Can Uganda’s Hospitable Culture Save the People of South Sudan?

By: Alex Pommier

April 16, 2014

Since the beginning of April, I have been living in Adjumani, a district in northern Uganda bordering South Sudan. Adjumani is known for frequently welcoming displaced persons due to its central location in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The recent outbreak of violence in South Sudan has caused a massive refugee influx with close to 81,000 refugees arriving in Adjumani since mid-December. As one of the first researchers to visit this area since the start of this most recent humanitarian emergency, I have the privilege of conducting fieldwork at a time when the issues I am studying are unraveling and can be framed by my experiences studying abroad. While I will not share the gist of my research now, the issue of host community-refugee relations observed in Adjumani contributes to an understanding of Ugandan culture and hospitality, highlighting the role of local culture in addressing forced migration.

Stemming from its cultural values, Uganda has a rather unique approach to welcoming refugees. Whereas refugee camps around the world are most often cramped, chaotic environments due to a lack of land or the host government’s unwillingness to use local resources to address refugee needs, refugees in Uganda face a different experience. After registering as refugees and spending a short time in a reception center, refugee households are allocated roughly 16,000 square feet of land in a refugee settlement to build a home and to farm. As most refugees in the region stay for years at a time while war continues back home, this allows for a gradual decrease of humanitarian assistance (especially food aid) and encourages refugees to not fall into the dependency trap found so frequently in other cases of displacement (discussed briefly in my previous post about foreign aid in Gulu).

While Uganda’s method of settling refugees appears ideal at first glance, simply multiplying the number of refugee households that have arrived in Adjumani from South Sudan in recent months by 16,000 square feet conveys the immense task of acquiring and preparing land for these refugee settlements. Moreover, the Ugandan government does not have the funding to purchase the necessary land and must rely on land donations from the host community. This is where the Ugandan culture plays a unique role in alleviating the suffering of forced migrants. Thus far, more than 15,000 refugee households have been relocated to plots of land in settlements donated by Ugandan landowners. They have begun building homes, cultivating land, setting up shops in the settlements, and even building churches.

Why would the host community be so willing to donate land, a precious resource in a region where agriculture is the primary source of livelihood? A senior local government official put it simply: “We know land is valuable, but we give it freely because we know that someday we might be refugees ourselves.” It is more than just reciprocity though; the Ugandan culture encourages sharing and hospitality in a way I have never seen before in other parts of the world. For example, meals are often shared with neighbors, strangers are given a place to sleep at night, and the local language of Luo does not have a word for “beggar.” At the same time, the strong role of family values in Ugandan culture is reflected in the way refugees are welcomed to Adjumani. There is a remarkable amount of teamwork between Ugandan aid workers and South Sudanese refugees in all assistance activities, from settlement management to hygiene sensitization to epidemic control.

This approach to refugee settlement is excellent for refugees by providing conditions that better respect human dignity, lessen the risk of disease epidemics, and empower refugees to contribute to their livelihood, but it does not come without its challenges. The current emergency in Adjumani has overwhelmed the local community, and available land has become scarcer and scarcer while refugees continue to cross the border into Uganda from South Sudan. Tensions between the host community and refugees have also been observed due to the environmental degradation caused by the massive settlements and when refugees venture out of the settlements in search of wood to build their new homes. Although incidents of violence between the two groups have been limited so far, a number of refugees have told me they wish there was a police presence in the settlements to quell rising tensions. Although Uganda’s approach to refugee settlement may not be perfect, it showcases how cultural values can play a role in saving the lives of thousands.

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