For over a decade, IRRI has criticised the encampment of refugees and asylum seekers as a key obstacle to their freedom of movement. Refugee camps and/or settlements reinforce the marginalisation of refugees and asylum seekers by restricting them to isolated environments. This in effect challenges their local integration and creates both personal as well as socio-economic barriers in their ability to determine a well-rounded and healthy quality of life.
Based on Article 26 of the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relation to the Status of Refugees which states that a host country shall allow refugees the “right to choose their place of residence to move freely within its territory”, IRRI advocates that the conventional encampment policy contradicts this framework by restricting freedom of movement, and furthering undermining livelihood systems, economic and educational opportunities, and reinforcing long-term dependence on humanitarian assistance. By contrast, when they are empowered to move freely, engage openly with their neighboring communities, and access basic social services and economic opportunities, both refugees and their hosting countries and respective communities, are able to mutually develop and progress socially, culturally, and economically.
Despite the ongoing support and implementation of encampment policies on behalf of UNHCR and national governments, steps are being taken to facilitate an alternative durable solution to encampments. UNHCR’s recently released policy on alternatives to camps recognises that the “defining characteristic of a camp… is typically some degree of limitation on the rights and freedoms of refugees and their ability to make meaningful choices about their lives.” The policy goes on to say that pursuing alternatives to camps means working to remove such restrictions so that refugees have the possibility to live with greater dignity, independence, and normality, either from the beginning of displacement or soon thereafter. IRRI welcomes this shift in policy and believes that the alternatives to camps policy has the potential to make a significant contribution to the realisation of refugee rights and more innovative durable solutions.
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR When I was joining IRRI in the first quarter of 2019, I could not have imagined the dynamism and shifts we would experience by the end of 2019. We changed. Simply put. At the milestone of 15 years, we determined that we needed to re- strategise and rethink IRRI, and what…
One of the slums in Kibuye, Kampala where urban refugees live. Picture extracted from video by scidevnet Contrary to public perception, the majority of refugees live in cities and towns rather than camps. In these urban spaces, some send their children to school, generate livelihoods and successfully negotiate their own way through exile. Others barely…
Uganda’s refugee policy urgently needs an honest discussion, if sustainable solutions for both refugees and host communities are to be found, a new policy paper by International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) reveals. The paper, entitled Uganda’s refugee policies: the history, the politics, the way forward puts the “Ugandan model” in its historical and political…
With words and actions, the Tanzanian is pressuring Burundian refugees to go home, putting them at greater risk of abuses.
IRRI’s 2017 Annual Report highlights our work in a year of significant achievement for us, as we continued to work on our three main programmatic areas of: -identifying the violations that cause displacement and exile; -protecting the rights of those who are displaced, and -ensuring resolutions to their displacement are durable, rights respecting, safe and timely. The…
By January 2018, there were approximately 1.4 million refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda, the majority of whom are from South Sudan. The rapid expansion and demarcation of land for refugee settlements in northern Uganda has allowed national and international actors to respond to the humanitarian needs of South Sudanese refugee communities. While this…
Between March and July 2017, close to 35,000 Congolese refugees fled atrocities in the Kasai region and sought safety in Angola. While the Angolan government has offered many safety from militia and army attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), its treatment of those who have fled is troubling. IRRI’s policy paper –…
This paper draws on six years of field research in the Great Lakes region, incorporating nine units of field research. Each study focused on the links between citizenship and forced displacement in the Great Lakes region and examined both the differences and the interaction between local and national understandings of belonging.
President Trump’s recent Executive Order is, without a doubt, extreme. The four-month hold on allowing refugees into the US, and the temporary ban on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, is both ridiculous and cruel. It is also wrong at multiple levels. It is flawed in its methodology, mistakenly based…
The International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) is responding to the call for information about humanitarian responses to forced displacement in Central and East Africa. Dedicated to promoting human rights in situations of conflict and displacement and enhancing the protection of vulnerable populations before, during and after conflict, IRRI works to challenge the exclusion and human…
On September 19, the UN Secretary-General will convene a summit meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York to address current “large movements of refugees and migrants.” Its goal is to ensure a re-commitment to the core principles of refugee protection and discuss new frameworks to respond to the increasing number of people on the move….
Since the outbreak of civil war in December 2013, more than 600,000 South Sudanese have fled to neighbouring countries. More than 226,000 of them have made their way to Ethiopia, contributing to the country overtaking Kenya as the country hosting the most refugees in Africa. The western region of Gambella hosts more than 270,000 of…
Last week the Be’er-Sheva District Court rejected a petition filed by two Eritrean asylum seekers and six Israeli NGOs against the government’s new policy of imprisoning irregular migrants who are unwilling to leave Israel to Uganda or Rwanda. By doing so, the court gave a green light to the indefinite imprisonment of Eritreans and Sudanese…
For decades, Europe has managed to ignore the majority of refugees housed in countries along the borders of those in crisis – including Turkey, Lebanon and Africa’s Great Lakes region – and has had its collective head in the sand over the critical failures to offer them adequate protection and assistance. It has wrongly assumed that aid budgets are a…
While Europe squabbles over the acceptance of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers arriving over the Mediterranean, over the past year 154,134 refugees of South Sudanese origin alone have been assisted in Uganda, with Adjumani District receiving around 87 new arrivals every day. Despite the fact that Adjumani is itself recovering from decades of conflict,…
Freedom of movement is a critically important refugee right, and nearly all others are contingent upon it. Without freedom of movement, rights to employment, education, legal access, identity papers, travel documents, naturalisation, and many other fundamental entitlements are severely curtailed, if not completely blocked. This right is repeatedly articulated in international law, reiterated in domestic…
Kenya’s High Court has just delivered a ground breaking judgement on the rights of refugees with implications for hundreds of thousands in Kenya. Affirming the right to freedom of movement and the prima facie right of refugees to live in urban areas, the Court put the right to dignity for refugees back at the heart…
Reports reaching IRRI and RLP indicate that on the morning of Wednesday 14th July 2010, OPM Directorate of Refugees and Police officers in Nakivale (Isingiro District) and Kyaka II (Kyenjonjo District) began rounding up Rwandans and forcing them against their will to board trucks to return them to Rwanda. Reports indicate that those targeted in…