07/COJESKI/NK/05/2025 Thursday 22nd, 2025
The United Nations Inspector
General Office/ UNHCR
Geneva,
CC:
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Rwanda,
Fillipo Grandi, UNHCR High Commissioner, Geneva
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Migrants, Geneva
The UN Office of Human Rights, Geneva,
The Director of BCNUDH, Kinshasa – DRCongo
The Director of BCNUDH, Goma, North Kivu- DRCongo,
The UNHCR Country Representative in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
The UNHCR Country Representative in Rwanda,
Re: Letter of protest and call for immediate actions to end the deportation of refugees in North Kivu DRCongo back to Rwanda: UNHCR Goma must account for her role to facilitate these operations
In our recent letter addressed to UNHCR Geneva about the situation of refugees in North Kivu, the Democratic Republic of Congo
“NREF: 04/COJESKI/NK/04/2025 of Wednesday April 30th, 2025” we alerted Mr. Fillipo Grandi about irregular activities against refugees in Goma North Kivu and the urgent need to engage Rwandan Authorities, which involved UNHCR team and which violate refugee protection. As you can view it in our various letters to your offices and to UNHCR we have not stopped pointing out UNHCR Goma roles in refugee rights violations either directly or indirectly through the Congolese National Commission for Refugees known as “CNR Goma”.
We remain uncertain if your office and UNHCR Geneva took our various call for actions and letters seriously because on ground we have not yet observed changes in terms of policies and services to refugees in North Kivu, on contrary we observed that UNHCR Goma became so close to Rwanda and appears more an association to abuse refugees.
From the month of April 2025 refugees reported to us cases of other refugees in North Kivu who were killed, went missing, disappeared, arrested, deported secretly to Rwanda and others exposed to inhuman and degrading treatment in many parts just because they happened to be Rwandan Hutu Refugees.
The shock which is still in the memories of so many people in Goma both refugees and host communities is “the mass deportation of Hutu Rwandan refugees back to Rwanda starting from Saturday May 17th, Sunday May 18th, and Monday May 19th, 2025”. Refugees were being arrested forcibly and arbitrary during various military operations, and stocked in various places in Goma and its surroundings and thereafter deported to Rwanda. Our team observed the presence of UNHCR’s Land Cruisers, Lorries with UNHCR Banners, and other UNHCR signs being used in order to transport refugees to Rwanda, our team also observed the presence of UNHCR Goma staffs working together with both Rwandan officers and AFC/M23 rebels team in Goma, which clearly showed that the operations were planned before and well-coordinated in advance and involved UNHCR for logistics. Families were separated, Congolese were also mixed together with refugees and taken to Rwanda.
“North Kivu province is at its worst and in this situation the protection of civilians including refugees is a humanitarian imperative. But also at the same time the Geneva Convention categorically repels all forms of deportation and criminalizes all forms of pretext to justify the deportation of refugees”.
We therefore strongly condemn UNHCR for aiding roles all these deportations of refugees in Eastern DRC since 1996 up to now, and immediately call upon these operations to stop. In the pretext of refugee protection UNHCR in DRC has always compromised and associated with armed groups in order to legitimize deportation of refugees and in some other ways give these forced repatriations a glimpse of fake humanitarian image. UNHCR in DRC must stop being an instrument used to justify crimes against humanity.
We therefore humbly call upon your offices to take urgent measures to involve Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other players in efforts to end all these deportations of refugees back to Rwanda,
We also call upon your offices to exercise its powers to close UNHCR Goma offices immediately after all we expected UNHCR staffs to be in Kinshasa and in Kampala Uganda,
We call upon immediate actions against all UNHCR staff officers involved in these deportations including opening up a court case to the International Criminal Court (ICC),
We call upon urgent actions in order to save the image of UNHCR in DRC but also to ensure that we are not forced to live and continue seeing every day these perpetrators, this is too painful.
Kulihoshi Musikami Pecos
Coordinnator
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