Background on Refugee Inflows and Settlements in Uganda

Uganda is situated in Eastern Africa and shares borders with conflict-torn countries, like South Sudan and DRC. The Northern part of Uganda has itself a recent history of civil war leading to large waves of displacement within and across borders. Uganda has a long history as a host

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country for refugees and currently provides refuge to almost 1.4 million forcibly displaced people, primarily from South Sudan, DRC, and Burundi (UNHCR, 2018). Uganda is known and often praised by international agencies for its open door policy to people seeking refuge from neighboring countries, and its favorable refugee protection environment characterized by its settlement approach (UNHCR, 2018; Meyer, 2006)⁴².

Upon arrival and registration at the transition camps at the Ugandan border, refugees receive emergency aid for up to two weeks. They are subsequently allocated to settlements according to capacity of the respective camp and potential family bonds (personal interviews, 2018). Here, they receive a plot of land for farming activities and material assistance in the form of shelter, food rations and facilitated access to public services, like schools and health clinics. The Ugandan government follows a self-reliance strategy aiming at the empowerment of the refugees (Meyer, 2006). By the allocation of agricultural land and basic farming tools, they enable the refugees to become independent from food aid and non-food items by generating a surplus that can be traded for other goods (Sebba, 2006)⁴³. The main economic activities are farming and livestock production by both refugee and host population, and over 80% of the rural Ugandan population is employed in the agricultural sector (Sebba, 2006; CAP, 2006). Food assistance is phased out after five years after arrival as the refugee should have become self-reliant (Dryden-Peterson &

Hovil, 2004). Further, the government tries to build integrated public services that are accessed by Ugandans as well as by the refugee population (Meyer, 2006; Kreibaum, 2016). In the Refugee Act from 2006-09 the Ugandan government officially established freedom of movement of all refugees and it allowed them to choose between living in one of the settlements (where they receive all the organized assistance) or to move independently to urban centers, like Kampala (where they forego this assistance) to self-settle there.

The number of protracted displacement situations, where at least 25,000 refugees from the same country have been displaced for at least five years in a given country of asylum, have increased in the past decades. In 2015, there were 32 such incidences, up from 27 in 1993, and

42It is important to note that particularly in recent years, several actors have started to criticize this self-reliance model employed in Uganda as being driven by the interest of donor and host institutions not necessarily benefitting the vulnerable refugee population (e.g. Meyer, 2006).

43 Since 2011/12 the Ugandan government has had difficulties in providing agricultural land to all newly arriving refugees due to the lack of sufficient gazetted governmental owned farm land. The scarcity has also given rise to land conflicts between host and refugee population (e.g. Refugee Law Project, 2003).

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their average length increased to 27 from formerly nine years. Overall, 41% of all refugees worldwide fall into this category (Sarzin, 2017). Though, initially welcoming the forcibly displaced, with the protraction of their stay, the Ugandan society increasingly perceived the refugees as a burden and competition in the labor market (Kreibaum, 2016). The Second Congo War starting after a coup in 1998, initiated one of those protracted displacement crises. This was one of the deadliest conflicts in Africa forcing millions of people to leave their homes, particularly, in the east of DRC. A peace agreement in 2003 officially ended this war. But particularly in the Eastern Congolese provinces, Kivu and Ituri, an independent conflict among militia continued and escalated in the following years, resulting in large waves of displacement across and within the DRC borders. In this paper, we focus on these displacement waves of Congolese fleeing to Uganda: As can be seen in Figure 3.2, the first major wave of DRC refugees came in 2005, which were mainly sent to the refugee settlement Kyaka II, followed by two additional waves in 2008 and 2009, where refugees were sent to the settlements Nakivale and Kyangwali. Nakivale is the largest settlement with more than 100,000 refugees, followed by Kyangwali with more than 40,000 and Kyaka II with almost 30,000 inhabitants. In all settlements, Congolese refugees represent the majority (UNHCR, 2015).

All three settlements are located in the South-West of Uganda in relative remoteness and rural places in proximity to the DRC border (see Figure 3.1). They were established in the early 1960s for Burundi and Rwandese refugees, of whom most resettled into their country of origin in the 90s (Refugee Law Project, 2002; UNHCR, 1995). This left the settlements largely vacant until the crisis in DRC flared up. The unanticipated, sudden and localized nature of this event provides a tool to isolate the effect of the refugee inflows from other factors. As argued in Kreibaum (2016), both the Ugandan government as well as aid agencies were unprepared for the sudden influx of thousands of refugees.

Irrespective of their freedom to move out of the settlements, 88% of the Congolese refugees in Uganda choose to live in settlements and only 12% live in Kampala (UNHCR, 2014). Betts et al.

(2014) document the intense economic interaction between host and refugee population. In spite of the remote locations of the refugee settlements, they are closely integrated in the local economies. Through trading in particular, the settlements are integrated into the wider economic system, and refugee and host populations are connected and continuously cross national, religious or ethnic lines (Betts et al., 2014). Congolese refugees are mainly active in agriculture, cultivating their own land or as agricultural workers, and only a minority own small businesses (Betts et al., 2013; UNHCR, 2014).

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Figure 3.1 UNHCR presence in Uganda as of July 2016 (Note: Rwamwanja Settlement was opened in 2012. Source: UNHCR website, accessed February 2^nd, 2018).

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Figure 3.2 Influx of Congolese refugees to three settlements