ABSTRACT
By November 1994, a short-term successful but expensive relief program was in place. The policy consensus was already clear, at least at the New York and Geneva levels: there would be a repatriation. In late 1994 assumptions of quick voluntary return and reconciliation within Rwanda dominated higher-level policy development, even though events in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zaire indicated that such a solution was unlikely. The donors' leverage came from the power of their purse, and toward the end of 1994, NGO requests for further UNHCR funding became more difficult to fill. The chronic irony of the condition was that the United Nations adopted an aggressive voluntary repatriation policy rooted in the assumption that conditions in Rwanda were appropriate for a return, even as new refugees were arriving in 1995–96. By the beginning of 1996 the four camps of the Benaco camp complex had 400,000 to 500,000 refugees and took on the characteristics of an urban conglomeration.
