In 2017 so far, roughly 2,000 new South Sudanese refugees have crossed into Uganda each day. As they arrive, they are met by a refugee policy that humanitarian organizations tout as an example of global best practice. Since 2006, the country’s “open door” policy has allowed refugees and asylum seekers to travel freely within the country, own land, open businesses and go to school.
With conflict and famine escalating in South Sudan, the number of refugees entering Uganda is expected to increase by a third, or about half a million people, this year. The costs are piling up, putting pressure on Uganda’s budget. The government and advocates are now calling for more international help. In particular, they would like to see more international NGOs and the private sector take a stronger stand.
“Funding is definitely an issue and so is the limited engagement of development partners and the private sector in the refugee response,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Uganda spokesperson Rocco Nuri told Devex. Private sector investments could include scholarships and jobs placements, or funding in refugee-hosting districts, he said.
Q&A: Uganda's refugee minister seeks solidarity in first-of-its-kind summit
Uganda and the United Nations will jointly host a summit this week that aims to draw in $2 billion in donor support for the country's hosting of some 1.2 million refugees. The meeting is the first of its kind since countries promised last year, in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, to better share the global costs of displacement.
Last month, the country hosted a Solidarity Summit aimed at raising $2 billion a year for the next four years to meet needs. The conference raised just $358 million in pledges, including donations, investments and programming commitments.
“The reality is that while we continue to keep our door open, there is a negative side,” Uganda’s refugee minister, Musa Francis Ecweru, told Devex before the summit. “These millions here put a lot of pressure on the resources available.”
To meet the needs of the 1.3 million refugees in Uganda, local humanitarian groups are spending $19 million a month, and need more than 50,000 tons of food (including rice, pulses and vegetable oil) to deliver to camps, according to El Khidir Daloum, country director for the World Food Programme in Uganda.
As of today, the UNHCR has received 27 percent of the $568 million needed to provide protection and humanitarian assistance across the country.
Uganda’s Refugee Act of 2006 allows for a level of freedom and integration into the local economy refugees rarely find elsewhere. By not treating refugees as a security threat, Uganda offers a genuine opportunity for refugees to thrive and live a dignified life with long-term benefits for Ugandans and refugees alike, Nuri said.
Among the key tenants of the policy is the country’s national “integrated service delivery” program, which stipulates that public services should be provided to both refugees and Ugandans equally and without discrimination.
Recent research indicates that Uganda’s policy helps more than just refugees; it’s good for the country’s economy. A November 2016 report by WFP and University of California-Davis found that humanitarian assistance for refugees in Uganda creates significant economic benefits for the local economy, and these benefits are greater when the assistance is in the form of cash transfers and land for agricultural production. The study team found that the assistance given to the refugees produces an “income multiplier” for host communities.
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Additionally, each refugee household that was given land by the government as part of its “settlement” approach to refugee management — whereby government-owned or community land is given for housing or agricultural production — contributes up to $220 to the Ugandan economy annually, depending on the settlement.
Humanitarian organizations are now urging other African leaders to adopt similar models. They argue that better refugee conditions close to home could deter the tens of thousands who opt for the dangerous route across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe each month.
“This is the type of policy that provides the home-grown solution that we are aiming for on the whole continent; this model should be encouraged,” Daloum said.
In the past year, the refugee population in Uganda has doubled due to renewed fighting in the South Sudanese capital of Juba. Many settle in northern Uganda, which has become the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world and home to the largest refugee settlement, Bidi Bidi, which hosts over 270,000 displaced people.
UNHCR has prioritized providing shelter, water and education. Due to the number of daily arrivals, most refugees live in temporary shelters made of wooden poles and plastic sheeting. Transitioning residents to semi-permanent shelters, made of mud walls and zinc roofing, will depend on the availability of funds in the coming months.
To address the water needs of refugees and the host communities, some 23,000 cubic meters of water is needed daily to meet the UNHCR standard of 20 liters per person per day. For now, humanitarian efforts are only able to provide 16 liters per person per day. Most of that is delivered through water trucking, “a costly and unsustainable solution in the long term,” Nuri said.
Some locations have motorized water systems and others hand pumps, but they are not sufficient to to address the gaps, he said. UNHCR and partners are looking at investing in in-depth hydrogeological surveys and installing more high-yielding water boreholes with piped water networks.
School-aged children make up a bulk of the refugee population in Uganda, where classrooms in some settlements have a student to teacher ratio of 140-to-1, Nuri told Devex. By the end of May 2017, 55 percent were enrolled in schools but only 12 percent were able to access secondary education.
The German government has recently offered scholarships to qualified students to attend tertiary education, benefitting 30 to 90 students per year with university education.
Germany also last week announced an $18 million grant to UNHCR to assist South Sudanese refugees in Uganda. These funds will be deployed over three years, and are expected to be used to construct semi-permanent classrooms, expand secondary schools, procure shelter materials and reinforce existing water supply systems across northern Uganda.
“For June and July we are okay, but for August we definitely have a shortage in the funding pipeline and that is going to affect the quality of food we can buy, deliver and distribute on time to refugees,” Daloum of WFP Uganda told Devex.
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