The case for refugees as a resource, not a burden for hosts

Newly arrived refugees from South Sudan sell food at the Ngomoromo border post, Uganda, on April 10, 2017. Since 2016, Igad has pioneered a progressive and humane regional compact on long-term solutions. PHOTO FILE | AFP 

In Summary

• Since 2016, Igad has pioneered a progressive and humane regional compact on long-term solutions.

By PETER KAGWANJA, RAOUF MAZOU, and MAHBOUB MAALIM

As the adage goes: “A bundle of belongings isn’t the only thing a refugee brings to the country of asylum.”

The commemoration of World Refugee Day is an opportunity to reflect on the fate of those forced to flee their homes by war, conflict, violence and persecution, and to focus the world’s attention on humanity’s shared responsibility and obligation to refugees.

This year, displacement is at an all-time high worldwide. The number of displaced people worldwide stands at 68.5 million, over 50 per cent of them young people under the age of 18.

Today, one in every 113 people is either a refugee, internally displaced, or an asylum-seeker. War is displacing over 28,300 people daily.

Africa is caught in the vortex of this unprecedented global refugee crisis. Over 20 million people in Africa are of concern to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Sub-Saharan Africa hosts over 30 per cent of the world’s refugee population.

The East and Horn of Africa, a region historically associated with endemic instability with far-reaching security and humanitarian implications, has the lion’s share of Africa’s displaced population.

Somalia has one of the world’s largest and most protracted displacement crises.

The combination of wa long civil war, terrorism, drought and floods has displaced nearly three million people, two million of them internally and 900,000 as refugees within the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) region and Yemen.

In South Sudan, a calamitous war between government and opposition forces that erupted in December 2013 has created over two million refugees.

This is Africa’s largest refugee crisis and the third largest in the world after Syria and Afghanistan.

Fortress approach

Refugees are still The Unwanted, to borrow the title of Michael Marrus’s famous 1985 book. Only 189,300 or 3 per cent of the world’s displaced people were resettled in third countries in 2016.

Our world has perfected the art of blaming the victim in order to shut refugees out, rather than addressing the root problems that created them. As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi aptly remarked, "Refugees do not bring terror. Refugees flee from terror.”

In recent years, anti-immigration policies inspired by surging populism, isolationism and protectionism have breathed new life into wthe “fortress” approach in the developed world to the world’s migration crisis, while about 60 per cent of the world’s refugees live in 10 countries, mostly in the global South, mostly confined to camps in the poorest parts of those countries.

New approach

But it is not all doom and gloom. Since 2016, Igad, itself a trade and collective security arrangement, has pioneered a progressive and humane regional compact on long-term solutions to protracted refugee situations.

Its special summit in Nairobi on March 25, 2017, adopted a rare blueprint — the Nairobi Declaration and Plan of Action on Durable Solutions to Somali Refugees and Reintegration of Returnees in Somalia — based on a humanitarian-development nexus.

In a nutshell, the new approach seeks to create conducive conditions in the countries of origin for voluntary repatriation and sustainable reintegration; for maintaining protection space while promoting self-reliance and local integration in the countries of asylum; strengthening regional capacity and co-operation on durable solutions; and encouraging international co-operation and responsibility sharing, including expanding resettlement opportunities in the wealthier nations of the world.

As citizens of the Igad region, refugees are children of the land, with a right to establishment thereon.

They deserve a share in its economic growth and opportunities.

The new approach is beginning to bear fruit, as Igad’s stocktaking conference on the implementation of the Nairobi Action Plan held in March 2018 shows.

Refugees are increasingly gaining access to quality education and skills training in an inclusive, safe and non-discriminatory environment.

Igad’s new approach to refugees is inspiring a rethinking of refugee camps and settlements as emerging viable marketplaces, and refugees as agents of development, consumers and “investors” in local economies.

The private sector is heeding the call to invest in camps. One of the leading commercial banks in Kenya, Equity, has opened branches targeting refugee clients in Dadaab and Kakuma camps.

Peter Kagwanja is the chief executive of Africa Policy Institute; Raouf Mazou is the representative of the UNHCR in Kenya; Mahboub Maalim is the executive secretary of Igad.