Uganda’s policy towards refugees has been hailed as progressive and the country has even been called “the world’s best place for refugees”. Refugees have the right to work and freedom of movement, according to Uganda’s 2006 Refugee Act and 2010 Refugee Regulations, which provide a strong legal and regulatory framework for refugee rights. This article makes a comparison of Uganda’s refugee policies to her neighbors in the region using the examples of refugee policies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, many African states responded by integrating refugees into zonal development programs and by encouraging refugees from independent African states to be integrated into the national economy. This approach largely changed in the late 1980s and through the 1990s as African states were subjected to externally-imposed democratization and structural adjustment, combined with a dramatic increase in refugees from post-Cold War conflicts and with declining support from donors for refugee assistance programs. Largely in response, and faced with the containment policies of states in the global North, many African states turned to more restrictive asylum policies, frequently containing refugees in isolated and insecure camps or forcibly returning refugees to their country of origin.
The past decade, however, has witnessed greater diversity in the policy responses of African states to the mass arrival and prolonged presence of refugees. Tanzania has hosted large refugee populations since the late 1950s and has demonstrated policies of inclusion—notably, the naturalization of some 162,000 Burundian refugees—and exclusion—notably, the expulsion of Rwandan refugees from its territory in 1996. In 2018, Tanzania withdrew from the UN-backed Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), which sought to further include refugees in national development planning. Tanzania has signaled it will prioritize returning refugees to their home countries over local integration, which forms part of the reason for the strict encampment policy. The strict encampment policy limits refugees’ freedom of movement, access to employment, and public services – leaving them overwhelmingly dependent on humanitarian assistance.
For its part, Kenya became a major refugee-hosting state in the 1990s, with the simultaneous arrival of significant numbers of refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Kenya’s approach has been largely to contain refugees in isolated and insecure refugee camps, but this approach contradicts the country’s policy of including refugees in the national economy, a policy it pursued with refugees from Uganda in the 1980s.
In 2014, the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps were legally recognized as refugee camps. The government also passed a law that capped the number of refugees allowed to be in the country at 150,000. This provision was eventually declared unconstitutional by the High Court of Kenya. Currently, refugees and asylum-seekers are still required by law to reside in refugee camps and cannot venture out without a movement pass (written authorization from the Kenyan government). Infringement of this right incurs a penalty of a six-month jail term, a fine of 20,000 Kenyan shillings (Euros 165), or both.
Nevertheless, it’s important to note that both Kenya and Tanzania are major refugee-hosting countries. They host far more refugees than many western (and wealthier) countries. Kenya hosts over half a million refugees, mainly from Somalia and South Sudan. Tanzania on the other hand, hosts 246,780 refugees and asylum-seekers, mainly from Burundi and DR Congo.
The shift in asylum policies in the two East African countries has been largely motivated by concerns of domestic politics, national security, and international relations. There once existed a period of open asylum policies in Kenya and Tanzania, but it existed for specific political and strategic reasons. As such, the shift to more restrictive asylum policies in the late 1980s was not the result of a new approach to refugees, but the result of the changing political context within which refugee movements occurred—both within the African context, and globally as states in the global North adopted more aggressive policies to contain refugees in their region of origin.
In the most recent dialogues held by the government of Uganda, officials have expressed disappointment with the way the international community has forfeited funding. The Minister for Disaster Preparedness has been quoted hinting at putting in place measures through which governments of refugees’ countries of origin can step in and provide financial support to the Ugandan government. No country should host refugees without significant international support. Uganda’s generous refugee model shouldn’t be taken for granted because besides offering refugees refuge and space for settlement, a lot that requires their sustenance and resilience depends on the availability of funding. Forced displacement in the region would look chaotic if Uganda closed its borders given the fact that the country is making tremendous efforts in a neighborhood where few other countries have the same interest.
By Patricia Namakula
