Do they keep people as refugees? Sure they do - the entire system is structured that way and they don't have the power to change it even though I know some of their senior bureaucrats at least want to.
Agree fully. That was the source of the great frustration in the Congo with the camps. Funny that the UNHCR folks inside Rwanda supported closing the IDP camps inside the country--they were not "refugees" so the UNHCR charterv did not apply. UNREO however was against forced closure along with key NGOs MSF inside Rwanda. MSF in Goma support closing the camps in Zaire (Congo). All of this cause gridlock until the new Rwandan government said enough--along with the Tanzanians.

What is needed is a clause in their charter which says that when a refugee camp becomes a political and then military entity it is then subject to other measures. Of course the big problem in Goma was the proximity of the camps to Rwanda in the first place. Their placement was a factor of the exhausted and dying refugees stopping and refusing to move; later attempts to move them ran into oppostion from the hardliners controlling the camps as well as from Mobutu who of course supported the hardliners.

Best

Tom