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Uganda Country Refugee Response Plan: Detailed planning (2024-2025)

Attachments

This appeal is an annex to the UCRRP 2022-2025, developed based on a bi-annual review of needs.

Updated December 2023

Executive Summary

The Uganda Country Refugee Response Plan (UCRRP) provides a framework covering the period 2022-2025, with an updated detailed planning for 2024-2025. It is a joint plan between the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), UNHCR and UN Agencies, international and national partners. The UCRRP aims to respond to challenges in a holistic, comprehensive, and integrated manner to achieve its strategic objectives: strengthen Uganda’s asylum space, provide lifesaving assistance, improve access to public services, strengthen co-existence and self-reliance, and pursue durable solutions.

Uganda continues to host the highest number of refugees in Africa, with over 1.6 million refugees from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, and 27 other countries. In 2023, 99,052 refugees and asylum seekers arrived in Uganda, and a total of 245,811 persons arrived since 2022. This continuous influx, combined with a natural population growth (3% annually), puts significant pressure on the limited health, WASH, and education infrastructure in hosting districts.

Refugees primarily live in settlements within twelve districts1, alongside host communities, resulting in economic and environmental challenges. Currently, urban refugees represent 8% of the total registered refugee population in Uganda.

Uganda has a progressive approach to refugees, anchored in the 2006 Refugee Act and the 2010 Refugee Regulations. This legal framework provides refugees with freedom of movement, the right to work, establish a business, own property, and to access national services, including primary and secondary education and the national health system.

Uganda has long been a global leader in its approach to refugee and host community peaceful coexistence and local settlement of refugees among host communities. Refugees and their hosts use the same health centers, and the children attend the same schools. In refugee settlements, refugees are provided with modest plots of land for housing and small-scale cultivation.

Thanks to donor contributions and the efforts of humanitarian, government, and development partners, along with the exceptional hospitality of the Ugandan communities, the UCRRP has brought vital and substantial support across all sectors and to all regions. Achievements include: child enrolment rates in primary education increasing to 95%2, and 395 Child Protection Committees with over 3,555 community members supporting case identification, monitoring, and raising awareness in settlements. Survivors from 4,239 GBV incidents were provided with appropriate multi-sectoral support, ranging from psycho-social support and medical services to legal assistance and livelihood support. The maternal mortality rate amongst refugees was 58 per 100,000 live births.

However, funding for the UCRRP has reduced significantly in the past years. Uganda was among UNHCR’s top 13 underfunded operations globally in 20233. The capacity of RRP Partners to provide lifesaving support to new arrivals and basic assistance to refugees has diminished, resulting in significant reductions in assistance. For example, the food assistance reductions in mid-2023, with over 80% of the population receiving USD 3 per person per month, is barely enough to survive. Unfortunately prospects for livelihood opportunities have not increased, making refugees more vulnerable. Partners continue to prioritize the delivery of essential services, but more support from development actors, as agreed through the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), is needed to transfer parallel systems such as health, education, and water from humanitarian partners to sustainable Government systems.

Despite these challenges, the “Uganda refugee model” continues to be an inspiration around the world. Uganda was a co-convenor at the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) in 2023 for its exemplary leadership in refugee management. The GRF served as an opportunity to build on the significant progress made by governments and other stakeholders towards the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees and to build momentum and strategic programming around Uganda’s 2023 pledges4 on: transition of services, taking action against climate change, increasing resilience and self-reliance, localizing the response and pursuing durable solutions.

Whilst mainly a humanitarian plan, the UCRRP also includes an important transition component aiming at a sustainable refugee response in Uganda. These efforts allow refugees to access national services pursuant to Ugandan law, while ensuring that the national systems are supported to absorb the refugees. As such, this plan contributes to shared government and partner agency commitments to achieve the goals of the GCR and CRRF, alongside interventions carried out by government institutions within the framework of the National Development Plan III (2020/21 – 2024/25), which provides for inclusion of refugees in development planning and statistics. As a result, for example, 85% of health facilities in refugee-hosting districts are accredited by the Ministry of Health and 66% of designs for water schemes have been reviewed, optimized, and approved by the Ministry of Water & Environment. Partners actively collaborate with the Government to ensure refugee inclusion in the 2024 planning. Furthermore, the District Development Plans in refugee-hosting districts integrate refugee and host community needs and thereby provide a holistic overview of needs in these districts. However, the effects of this inclusion may not be fully realized within the timeframe of the current strategy, necessitating ongoing advocacy efforts to bridge the gap between humanitarian and development planning in the short term.

The priorities of the UCRRP are to strengthen the current asylum policy; increase access to livelihood activities, in particular in sustainable agriculture and whenever possible through joint ventures of host and refugee communities; increase the focus on environment-related initiatives, notably tree planting and reforestation; ensure quality education by putting sufficient infrastructure in place, including temporary structures, and a double-shift system in a timely manner wherever required; continue to integrate basic services to refugees into government systems and enhance the capacity of the Government to ensure successful integration, including through development actors; enhance preparedness in case of a large influx from neighboring countries; ensure refugee-hosting and refugee-impacted districts benefit from investments by development actors; continue to support strong coordination with/between OPM and line ministries, notably local government; and ensure all activities benefit primarily the most vulnerable, through targeted assistance, including cash-based, and improved outreach activities including in the education and health sectors.

The UCRRP will adapt to learning and to changes in context. This appeal is developed based on a bi-annual review of needs.