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Tanzania to offer citizenship to more Burundian refugees

Xinhua, April 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

Tanzania is set to offer citizenship to more Burundian refugees in the country by the end of this year, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Tanzania's deputy home affairs minister Hamad Yusuf Masauni said the government in collaboration with UNHCR is at the final stages of carrying out physical verification on those who deserve to be granted citizenship as promised by the president.

"It is our plan that the process is complete by the end of this year so that those refugees who merit nationality be granted in accordance with the law," the minister said when speaking in Tanzania's capital city of Dodoma.

Tanzania previously granted naturalization to some 32,000 Rwandan refugees in 1982 and in February of this year it concluded the naturalization of some 3,000 Somali Bantu refugees (ethnic Wazigua from Tanzania), who had fled Somalia in 1991, after the fall of the Siad Barre regime.

Tanzania is also host to approximately thousands of refugees from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). Endit