Over the years, Uganda has earned the reputation of having a progressive refugee policy, centred on the Refugees Act of 2006, which was adopted as a guiding framework for the country in welcoming refugees. The policy is designed to make Uganda a country that provides opportunities to those in need. While the world refers to the refugee situation as a major crisis, the country’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is an advocate for better living conditions for refugees in host countries. He has stated on various fora including at an IGAD summit on Somalia that refugees are not the problem, he asserts that the problem is sectarianism.
Museveni has stated previously; “Africans are categorized in four linguistic groups namely; Bantu, Nilotics, Sudanic and Cushites. I have no problem with all these groups settling anywhere on the continent since they are all Africans and considered brothers and sisters. What concerns me most is the ideology of sectarianism where people are artificially divided along tribal, religious and other grounds.”
According to the President the world needs to address issues relating to refugees and internally displaced people including relief during the time as refugee, clean water for domestic use, electricity to minimize environmental abuse and shelter that is environmentally friendly like prefabs to avoid destruction of trees.
“Refugees and displaced persons need an education so that they don’t lose time. They also need to acquire skills which can enable them to participate in production in the countries where they are and also when they return home,” Mr Museveni is quoted as saying.
In Uganda refugees have access to government-provided health care and primary education. The country is currently host to 1.5 million refugees, the highest number in Africa and the third highest in the world after Turkey and Italy. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR) has coined what is called the Uganda model which permits refugees to work, cultivate land, and move around freely. The organization has credited Uganda for being the only country in the world that grants the same rights. According the UNCHR, elsewhere in the world, arrivals are typically viewed as competition for jobs and scarce resources.
Uganda’s stance on refugees stems from the country’s history which has seen spikes in the numbers of displaced people. The Idi Amin tyranny from 1971 to 1979 left hundreds of thousands of Ugandans internally displaced or forced into exile. Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) slaughtered people in northern Uganda in the early 2000s, leaving an estimated 1.8 million people internally displaced. This has over time made the country and its people more adaptive to relating with displaced people.
Dr Evan Easton-Calabria traces Uganda’s history further back than the recent insurgencies. In an article; ‘Uganda has a remarkable history of hosting refugees, but its efforts are underfunded’, published on www.theconversation.com, the refugee expert, states; “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 southwest 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. They were only the first of many waves of refugees from different neighbouring countries to arrive. Uganda has hosted significant numbers of refugees ever since.” He further asserts; “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.”
To drive this point home further, the UNHCR released a report on a strategy called the livelihoods and resilience sector strategy aimed to stabilize the livelihoods of new refugee arrivals and vulnerable long-term refugees in Uganda.
Published on their website, /reliefweb.int/report/uganda/uganda-refugee-response-plan-rrp-2020-2021-livelihoods-resilience-quarter-2-january-0, the report states; “Partners endeavor to stabilize the new refugee arrivals through short-term emergency livelihood interventions aimed at lifesaving and enhancing food and nutrition security, most often serving as a basis to develop longer-term strategies. The sector has registered growing efforts by partners investing in longer-term development interventions aiming to build on existing capacities and skills of both refugees and hosting communities.”
It further underscores efforts being made to transition from giving humanitarian assistance to development interventions in refugee situations in the country. There are also efforts to develop skills among the refugees so as to enhance competition in the job market or/and create employment for the refugees in a bid to build self-reliance.
The report further calls on strategies that will ensure long term and sustainable interventions; “To achieve more self-reliance and increase productivity in the communities, the sector requires a deliberate progression to promote market-driven interventions, private sector linkages and extensive capacity building activities that enable the refugees and the hosting communities to become economically self-reliant and productive in the local economies. Strategic investment in businesses remain crucial to support viable value chains and strengthen emerging employment opportunities. The diversification of household livelihood to improve on food security and income generation, improving communities access to financial services, provision of sufficient and holistic trainings based on market demand; strengthening the capacity of local district government remains crucial to building resilience, to ensure that capacities of refugees and the hosting communities is enhanced to mitigate various shocks and stresses.”
Despite the various challenges, the refugee situation in Uganda is being explored and is contributing to the dramatic social-economic transformation of the country.
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