Last updated: May 2011

Tanzania Immigration Detention Profile

• Detention Policy
• Detention Infrastructure
• Facts & Figures

Tanzania once hosted one of the largest refugee populations in Africa and today it is an important transit country for migrants heading to South Africa. Conflicts in the Great Lakes region dramatically increased the number of refugees in Tanzania from 292,100 in 1992 to 883,300 in 1994.[1] By December 2014, the number of registered refugees in the country had dropped to approximately 88,400.[2] While increased stability in the region has slowed the flow of refugees into Tanzania, other types of irregular migration have increased substantially and may have resulted in the increased use of detention in the country.[3]

The Tanzanian government has been criticized for its long-standing policy of “securitizing” refugee camps, which involves limiting the freedom of movement of refugees by charging those who leave camps with violations of provisions of the Immigration Act.[4] The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants reported in 2008 that some 760 refugees had been arrested for criminal charges or for leaving designated areas without permission.[5]

Tanzania does not have a dedicated immigration detention centre and instead uses local police stations, and, prisons to detain migrants until they can be deported.[6] It also reportedly uses remand homes to accommodate migrants under 18.[7] The Immigration Act provides criminal punishments for unauthorized entry or stay. In recent years, these criminal provisions, which can include long prison sentences, have reportedly not been systematically applied.[8]

Detention Policy

The 1995 Immigration Act provides both administrative and criminal remedies for people charged with violations of the Act. Irregular migrants awaiting deportation can be held in administrative detention. The Act does not specify a limit to the time a person can be held in this form of detention. Non-citizens can also be charged with crimes for irregular entry or stay. Penalties can include a fine not exceeding 100,000 shillings (approx. 50 €) and/or imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years.[1]

A suspected “prohibited migrant” may be arrested and brought before a magistrate. Once ruled to be in an irregular situation, he/she can be placed in custody until deportation. Additionally, the Act provides for the administrative detention of anyone whose entry or stay in Tanzania was unlawful; whose presence in Tanzania is considered to be “a danger to peace and good order”; or who is “for any other reason undesirable.” When the prohibited migrant is waiting to be brought before a court the period of detention is not to exceed 28 days.[2]

In 2011, Bonaventure Rutinwa, a refugee expert at the University of Dar es Salaam, told the GDP that “since 2007 the broad policy of the government has been not to charge [irregular migrants] but to hold them administratively pending deportation.” When non-citizens are criminally charged, says Rutinwa, this is largely a result of the fact that there is no “mechanism for profiling … who is and who is not an asylum seeker.”[3] 

It is unclear to what extent these practices are still applied. According to a 2013 survey conducted by Asylum Access, one issue with Tanzania’s detention policy is the fact that sentences for those convicted of illegal entry vary greatly, resulting in some migrants serving much longer sentences than others. In addition, migrants who are able to pay a fine for illegal entry instead of serving a sentence continue to be detained while awaiting deportation.[4] Detention after the completion of sentences can also be prolonged due to a lack of funds for deportations.[5]

Asylum Access researchers noted that screening procedures were often not used to determine whether arrested migrants had potential asylum claims. There was at least one instance in which a detained person reported that he had asked to open an asylum claim, but was never referred to anyone for processing.[6]

Under Tanzanian law, the detention of children is prohibited. However, in a 2015 report on Tanzania, the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS) said that according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), in practice both unaccompanied and accompanied children are detained with adults.[7]

The RMMS also reported that the Tanzanian government is considering adopting “alternatives to detention,” including creating reception centres to hold migrants instead of in prisons and increasing the use of the IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration service.[8]

Criminalization. Article 31(1) of the Immigration Act provides that “any person who (i) unlawfully enters or is unlawfully present within Tanzania in contravention of the provision of this Act shall be guilty of an offence.” The maximum penalty is 100.000 shillings (approx. 50 €) and/or 3 years imprisonment.[9]

The 1998 Refugee Act also provides for criminal penalties for asylum seekers and refugees who fail to comply with its provisions. They can be incarcerated for a period not exceeding six months and/or punished with a fine not exceeding fifty thousand shillings (approx. 25 €).[10]

