We are so happy: 5 Refugees received their Passport in DRC recently after one year of advocacy

The very first group of 5 refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo received their Conventional Travel Document (CTD) after a year of advocacy

In February this year 2026 we opted to raise the issue of not giving passports to refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we engaged with refugees in various meetings in total we held 7 community awareness meetings in which we explained refugees what they need to do and what is required in order to apply for a passport. We realized that many refugees lack accurate information and orientation in what to do and where to go and a lot of work is needed to empower them on various issues.

At the same time, we held various meetings with stakeholders mainly UNHCR and the Congolese Refugee Commission, in total 4 physical meetings were held, many phone calls and various emails were written, which helped the minds to converge and looked in the same direction. We also observe that many stakeholders lack training and capacity building on issues surrounding refugees, and sometimes they do not act just because there is no one reminding them what they should do in order to create better opportunities to refugees.

Recently as a result, five (5) refugees in Kinshasa were granted the Conventional Travel Document which is known here as the “refugee Pass-Port”. This is not enough but this is the begging of a whole journey in order to promote refugee rights in DRC. From this we shall engage on the need to make this document accessing to all refugees who want to travel, but also to engage the authorities to know more about this document, especially the Migration Department.

Over the years refugees could not travel outside the Democratic Republic of Congo but now, we are making a great progress, thanks to our partner COHERE for her support especially financially to our work. Generally COHERE gives us a flexible grant and it is upon us to define our priorities.

Refugees in DRC have so many problems and everything is a priority, sometimes we are ourselves wondering what we should consider as priorities in our planning but still we do zero down to particular issues which we put forward. Just imagine if we were not there?

Now from this step forward, we can define other priorities to encourage refugees to participate in various meetings outside the country, engage in business and trade outside DRC and network with other refugees in the world. One among the urgent programs we need to put in place is to teach refugees the Languages mainly English and French.

Current statistics

The Democratic Republic of Congo hosts more than 625,000 registered refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Angola, South Sudan, Centre African Republic, Sudan, Congo-Brazaville, and other countries. More than 3,000 asylum seekers were rejected and have been waiting for their appeals more than 15 years now, more than 5,000 Angola Refugees were victims of the Refugee Status secession Clause implemented in 2012 which withdrew the refugee status to a category of Angola refugees and up to now they have nothing to say, more than 3million refugees in DRC are not identified, more than 400,000 refugees do not have valid documents in DRC, and lastly more than 3,500 refugees were deported to Rwanda during this year in a deal signed between UNHCR, DRC and Rwanda which UNHCR covers the implementation in North Kivu Province under the control of Rwandan Army.