Some three million refugees from war-torn countries in Central and East Africa are in a protracted refugee situation – defined as living in exile for more than five years. Donors focus on delivering emergency assistance in response to high profile refugee flows, but are losing interest in helping forced migrants from states where there is no prospect of peace. As the number of long-term refugees rises, host governments are reluctant to facilitate local integration. But this reluctance seriously undermines the success of schemes to improve refugee welfare and self-reliance.

Research from Makerere University’s Refugee Law Project explores local integration as a durable approach to the protracted refugee situation in Uganda. Criticising both the Ugandan government and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the authors argue that refugees need not be burdens. Getting refugee and local children to study and socialise together is promoted as a way of overcoming hostility between host and refugee communities.

A further challenge to improve refugee welfare is to promote self-reliance amongst refugees. A Self-Reliance Strategy (SRS) was adopted by UNHCR and the Ugandan government in 1999 in order to integrate the services provided to refugees into regular government structures and move from relief to development. It was hailed at the time by UNHCR as an innovative and development-oriented departure in refugee policy.

Yet for Uganda’s 200 000 officially recognised refugees the SRS has not been a great success. The settlements established for them by the UNHCR and Ugandan authorities are isolated and lack of sufficient arable land. Chronic insecurity in northern Uganda caused by the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgents has further reduced the prospects for refugee self-sufficiency. Ugandan legislation relating to refugees is outdated. Depicting refugees as aliens who need to be controlled, it is inconsistent with international standards set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Analysis of the SRS shows that:

• it has done little to hasten integration or engage refugees in development
• whilst the SRS talks about fostering harmony through providing integrated services for refugees and rural Ugandans it reinforces antagonism by maintaining notions of ‘otherness’
• little has been done to bring refugee children into the Ugandan primary education system or to encourage interaction between different groups of refugee children
• UNHCR talks about ‘local settlement’ as one of the ‘durable solutions’ yet avoids mention of ‘integration’ as this might have connotations of assimilation and permanence which would upset the Ugandan authorities.

Uganda’s Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) sets out a national vision to eradicate mass poverty by 2017. Whilst the plan stresses the need for security and agricultural growth, it makes no provision for refugees. Systems to settle refugees and the mechanisms of the PEAP run in parallel and are uncoordinated. As a result, there are few opportunities for mutually beneficial solutions.

The experience of one school in western Uganda provides a model for both refugee self-sufficiency and local development. The Bujubuli primary school is in a peaceful region in which there is sufficient land for refugees to feed themselves. Financial support from UNHCR, the education ministry and the Ugandan Prime Minister’s office has enabled a low teacher-pupil ratio and fostered a harmonious learning environment for both local and refugee children.

Those who formulate refugee policies are urged to:

• commission country-specific research on the benefits of refugee presence to host populations
• develop methods to quantify levels of integration among refugee and host communities
• realise that integrating services for host and refugee populations is not enough: planning, coordination and monitoring of the social and economic integration is essential.

Self-sufficiency and local integration of refugees operate in a symbiotic relationship. Economically, politically, and socially, it is not possible to have one without the other.

Source(s):
‘Local integration as a durable solution: refugees, host populations and education in Uganda’ by Sarah Dryden-Peterson and Lucy Hovil, Working Paper no 93, New Issues in Refugee Research, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, September 2003 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 8 March 2004

Further Information:
Sarah Dryden-Peterson and Lucy Hovil
Refugee Law Project
Plot 9, Perrymans Garden, Old Kampala
P.O. Box 33903
Kampala
Uganda

Tel: 256 41 343 556
Fax:   +256 41 346 491
Contact the contributor: sarah_dryden@post.harvard.edu

Contact the contributor: hovil@spacenet.co.ug

Refugee Law Project, Uganda

Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
CP 2500, 1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland

Contact the contributor: hqep00@unhcr.ch

Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, UNHCR

Other related links:
'Locking away potential: What host countries lose when they keep refugees in camps'

'Water, livelihoods and resettlement of displaced people: lessons from Eritrea'

'The forgotten solution: local integration for refugees in developing countries'

The United Nations in Kyrgyzstan

'Refugees and displaced persons: a challenge to NEPAD'