Uganda’s refugee policy is praised worldwide as it is different from other hosting countries: refugees can stay in settlements or they can decide to move to a city. In both cases, they can seek employment anywhere. Yet, only in the first scenario do they receive humanitarian assistance and a piece of land to farm. Nakivale refugee settlement, approximately 200 km away from Kampala, is one of the oldest settlements in the country. It currently hosts 119,587 refugees from the Democratic Republic o...
The United Nations University in the Netherlands (UNU-MERIT) is pleased to announce an agreement with the World Food Programme to provide long-term monitoring, evaluation, analysis and policy guidance in support of WFP’s work with refugee and vulnerable communities in Kenya. Worth USD $2 million over the next four years, this project will be led by Dr. Nyasha Tirivayi of UNU-MERIT. Her team of dedicated researchers will monitor and evaluate the effects of long-term aid programmes to Kenya’s popu...
My co-author Francesco Loiacono and I won an exploratory grant from Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) last year, and a small grant from the International Growth Centre (IGC) this year. The first allowed us to travel to Uganda and organise focus group discussions with refugees, firms and other stakeholders. This initial qualitative work helped us in developing and refining our idea. Then the IGC grant will fund our baseline data collection with a sample of urban and rural refugees, as well as ...
Though most eyes were on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, the UN General Assembly adopted another accord in December 2018: the Global Compact on Refugees. While labelled “a powerful expression of multilateralism in today’s fragmented world” by UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, the question remains whether the compact is simply ‘old wine in new bottles’ — as many of its topics have already received attention in the academic and policy ...
In line with UN commitments ‘to leave no one behind’, social protection is a strategic approach for cutting poverty and improving resilience, based on strengthening the links between humanitarian aid and development. Extending coordinated social protection provisions to refugees could be the bridge from rapid response measures in crisis situations to medium and long-term development targets as sought by the Social Protection Inter-Agency Coordination Board (SPIAC-B). This post tackles the comple...
When most political leaders talk about migration and security, they usually refer to threats rather than opportunities. Prof. Khalid Koser, the executive director of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), a Geneva-based public-private fund supporting local prevention of radicalization around the world, believes that’s back-to-front. Migration is not only beneficial to societies and economies, Koser says, but can also help prevent violent extremism....
In this study, I considered the needs of refugees and the responsibilities of states based on the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The main question is whether or not terrorism affects the right and principle of asylum seeking. Another focus is the link between refugees and national security, particularly with regards to asylum applications and approvals....
In honour of International Migrants Day on 18 December, the UNU Migration Network has released the following very compelling statement highlighting some of the most important migration concerns that must be addressed by future policies. The events of 2015 have brought unprecedented media and political attention to migration. With the rise of migration across the world and the difficulties that governments encounter in integrating migrants successfully and guaranteeing them dignity, a parallel, u...
“The one thing all children have in common is their rights. Every child has the right to survive and thrive, to be educated, to be free from violence and abuse, to participate and to be heard.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for Universal Children’s Day, 20 November. Alan Kurdi was three when his body, lying face down on a Turkish beach, became one of the defining images of the recent “refugee crisis”. Like so many other Syrians caught up in the conflict between Islamic State...
Global Entrepreneurship Week kicks off today, with contributions from more than 160 countries and countless organisations. This year’s event takes place amid a worldwide ‘refugee crisis’, prompting discussions at all levels. It is therefore the perfect time to look at what refugees can bring to host communities: especially entrepreneurial spirit, write PhD Fellows Katrin Marchand and Ortrun Merkle. We all have a mental imagine of what a classical entrepreneur is, someone who ha...