenship will remain at a refugee camp and maintain their refugee status.
Mr Chikawe said the former Burundians are now Tanzanians, and that the government is hesitant to relocate them to other parts of the country because it would contravene their right to live in any part of the country as new citizens.
UNHRC Representative in Tanzania Joyce Mends-Cole said making the Somali-Bantus citizens would enable them to build their lives and become self sufficient.
“The decision by the Tanzanian government to welcome the descendants to reapply for their citizenship voluntarily is commendable. It shows the catalyst role Tanzania has played to look for solutions to global solutions,” she said.
by Taboola
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Refugees to call Tanzania home
Refugees at a camp. Tanzania has given citizenship to refugees who had lived in the country for several years. Photo/FILE
By ERIC KABENDERA The EastAfrican
Posted Saturday, June 7 2014 at 15:26
IN SUMMARY
- The ministry has also granted citizenship to 162,256 Burundians who migrated to Tanzania in 1972, ending a decade long confusion over their status.
- The Bantu-Somalis are ethnically from the Wazigua tribe from northeast Tanzania. Centuries after their ancestors left Tanzania, they retraced the route they took as slaves.
- The refugees who rejected citizenship will remain at a refugee camp and maintain their refugee status.
Tanzania’s Ministry of Home Affairs has granted citizenship to 3,000 people who were originally Tanzanians but were captured by Arab slave traders centuries ago and sold to Somalia. They returned following the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia.
The ministry has also granted citizenship to 162,256 Burundians who migrated to Tanzania in 1972, ending a decade long confusion over their status. However, the government is facing a dilemma over whether to relocate them to other parts of the country or keep them in Tabora where they have lived for 40 years.
The UN refugee agency had advised that the refugees be distributed to 52 districts countrywide. However, the relocation came to a halt when some of the areas earmarked asked for money to establish development projects to support them and others rejected the idea due to security concerns.
The Bantu-Somalis are ethnically from the Wazigua tribe from northeast Tanzania. Centuries after their ancestors left Tanzania, they retraced the route they took as slaves.
At a meeting with the former refugees to grant them naturalisation certificates in Tanga, the Minister for Home Affairs Mathias Chikawe said some 150 Somali-Bantu refugees had opted out, hoping that the situation in Somalia would stabilise and they could return.
“I call upon the refugees granted the citizenship to refrain from being persuaded by terrorists to participate in terrorism,” Mr Chikawe said.
The process to grant citizenship to Somali-Bantus was put on hold in 2010 after the government discovered that the process was marred with corruption.
The refugees who rejected citizenship will remain at a refugee camp and maintain their refugee status.
Mr Chikawe said the former Burundians are now Tanzanians, and that the government is hesitant to relocate them to other parts of the country because it would contravene their right to live in any part of the country as new citizens.
UNHRC Representative in Tanzania Joyce Mends-Cole said making the Somali-Bantus citizens would enable them to build their lives and become self sufficient.
“The decision by the Tanzanian government to welcome the descendants to reapply for their citizenship voluntarily is commendable. It shows the catalyst role Tanzania has played to look for solutions to global solutions,” she said.
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
You May Like
Good Skin Foods: Healthy Recipes for Glowing SkinGlad Healthy
http://uprealtime.com/view/FSA1S65L...Bed+Tonight+to+Burn+Belly+Flab+All+Night+Long
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