With camps limiting many refugees, the UNHCR’s policy change is welcome

We would like to reproduce hereafter an article by Lucy Hovil called "With camps limiting many refugees, the UNHCR’s policy change is welcome" dated 02 October 2014 and published in The Guardian. It analyses UNHCR new position on alternative to refugee camps. 

It is rare to witness a paradigm shift in refugee protection. But such a shift has just happened with the release of the new policy from the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) on alternatives to refugee camps.

For refugees and their advocates, who have been shouting for years about the perils associated with camps, the policy is almost too good to be true. As it states: “From the perspective of refugees, alternatives to camps means being able to exercise rights and freedoms, make meaningful choices regarding their lives and have the possibility to live with greater dignity, independence and normality as members of communities.” It makes perfect sense. But why has it taken so long? For decades, the default response to refugee crises has been to set up camps or settlements and coerce refugees into them. Camps, it was argued, were best suited to meet the social, economic and political realities in which refugees are living.
Yet a significant body of research has demonstrated the exact opposite, pointing to the fact that those refugees who have opted out of the camp system – even when that means forgoing any humanitarian assistance – have established an effective alternative approach to exile. 

They have managed to live in areas where they feel more secure, and have engaged in the local economy. Far from being passive victims, they have taken control of their lives, often without any external assistance. Until recently, however, there has been strong resistance to modifying policy to reflect this reality and harness the potential of refugees: the settlement model has suited the powerful interests of governments and UNHCR alike. 

In the case of the former, camps are a tangible demonstration that a government is actively responding to a refugee crisis. Camps play into the narrative that refugees are outsiders, foreigners or a security threat demanding close scrutiny until such time as they can return home. For the UNHCR, camps have ensured a visible tool for raising funds and “managing” humanitarian demands. Experience has shown these assumptions to be fundamentally flawed, however. Instead of generating security, camps have often created insecurity, providing fertile ground for the radicalisation and recruitment of refugee populations. 

They have also proved inefficient with regard to humanitarian needs: although the camp structure has allowed for some effectiveness in identifying vulnerable populations and distributing assistance, it has created a great deal of inefficiency, not least by creating parallel systems for the delivery of services, which have failed to dovetail with services for the local population, further entrenching the “them and us” mentality. Camps have hindered opportunities for self-reliance, with refugees constantly hampered by restrictions on their freedom of movement. In addition, when the international community has lost interest in the plight of the refugees and funding has been reduced, those in camps have been far more vulnerable than those who have found alternative livelihoods – alternatives that have been contingent upon freedom of movement and the exercise of choice. 

In Uganda, for example, tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees spent more than two decades living in camps, being unable either to return to their homeland in the midst of a civil war, or to integrate into the local community with access to economic and other opportunities. As a result, their lives were put on hold, not only jeopardising their quality of life in exile but also making them more vulnerable when they returned to the new state of South Sudan with little to show for the decades they had spent in exile.

And now, following the outbreak of fighting in South Sudan in December 2013, those fleeing to Uganda are once more being segregated from the local population and moved into camps where a humanitarian crisis is growing by the day.

Recent research (pdf) showed that these refugees are living in precarious circumstances, with inadequate humanitarian assistance and afraid for their own security. Once again, the perils of camps have been thrown into sharp focus. While the UNHCR has certainly come to the party several decades too late for many who have been forced to live in camps, this new policy is welcome and the UNHCR is to be congratulated for formulating what is, by any standard, an outstanding document. Its policy stresses the need for respect for refugees’ rights, inclusion, innovation and mobility; it recognises the need to work with, rather than against, local communities, who are often the first humanitarian actors on the ground; and it shows an awareness of the potential for refugees to become productive members of the communities in which they live.

Before we get too excited, though, it is important to remember that the policy is only as good as its implementation, and this is going to be a considerable challenge. As it acknowledges, creating effective alternatives to camps requires a permissive policy environment, and national refugee legislation in many countries continues to require encampment. Furthermore, realpolitik is going to be a major hurdle, especially in those countries where security narratives are dominant. With spaces for belonging shrinking across the world, and governments becoming increasingly exclusionary in their politics, convincing them to allow refugees to move freely is going to be tough. To battle the camp reflex internally and externally, UNHCR is going to need all the help it can get. However, it is a large and powerful international organisation with huge potential. A strong policy framework is an excellent start for mobilising this potential, and for now we in the refugee rights community will take that.

Lucy Hovil is senior researcher at the International Refugee Rights Initiative.