Ten Years, 1.6 Million Patients, and a Camp That No Longer Exists

On June 17, 2026, an international medical humanitarian organization announced it was ending medical activities in Kibondo district, Tanzania, after more than ten years of running the main hospital and health services for Nduta refugee camp. It did not choose the timing. The camp itself had already been shut down by the Tanzanian government seven weeks earlier, on April 30, and there was no longer a population left in Nduta for it to serve.

The announcement closes one of the organization's longer-running medical operations. It also lands at an uncomfortable moment: human rights monitors and refugees who lived through the camp's final weeks say the closure was not the orderly, voluntary process Tanzanian and UN officials describe.

A Decade in Numbers

The organization launched operations in Nduta in 2015, after thousands of Burundians fled a political crisis at home. Over the following decade, its teams delivered more than 1.6 million outpatient consultations and admitted over 100,000 patients to the camp's hospital, with a particular focus on maternal and child health — antenatal care, safe deliveries, postnatal follow-up — alongside emergency response to recurring outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and measles. "Investing in the health of mothers and children has been a cornerstone of our work," said Serviour Dombojena, the project coordinator in Nduta, in the organization's closure statement. It says it worked throughout alongside Tanzania's Ministry of Health and trained national staff, with the explicit goal of leaving behind a stronger local health system once the camp eventually closed.

How the Camp Disappeared

That handover happened on a government timeline, not a humanitarian one. The closure followed a tripartite agreement between Tanzania, Burundi, and UNHCR aimed at "voluntary" repatriation of Burundian refugees — part of a plan to return roughly 100,000 people by June 2026. Tanzania's Interior Minister, Patrobas Katambi, formally closed Nduta on April 30, handing its infrastructure to the government for other uses. Burundian human rights monitors, including the Coalition for Human Rights/Living in Refugee Camps (CDH/VICAR), described a different process: refugees facing months of "increasingly coercive measures" — restricted movement, demolished homes, aid tied to repatriation registration, night raids and arrests — culminating in a surge of departures and the camp's sudden, complete emptying. According to Burundian outlet SOS Médias Burundi, nearly 15,000 people were repatriated in three days, in conditions several described as inhumane, with the last convoy leaving Nduta before dawn.

UNHCR's position has been more guarded than either account. A spokesperson told AFP the agency had "consistently raised concerns with the authorities whenever reports of pressure or abuse emerged," while maintaining that the framework agreement calls for returns to be voluntary, safe, and dignified. The agency has separately acknowledged shortcomings in how the tripartite plan was carried out, including concern over home demolitions, but has not taken concrete steps to halt the pace of returns.

Where the Need Went

Roughly 198 families out of a camp that once held more than 50,000 people were selected to transfer to Nyarugusu, Tanzania's other Burundian refugee camp, on the grounds that they still required international protection. Refugees and rights groups have called the selection process opaque, and some accounts allege manipulation of the lists in favor of people connected to the Burundian and Tanzanian governments. Nyarugusu is itself scheduled to close by June 30, 2026, leaving roughly 22,000 remaining Burundian refugees facing the same uncertainty Nduta's population faced months ago. Burundian rights organizations say returnees have already reported being monitored and targeted after arrival by the Imbonerakure, the ruling party's youth wing, with some fleeing the country again. They argue mass, accelerated repatriation under pressure risks violating the principle of non-refoulement under the 1951 Refugee Convention — the rule that protection cannot lawfully be withdrawn by sending someone back into danger, however the paperwork describes the process.

The Pattern Repeats

The organization says it remains present in Tanzania with other medical projects and that it hopes its decade of investment in Kibondo's district health system will continue to benefit both the host community and any refugees who remain. But the Nduta case illustrates a structural mismatch that is becoming familiar across protracted displacement settings: health systems built over a decade can be dismantled in weeks once a government decides a camp's political usefulness has expired, regardless of whether the underlying protection needs of the people inside it have actually been resolved. The hospital outlasted the unrest that built it. It did not outlast the closure order.