Camp securitisation. Art. 17 of the Refugee Act provides that refugees and asylum seekers must live in areas designated by the minister responsible for refugee matters. It is also illegal for refugees to travel more than 4 kilometres from refugee camps without permits.[11] Some observers have raised concerns over the impact of this “securitisation” policy, which in some cases may amount to deprivation of liberty. However, according to Rutinwa of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s refugee camps have been securitised under the law since the introduction of the British War Evacuees Orders of 1947, which were intended “to restrict access to refugees from ‘enemy territories’ or citizens of states at war with Britain.” Tanzania’s subsequent Refugee Acts—in 1966 and 1998—originated in the provisions of the War Evacuees Orders.[12]

The real issue, says Rutinwa, is the varying application of securitisation provisions over the years. “From the 1960s to 1980s, the provisions were not rigorously enforced, and some settlements were set up more or less as normal villages. In the 1990s, the restrictions on movements were enforced more robustly due to genuine concern over increased insecurity in the refugee hosting regions caused by the presence of refugees. The current motive for the somewhat strict enforcement of these provisions with regard to the only remaining camp for Burundian refugees appears not to be related so much to securitisation of camps, but ‘encouragement’ of voluntary repatriation.”[13]

Refugees with credible reasons for exiting the camps may be issued exit permits from the Tanzanian Ministry of Home Affairs. While presence outside the camps without exit permits is punishable by a fine and three-year prison sentence, the RMMS reports that refugees apprehended outside refugee camps without permits are often sentenced to community service rather than imprisonment or deportation.[14] According to the U.S. State Department, refugees caught without permits are generally placed in a prison facility within the camp and released within a short period of time.[15]

Repatriations. In 2002, Tanzania entered a tripartite agreement with the UNHCR and the government of Burundi on the voluntary repatriation of Burundians. Some rights groups have criticised the repatriation effort as being involuntary and in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, in part because “no procedure is in place to assess the individual claims by refugees and asylum seekers of well-founded fears of persecution.”[16] In mid-2010, for example, a Tanzanian activist forwarded a letter to the Southern Refugee Legal Aid Network email list claiming to have first-hand reports of refugees from Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi being forced to return to their countries from various camps and pleaded for pressure to be put on the Tanzanian government lest these refugees “be exposed to the danger of imprisonment, mistreatment, and possibly even death.”[17]

However, according to Rutinwa, although the government’s promotion of repatriations has at times been “a bit aggressive,” he would not “characterize” the program as “amounting to refoulement.”[18]

On 27 July 2013, Tanzania’s President announced that all irregular migrants were required to leave the country within 14 days. Following this announcement, it is estimated that more than 20,000 irregular migrants left Tanzania voluntarily. [19] In September 2013, the government initiated an operation to round up the remaining irregular migrants and deport them. However, after significant pressure from rights groups and the diplomatic community resulting from fears that people who had claims to legal status in the country might have been deported, the Tanzanian government suspended the operation.[20]

Detention Infrastructure

An expert in Tanzania told the Global Detention Project in 2011 that the country does not have a dedicated immigration detention centres.[1] In its 2015 report on Tanzania, the RMMS confirmed that the country had yet to establish a dedicated immigration detention centre.

“Migrants who enter Tanzania irregularly are held in police holding facilities in the place of entry or arrest pending appearance in court or deportation. After presentation before the court, they can be committed by a court warrant to be held in remand prisons, pending trial. If convicted, they would go to normal jails to serve their terms.”[2]

The country also uses prisons to detain migrants. Remand homes are used to detain migrants under 18. However, because the remand homes are controlled by the social welfare department and are non-militarized, they are not favoured by Tanzanian authorities.[3]

In August 2014, Tanzanian police reportedly arrested 48 Ethiopians who had entered the country illegally and then been abandoned by their smugglers. The RMMS argued that an increase in the arrests of Ethiopian migrants is possible as more Ethiopian migrants may be pushed to travel into Tanzania as a result of Saudi Arabia deporting more than 160,000 Ethiopians in late 2013 and early 2014.[4]

