A remarkable history of hosting refugees
UGANDA has agreed to a request from the US to temporarily accommodate 2 000 refugees from Afghanistan while Washington processes their applications to live in the US.
The move underscores the reputation Uganda has of being progressive on refugee issues. Refugee expert Dr Evan Easton-Calabria provides insights into why.
When did Uganda start hosting refugees?
Uganda has a long history of hosting refugees. This started in the early 1940s with Polish refugees who fled from Nazi-occupied Europe. The Nakivale refugee settlement, formed in 1959 in south-west Uganda, is the oldest refugee camp in Africa.
Uganda also hosts huge numbers of refugees. In the mid-1950s almost 80 000 Sudanese refugees, fleeing the first civil war, sought refuge in the country. Uganda has hosted significant numbers of refugees ever since.
Today, almost 1.5 million refugees live in Uganda, making it the top refugee-hosting country in Africa and one of the top five hosting countries in the world.
Its long-standing open-door policy has benefited it politically and financially, with hundreds of millions of donor funds provided each year for humanitarian and development projects. These target refugees and locals. While Kenya, for example, has received €200 million (about R3.5 billion) in humanitarian aid from the EU since 2012, Uganda has received this much from the EU in just over four years.
Is the country more progressive towards refugees than its neighbours?
Uganda’s policies towards refugees have been hailed as progressive. It has even been called “the world’s best place for refugees”.
Refugees have the right to work and freedom of movement, thanks to Uganda’s 2006 Refugee Act and 2010 Refugee Regulations, which provide a strong legal and regulatory framework for refugee rights.
Refugees have the right to the same social services as Ugandans, including health care and free primary education. They are not confined to camps but can also live in urban areas. The country has, therefore, received a lot of positive attention for “fostering” the self-reliance of refugees.
However, despite rights on paper in Uganda, refugees struggle.
They are not legally recognised as refugees if they live in cities besides the capital, Kampala. As self-settled urban refugees, they risk being misclassified as economic migrants. Lacking official refugee status (unless they have been registered in a settlement), urban refugees also often lack assistance.
Although refugees in Uganda are economically diverse – one study identified more than 70 types of livelihoods activities by refugees in Uganda – for many in settlements, subsistence farming is their primary livelihood. But despite plots of land being provided in settlements, many don’t have enough land to farm on and soil quality is often low. This means that for many, farming is no longer a viable livelihood.
This shows that liberal refugee policies, like those promoting self-reliance in Uganda, must be backed by adequate resources if they are to be more than just words on paper.
Comparatively, Uganda’s neighbours, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, have traditionally been more restrictive. Kenya relies on a system of encampment, where most refugees live in camps, and Ethiopia has only recently expanded its out-of-camp policy to all refugees and asylum-seekers, although regulatory gaps remain.
Nevertheless, it’s important to note that both are major refugee-hosting countries. They host far more refugees than many Western (and wealthier) countries. Kenya hosts more than half a million refugees, mainly from Somalia and South Sudan. Ethiopia hosts more than 788 000 and is the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa.
How effectively does Uganda manage its refugee community?
On one hand, Uganda provides an important foundation in terms of providing the legal infrastructure to allow many refugees to lead independent lives. But refugees also enter a challenging context: Uganda struggles to provide adequate services to its own citizens and unemployment is high. It has one of the world’s lowest rankings in the Human Capital Index.
In addition, the 2021 presidential election saw increased political and social unrest which has led to the violation of rights such as the freedom of assembly and expression for citizens and other residents, including refugees. While many Ugandans have welcomed refugees, there are increasing accounts of overburdened cities and strains on resources, like firewood, in some parts of the country.
The corruption of humanitarian aid is also a problem, with UNHCR Uganda accused of mismanaging tens of millions of dollars in 2016 and 2017. This illustrates the clear need for effective financial management, so that refugees can be helped.
There is also another important question of responsibility. Despite the positive attention the international community has given the country, donor funds have not often matched the praise. If schools and health facilities are crowded, in part because of refugees, the responsibility to provide additional support should not fall on a refugee-hosting country such as Uganda alone. Limited resources mean limited management. As of June, the 2020-2021 Uganda Refugee Response Plan was only 22% funded, leaving a shortfall of $596 million (about R9bn) to cover all sectors, ranging from protection to food security to sanitation.