Supporting Refugee Protection in East Africa

Africa hosts a staggering three million refugees. Nearly a third of these are hosted by just three countries in East Africa; Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The large number of refugees has strained the limited resources of countries in the region. As a result, refugees often face impoverished conditions and strained relations with host communities who see them as competition for scarce resources.

The Refugee Program seeks to ameliorate the conditions of refugees in the region by supporting the initiatives of local organizations. The focus of our recent collaboration has been to encourage the passage of progressive refugee legislation in Kenya and Uganda.


Refugees in East Africa

Refugee protection in East Africa has had a long and complex history. As far back as the 1940s the region hosted Polish refugees fleeing the devastation of World War II. In the 1950s and 60s, thousands of refugees fleeing the ethnic violence in Rwanda descended on the region settling mainly in Uganda and Tanzania. Similarly, during the liberation wars that covered most of southern Africa, thousands of asylum seekers fled from countries such as South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Mozambique.

However, the massive refugee influxes of the last decade, caused by the political violence that has engulfed much of the Great Lakes region, have presented new challenges as huge numbers of Burundians, Rwandans, Sudanese, Somalis, Congolese, Ethiopians and others clamor for protection.

These mass population movements are often sudden. Poor refugees descend upon communities which are themselves struggling to meet their own needs, and cannot therefore provide additionally for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.

Host nations receiving refugees themselves lack a legal and procedural framework within which to adequately protect the rights of the fleeing populations. As a result, refugees are forced to live in squalid camps in insecure areas with inadequate access to food and other basic necessities. Refugees are often viewed with suspicion by host populations who view refugees as competition for resources and worry that camps will become magnets for crime and insecurity.

Despite the fact that three East African countries have long traditions of generously offering asylum to those fleeing persecution, a host of pressures are threatening that generosity. The Refugee Program is working with human rights organizations in the region to promote positive models of refugee protection and advance practical strategies for the integration of refugees in East Africa.

A major focus of our work in the region has been to support the work of local partners in advocating for the passage of national refugee legislation in Kenya and Uganda. Despite the fact that both Uganda and Kenya are signatories to the major international instruments relating to the protection of refugees, neither of the countries has enacted national legislation reflecting the obligations articulated in those treaties and setting up procedures for the processing of asylum claims. This lack of legislation means that refugee protection has tended to be governed by the vagaries of charity rather than viewed as a matter of rights. It is hoped that positive models will be adopted by the countries concerned and that the newly reconstituted East African Legislative Assembly will provide a forum for extending these models across the region.

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