The ‘refugee aid and development’ approach in Uganda: empowerment and self-reliance of refugees in practice

The Self-Reliance Strategy [SRS], a program designed and implemented by the Government of Uganda [GoU] and United Nations High Commission for Refugees [UNHCR], Kampala Branch Office, has had varied and complex outcomes. It entailed a wide spectrum of implications for the range of actors involved in or affected by the program. The “suffering” the refugees refer to above was one such outcome of the SRS for some refugees, as the program entailed reductions in food rations and decline in provision of health care and community services for refugees. However, the outcomes emphasised by subsequent ‘official’ characterisations of the policy continually point to the ‘achievements of the Self-Reliance Strategy’, referring to refugee self-reliance, achieved through ‘refugee empowerment’, as the key accomplishment of the SRS (UNHCR/GoU, 2004b). The following examination explores this disconnect between refugees’ experiences and perceptions of this program and the ‘official’ discourse surrounding the SRS. It brings to light the significant barriers to self-reliance for refugees in the settlement system in Uganda, the inconsistent conceptualisation of self-reliance embedded in the program and the flawed approach to refugee empowerment. It argues that the refugee aid and development [RAD] approach1 from which the SRS emerged can serve a range of agendas. In appealing to these agendas, however, refugee self-reliance, an underpinning principle of the approach, can in fact be in tension with refugee empowerment, rather than inextricably linked to it, as was proposed in the SRS.