AllAfrica Global reported in February 2011 that on 15 February, 40 Ethiopians and two Somalis had been arrested by Tanzanian police for entering the country illegally.[5]

UNHCR’s 2011 Tanzania operations profile reported that “by early 2008, some 550 prisoners had been convicted of unlawful entry into Tanzania and some 1,300 illegal immigrants, mainly from the Horn of Africa, were detained pending deportation to their home countries. The majority of persons in mixed movements are intercepted and detained by the authorities, while in transit to southern Africa.”[6]

In April 2008, the Tanzanian Ministerial Task Force on Irregular Migration reported that in January of that year, 1,289 migrants from 12 different countries (a majority from Ethiopia) were being held in Tanzanian detention centres.[7]

The Ethiopian Review, based in Washington D.C., reported that during the period 1-8 April 2008, 362 migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia were arrested for irregular entrance. It noted that 90 Ethiopians were sentenced to six-month sentences after failing to pay 50,000 shillings for illegal stay in the country and that deportation orders were to be executed as soon as they completed their prison sentences.[8]

Mwisa “detention camp.” Several civil society organisations reported that an immigration-related detention centre was opened in 1996 in Mwisa, in the Karagwe district close to the Ugandan and Rwandan borders.[9] The Tanzanian Legal and Human Rights Centre reported in 2008 that the Mwisa detention centre was closed in April 2007.[10]

There were numerous reports about the purported uses of the Mwisa detention facility during the mid-1990s. In December 1996, the Integrated Regional Information Network of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that Hutu refugees who refused to return to Rwanda were being held at the camp in Mwisa.[11] In 1997, Amnesty International also reported that refugees were being held at a “detention camp” in Mwisa. Amnesty reported that UNHCR had not been able to establish contact with the detainees at the camp.[12]

According to a 2005 UNHCR report on refugee protection gaps in Tanzania, the Mwisa camp was set up under provisions in Tanzania’s refugee law that allow the country, in consultation with UNHCR, to hold combatants as well as any “asylum seeker or refugee [who] is acting in a manner prejudicial to peace and good order or is prejudicing the relations between the Government of Tanzanian and any other Government.” According to this report, “the approach agreed between the Government and UNHCR is that when a person is suspected of being a combatant, UNHCR and the government must conduct a joint screening of that person to verify that fact. When both parties agree, the person is sent to Mwisa.” However, according to UNHCR, “There have been incidences where the government has transferred refugees to Mwisa without involving the UNHCR. However, UNHCR monitors the facility on monthly basis and when they discover such persons, they intervene on their behalf.”[13]

Facts & Figures

As of December 2014, there were 88,492 registered refugees in Tanzania; 113,180 as of January 2011; 118,731 as of January 2010; 548,824 as of 2005; 680,862 as of 2000; and 883,300 as of 1994.[1] Additionally, as of January 2011 there were 3,800 people in a refugee-like situation and, as of December 2014, 883 registered asylum seekers.[2]

According to Bonaventure Rutinwa, “1994-1996 is regarded as the peak period when about one million post-1990s refugees from the Great Lakes countries were supported by UNHCR in 13 different refugee camps in Tanzania.” In addition, during this period, “there were 220,000 Burundian refugees of the 1972 caseload who were hosted in three self-supporting settlements. … The government also estimated that some other 200,000 refugees of different nationalities were self-settled throughout Tanzania. Thus, a figure of 1.4 million refugees would be a reasonable estimate.”[3]

According to UNHCR, as of August 2015, the countries of origin of most refugees in Tanzania were Burundi (33,742) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (55,609). There were also 150 refugees from Somalia.[4]

According to information from Rutinwa, as of May 2011, “the total number of refugees in the remaining two camps is slightly under 100,000. However, there are some 24,000 Burundian refugees who are self-settled in the Kigoma region, and some 1,900 Somali refugees. Both of these … have been in principle allowed to apply for naturalisation.”[5]

As with refugees, current asylum seeker numbers represent a significant decrease from previous years. As of December 2014, there were 883; in 2000, there were 21,420.[6]

In 2005, 81,519 people were voluntary repatriated from Tanzania. Similar numbers were reported for 2002, 2003, and 2004.[7]