title: Uganda's Refugee Response Policy Approach: Analysis of Settlement Programmes for Refugee Women
Creators: name: Alupo, Beatrice A
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: intersectionality
subject: refugee women
subject: Uganda
subject: gender mainstreaming policy

description: Nearly two decades ago, Uganda adopted the 2006 Refugees Act to assist with the local integration of refugees. Uganda is the leading refugee-hosting country in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of approximately 1.6 million refugees, of which 51% are women. Most of the refugee population in Uganda originates from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) declared Uganda's refugee settlement approach a "global model". At the same time, Uganda has been at the forefront in the East African region in introducing gender mainstreaming policy as a development priority. The Ugandan government has affirmed its commitment to socially and economically empower its refugee populations, with the specific inclusion of gender mainstreaming policies to promote gender equality practices in all programmes for refugee settlements. To date, most studies on refugee settlement policies and programmes concentrate on high-income economies with advanced welfare services. Few studies have examined the experiences of refugee settlement policies in low-income countries such as Uganda, and even fewer have examined the recent evolution of gender mainstreaming approaches in refugee settlement policies and programmes such as Uganda's. My thesis therefore asks How is gender mainstreamed in the implementation of Uganda's refugee protection obligations? And in turn, To what extent is Uganda's refugee settlement approach responsive to the needs of refugee women? Through a qualitative single case study approach, I investigate the efforts of the Ugandan government and its implementing partners in actively promoting gender mainstreaming in its refugee settlement policies and programmes. Since 2017, Uganda has introduced as policy the UN General Assembly's Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). Under its commitment to the CRRF, Uganda has made gender mainstreaming policy a development priority to reduce resource and opportunity disparities between refugee men and women and promote refugee women's empowerment and effective participation. I analyse the evolution and design of Uganda's refugee settlement policies and programmes and its endeavours to empower refugee women and promote gender equality. Through the intersectional lens, this thesis examines the content (policies) and practices (programmes) of Uganda's refugee settlement approach. This thesis finds that the Ugandan government and its implementing partners are responsive to the promotion of gender equality language in policies and programmes, but some programmes struggle to meet the diverse needs of refugee women. It identifies how the gender mainstreaming policies and programmes designed to assist with the settlement of refugee women in Uganda must recognise the socioeconomic inequalities and unequal power relations within community. It also finds that, although the Ugandan government and its implementing partners refer to and emphasise gender equality and women's empowerment in policy, a combination of coexisting, intersecting identities such as religion, ethnicity, gender, language, and location are omitted from consideration in the design and delivery of refugee settlement programmes, hindering accessibility for refugee women. Successful implementation of refugee settlement programmes relies upon consideration of all the structural inequalities that refugee women face, especially their remote location in settlement camps, their diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, and their language barriers.