The Research and Evidence Facility team held a consultation meeting on the 16th of June 2017 with stakeholders in Kampala, Uganda. Participants ranged from those working for NGOs such as the Danish Refugee Council, UNHCR and UNICEF to locally based organisations such as Network for Ugandan Researchers and Research Networks.
The team introduced participants to the REF, discussed research plans and invited them for feedback. One of the topics participants brought up was the issue of South Sudanese refugees and migrants based in Uganda choosing to return to South Sudan. There is a lot research on why they move to Uganda but very little on why they’re returning. Participants and the team discussed how this could potentially be related to lack of services and support available to them but it is also possible that refugees and migrants may return to South Sudan for some time, without necessarily seeing themselves as repatriating for good, and may come back to Uganda again and again. However, refugee structures tend to try to lock people in place.
Another topic of concern that participants shared is migration of Ugandans to the Gulf. The numbers of Ugandans moving in this direction has increased, as have their vulnerabilities, which needs to be looked into. With regards to migration management, Uganda now has a national coordination mechanism on migration, which is trying to bring the various actors together beyond the Office of the Prime Minister.
The meeting concluded with discussions on collaborative opportunities and research areas that need to be looked into. These areas included how the Ugandan education system differed from what refugees are used to and as a result, many young refugees choose to drop out and seek work, and refugees that have been in Kampala for a long time but choose to not be registered. Their reasoning needs to be explored. Further interesting areas that were suggested related to the comparability between Uganda’s government policy on refugees and actual situation on the ground as well as deeper understanding of rural-urban migration of refugees and the capacity of districts to support a population inflated with refugees.