<>Switzerland has been supporting since 1994 programmes of protection, return and reintegration of the refugees or displaced persons in the Great Lakes region. Humanitarian actions in favour of displaced persons are intended to compensate the consequences of the lack of the state social structures and the collapse of traditional survival strategies. They act in a manner that the populations present in refugee camps or those in the process of return, as well as the hosting communities, can remain economically and socially active and can keep, or even regain, their ability to care for themselves.

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If the management of thousands of displaced families proves to be very complex, their return on their homeland is not easier to conceive. Indeed, the issues relating to the rights to property and the access to land, as well as the population pressure, remain immediate challenges in Rwanda and Burundi.

In this context, the Refugees and displaced Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) acts on three levels:

• it offers protection, assistance and food aid to refugee populations in the camps of Tanzania through financial contribution to the programmes of the High-Commission for Refugees (HCR) and World Food Programme (WFP). Switzerland supports the  International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in its search for families in Tanzania camps and shelter structures in Burundi and the DRC. HCR, WFP and the  Office of the United Nations for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) are developing return programmes (social infrastructure, habitat) in order to facilitate repatriation, rehabilitation and reintegration of Burundian and Congolese refugees currently established in refugee camps. Finally, measures are taken to mitigate the effects of the prolonged presence of refugees on the environment around the camps;
  
• it provides food aid and essential medical care in the areas of presence of the displaced populations through contributions to Médecins sans Frontières - Suisse (MSF) and Medair, WFP and ICRC organizations;
  
• it finances many actions of rehabilitation, reconstruction and security in areas marked by conflicts: recovery programmes in the agricultural, pastoral and fishing area; basic health infrastructure; water and sanitation infrastructures; humanitarian demining in Burundi, etc. To do this, partners of Swiss humanitarian aid are MSF - Suisse, Medair, ICRC, the  Swiss Demining Foundation (SDF) and several local organizations.