Suzan Ilcan, Marcia Oliver and Laura Connoy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Increasingly, refugees residing in refugee camps are living in protracted situations for which there are no quick remedies. Existing attempts to address protracted situations for refugees engage with the concept and practices of the Self-reliance Strategy (SRS). This paper focuses on the SRS in Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement. It draws attention to its disconnection from the social and economic relations within which refugees live in settlements, and the strategy’s inability to provide refugees with sufficient access to social support and protection. In this context, the analysis highlights the failures of the SRS in terms both of shaping the conditions under which refugees experience restricted movement, social divisions and inadequate protection, and of placing greater responsibility on refugees for meeting their own needs with little or no humanitarian and state support. It also reveals how humanitarian and state actors, and their forms of assistance, manage the lives of refugees and are implicated in the creation of new challenges for refugees in Nakivale. In light of these issues, the paper emphasizes the gaps in the SRS orientation and calls for alternative approaches to humanitarian and refugee management that enable and support refugees to self-settle, access legal and social support, and participate in and contribute to their social and economic environment in meaningful and sustainable ways. The analysis for the paper is based on extensive refugee policy and legal documents, and on interviews with refugees in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, officials from the Ugandan government and representatives from international and national organizations that provide assistance to refugees.
INTRODUCTION
It is now considered the norm for residents of refugee camps or organized settlements to live in such situations for protracted periods. These are instances when groups of people live in exile for five years or more. While residing in the camp, refugees receive various forms of assistance that are shaped by international and national refugee management policies and practices, as well as by broader geopolitical and economic factors. Due to the protracted nature of existing refugee situations, such as in Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda, and the high costs associated with extended humanitarian assistance, refugees are increasingly called upon to be more responsible for their own well-being. This strategy is known as the Self-reliance Strategy; it includes practices and initiatives that encourage refugees to take greater responsibility for themselves and to do so in ways that engage them in supporting the values of enterprise and free markets, and in becoming active participants in small-scale entrepreneurial efforts to meet their own basic needs. Such self-reliance practices emerged in the late 1980s within neo-liberal policy agendas that emphasized political and economic ideas characterized by certain beliefs, such as: that most activities are best managed without government interference; that the market is a key source of economic opportunity and independence for individuals; and that individuals, even those from vulnerable groups, should take on more responsibility for addressing their own economic and social challenges, such as poverty, marginalization, unemployment or conflict-ridden situations (see, for example, Brodie 2009;
Ilcan 2009; Staeheli and Hammett 2013). In this neo-liberal context, self-reliance strategies are not place-specific; they can be (and frequently are) rolled out in diverse sites and arenas, such as refugee camps, development management, poverty reduction, security and public-sector privatization (see, for example, Duffield 2010; Lazar 2007; Oliver 2012), and through a multitude of governing actors. In Uganda, international and state actors, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), are promoting this concept and practice through the SRS.
There is little doubt that promoting refugee self-reliance and well-being in sustainable ways can be critical in assisting vulnerable populations to have more control over their lives and make meaningful contributions to their surroundings. The current manner in which the SRS is being implemented, however, hinders the positive outcomes that could potentially result from this strategy. As an attempt to make refugees less reliant on humanitarian assistance and more responsible individuals through market-based initiatives, SRSs, as we demonstrate below, do not take into account the existing political, economic and social relations that shape the environments in which refugees live. There are many examples that come to mind in the Ugandan context, such as the country’s local settlement policy, reductions in food aid, high levels of poverty and malnutrition, poor market opportunities and the lack of post-elementary schooling for refugees. As a result of neo-liberal and decontextualized approaches to the SRS, our analysis below reveals how residents in Nakivale experience greater pressure to be responsible entrepreneurial subjects in a climate of increasing isolation, marginalization and poverty.
In this paper, our analysis is based on refugee policy and legal documents, and on interviews with refugees in Nakivale Settlement, officials from the Ugandan government and representatives from international and national organizations that provide assistance and social support to refugees. In what follows, we provide a brief overview of Uganda’s refugee and local settlement policies, the SRS in Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement, and an analysis of SRS as a form of refugee management that is promoted by international and state actors. Our analysis of SRS demonstrates how humanitarian and state actors (and their forms of assistance) manage the lives of refugees and are implicated in the creation of new challenges for refugees and refugee claimants. It also emphasizes the gaps in the SRS orientation, which in turn enables us to propose alternative approaches to humanitarian and refugee management. These approaches draw from principles of social justice, specifically those that enable and support refugees to self-settle, access legal and social support, gain rights to citizenship, and participate in and contribute to their surroundings in meaningful and sustainable ways.