The Mwange Repatriation Center is comprised of the Community Skills and Resource Center and Réseau d'Information pour le Repatriement (RIR). By informing refugees about their status and rights as refugees and the processes behind repatriation, the RIR enables refugees to make educated decisions about their futures and protect their own interests. Concurrently, the Community Skills and Resource Center conducts seminars to prepare refugees with mediation and leadership skills that will help them successfully transition and contribute to their redeveloping home communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Although UNHCR has explicit procedures for repatriation, it often lacks the resources to ensure that all refugees in a camp are able to hear and understand the intricacies behind the repatriation process. In such a rural location, refugees in Mwange Camp have no other way to obtain this information on their own. With repatriation impending, refugees—many of whom have been in the Mwange Camp for almost a decade—require assistance in determining how to reestablish their lives when they return to their home communities.
Réseau d'Information pour le Repatriement reaches about 800 refugees each month through its seminars and printed information, and the CSRC currently has 72 participants in its seminars.
The entire Mwange community has access to both of these resources, allowing all community
members the opportunity to inform and otherwise prepare themselves for repatriation.
• Offering seminars on the details behind repatriation
• Training refugees in mediation, public speaking and leadership
• Providing pamphlets to the community with information about repatriations processes
• To raise awareness about current repatriation conditions in the DRC
• To provide up-to-date information about repatriation to at least 20% of camp residents annually, and 70% of repatriating residents
• To prepare Mwange Camp residents for a safe and successful return to the DRC
*Because of budget constraints, FORGE has temporarily scaled back the scope of many of its projects. The project descriptions and budgets seen here describe the project's typical operations, and might therefor not reflect the current situation on the ground. Once sufficient funding is secured for each project, its operations will be expanded back to those reflected in this description and budget.