16 Feb Uganda travel dates announced

I will be in Uganda from March 8 to 23. I look forward to meeting with NGOs, humanitarian agencies, government actors, businesses and youth groups, and most of all with refugees themselves in Kampala and Nakivale.

Why Uganda?

With Europe struggling to manage the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq, one may easily forget that a vast majority of refugees – 86% – are hosted by developing countries. Another 40 million people have been displaced within their own countries due to conflict or disaster (the official terminology adopted by international institutions differentiates between refugees and internally displaced persons or IDPs).

Over the past decades, Uganda has dealt with several waves of refugees from neighbouring countries, the majority of them coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Somalia and South Sudan. As of January 2016, Uganda is hosting close to half a million refugees and asylum-seekers, and about 30,000 internally displaced persons. The country is currently facing a new wave of refugees from South Sudan, with thousands of new arrivals each month.

Since 2006 Uganda has gradually loosened up its refugee integration policy, allowing them to settle in the capital, Kampala, and giving them the right to work. This new framework is considered as one of the most generous refugee policies in the world. However refugees and asylum seekers remain highly vulnerable due to the country’s high unemployment rate and low provision of public services.

#RefugeeEconomics will look at the way refugees in Uganda participate in the local economy. Could the Ugandan population benefit from hosting refugees?