“Working with refugees has proved difficult due to cultural differences and language barrier, how can we address that?” The question was put across by a participant during the training conducted by International Rescue Committee (IRC) Re: Build team and Platform for Vendors (PLAVU) at the Lubaga Division Headquarters on Thursday, 3rd August, 2023. This training is part of the series of “Refugee Policy, Rights & Responsibility Awareness Creation to Re: Build Partners” trainings that the two organisations are jointly conducting in three divisions in Kampala.
The participants discussed the responsibilities of refugees living in the city. It was revealed that urban refugees are responsible to participate in all activities in the same way as any other citizen except elections and seeking employment from the security organs. In addition, “refugees are not supposed to perpetually or permanently access or own land. Refugees can access, own and make use of leasehold land. They have rights over leasehold land,” the facilitator of the training, Tina Kalitani (from IRC) said.
She further highlighted that the country is responsible for the welfare of the refugees and because of that, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) department of refugees is responsible for this vulnerable category of people. Other institutions noted were the security organs- particularly the Police. The international community such as UNHCR are partners who only support this problem. This was a vital highlight to the participants who often question where they report in case of refugee matters.
The town clerk; John Bosco Basinyoli said that the division needs “to organise a fora where all development partners come together to harmonise all the interventions and avoid duplication. He was also concerned about, “refugees involved in business who operate without license and who never follow all the required regulations guiding businesses in the city. In Uganda, one is required to pay for license before opening up any business” he warned.
Since refugees have a right to work, they are responsible to follow the work related rules and regulations such as payment of taxes. It was also specified that refugees are supposed to participate in all activities of the community such as community meeting and ‘Bulungi bwansi or ‘communal activities’ just like any other citizen.
It was revealed that the community usually considers refugees as poorly behaved just because the community does not appreciate their cultural differences. The chairperson of the Gender Committee at the Division advised the community to pick the refugees’ community leaders to better work with them. “Translation of both language and cultural meanings can be addressed through refugee community leadership,” she emphasized. “This approach of working through representation as the best way to address the above challenge,” She added.
Nyago LCI (Kibuye II, Makindye Division) executive shared a case of the Community Register. According to the Secretary, the Committee established a refugee desk in their village office to handle the issues of refugees. A volunteering refugee who can speak several languages regularly uses this desk and is able to talk and pass on information from refugees to the committee for response. This volunteer is also co-opted to the LCI executive. In this village, registration of all residents is mandatory to everyone that comes to the village.
The secretary reported that before this book was introduced, it was difficult for the committee to differentiate between refugee, asylum seeker and other foreigners living in the community. He said that the village was referred to as a ‘Congolese village’ and that it was difficult to allocate relations in case of death of a foreigner and they did not know how to deal with the urban refugees.
The information from this register has helped the executive committee to easily mobilise the community and select a particular category of interest, eased planning for them e.g. those interested with meeting refugees of interest, enabled them to identify suspected criminals and has helped in provision of appropriate response to all community members.
The major challenges faced by the committee are limited resources to facilitate the volunteer and adequately follow up refugees in the communities, unlimited movement of refugees within and out of the village, use of manual data collection methods which are prone to minor errors.
“Thanks to IRC and PLAVU for introducing this idea and for further improving our capacity in this area” reported the secretary.
The committee recommended that IRC, PLAVU and other partners should advocate for;
- Financial and material assistance to the committee to address the challenges associated with this Community Based Registration System,
- Linking this Community Based system to OPM data collection process,
- Undertake a pilot study of this system with a view of scaling it out to other areas,
- Further training to the committee members in vulnerability assessment of refugees.
The Representative of the Mayor of Lubaga division thanked IRC and PLAVU for organising this training. He asked participants to pass on information gained from this training and duplicate Nyago LCI refugee registration system. He asked all LCI chairpersons to co-opt refugees on their executive community as a way of easing their work of reaching out to all vulnerable categories living in the communities. He asked IRC to organise study visits for Local council members and other community resource persons to Kenya for them to learn and build synergies.
For more highlights from the activity, the detailed activity report can be obtained from the PLAVU office.