 What can member states do to naturalize non-citizen residents, in this case refugees in their midst? As far as local elections are concerned, out of the eight cases that we've looked at, there's only one exception, i.e. Sweden, which allows non-citizen residents or refugees with three or more years of residence in the country to vote in local and or provincial elections. That is really an exception. Otherwise, all the other cases really require citizenship naturalization to vote either in local elections or national elections. And what happens when in the cases where refugees actually gain or acquire the right to vote, either in cases like Sweden that allow voting to local regional elections even without citizenship for people that have resided continuously in the country for three or more years, or in cases where the refugees have managed to access the citizenship of the host country after fulfilling their criteria that are set by the even framework of each host country. We found that despite having the formal right to vote, refugees still encounter a wide range of challenges in their attempt to effectively access and exercise their voting rights. One of the challenges is the lack of information and understanding of the political system in the host country. This came up during many interviews in several host countries where refugees specifically remarked that they would find very useful for to receive civic education and to receive voter information from a very early stage and not awaiting until they actually become eligible to vote. As it was noted by one African refugee in the UK, what he said was that we need to receive information from day one and we shouldn't wait until we become naturalized citizens because then we have the rights but we don't understand how the system works and many of us come from countries where we haven't had the chance to vote previously or where the political system is completely different. So once we get access to our voting rights we need to understand how the political system works in the host country. Another significant challenge was the language barriers and of course language barriers is always a big obstacle for integration and participation not only in political life but in many aspects of social life, employment etc. So for the full integration in the host country and to that and indeed many host countries like Sweden and Germany offer language courses for newly arrived refugees so this is one mitigating measure of ensuring that ensuring the smoother integration into the host society. However we found that there are persisting barriers among women refugees because very often women refugees they have not received, they have not had the chance to receive formal education in their origin country and so when they move into the host country it is not always easy to access the language courses and to actually manage to learn the language and to be effectively integrated into the host society. And then the general feeling of marginalization and discrimination was another factor that prevented or hindered refugees from their participation as in many cases they live either in the camps or they live in neighborhoods which are predominantly impacted by foreign population hence they don't feel part of the host society but they had the experience of feeling that they were living in a parallel in parallel realities so to speak. And then negative experiences from origin countries this was one of the findings that emerged during interviews with different categories of refugees in many host countries that given the fact that many of them were persecuted due to political reasons from their origin country and have experienced very negative cases of state and authority's reaction towards their attempt to participate in political life they were hesitant or traumatized and they were not willing to participate in the host country politics as it was characteristically said by one Somali refugee in Kenya but politics brought us out of our origin country why start messing up with politics again here in the host country let us enjoy their peace and freedom. So that is a telling example of why and the experiences from the origin country played a big role in overcoming the barriers to effective political participation in the host country. And then another key challenge is the lack of awareness the lack of awareness of how and why it is important to be involved in political life why your voice should be heard and why it is important to exercise political rights in the host country. We saw in many cases for example among some of the Syrian refugees in Sweden that they did not consider themselves as part of the host society and they didn't feel that they would have legitimacy to exercise their right to vote even if they formally had this right they didn't think that they had that they were they had the ethical the ethical necessity to exercise this right. So those are some of the obstacles along the way some of them quite understandable as to why refugees can't or will not necessarily participate politically in the host country. We looked at other mechanisms of participation as well and we found out that in if not for if not for the right to vote if they don't practice or they can't exercise the right to vote in the host country there are actually there is also we talked in the report a little bit about membership of political parties right in different countries we've seen that actually depending on the statutes individual statutes of political parties in various host countries they might actually give they might be open to receiving in their midst members from the BBG community regardless of the fact what they have citizenship or not in the host country so that is an aspect we've also looked at and it's an aspect of of the exercise of the of the right to participate politically in the host country and represent in a way the interests and the concerns of the community you come from or the constituency you come from. In addition to that we also looked at the so-called consultative bodies and that refers specifically to these bodies consultative bodies but at the same time it just refers to bodies which have been on the use in have been practiced in some countries more and some countries in a less degree I'll give you a couple of examples and since this is a comparative analysis I also so to look outside of the box a little bit as we're going to be dwelling more in the study of the electron but in Europe for instance there is the Council of Europe passed a convention on consultative bodies back in 1992 which was then in actually 1997 urging really member states to form consultative bodies which are essentially mechanisms that enable entities that enable refugees to become members of these bodies at the local level and then together with local authorities represent the interests and the advocate for the rights and the interests of the refugee communities at the local level if I can make sort of a daily comparison with the case study of Uganda here there are the refugee welfare councils right in camps and settlements which also have a role to play in terms of making the link of the interaction or the interaction between government between particularly the office of the prime minister here right and the refugee communities residing in those settlements and camps with the role of facilitating service provision and coordinating and so on and so forth so also consultative bodies in Europe particularly say in the case study of Germany, Germany has been quite successful in enacting this particular Council of Europe convention by way of establishing these consultative bodies at the state level and so there are numerous of these consultative bodies which are formed and they enjoy membership of refugees in their midst together with citizens and German citizens and together of course the role is that of the rights of refugee communities in those cities where they live the downside to these consultative bodies I would say maybe it's able to apply to the RWCs here is that of course they don't have an executive function a decision-making function they have an advisory role and they are there to supplement in a way with advocacy activities with advice representing the rights and the interests of refugees concerned so I think there is space here as we'll see later with recommendations there is space here for the empowerment of these bodies be that consultative bodies like we have to be in different countries in Europe particularly Germany or the likes of RWCs in the case study of Uganda so that is the point that we want to let's turn now to the to the participation in in origin countries and before before I say before I start speaking about the non-formal participation I would just like to say a few words about formal participation in the origin countries so we have examined out of country voting we have considered the mechanisms of out of country voting whenever this is legally and technically possible out of the five origin countries that we examine two countries have regulations for out of country voting Afghanistan and Syria but even in this even in those cases there have been a lot of challenges as as it is characteristically stated as it was characteristically stated by many Syrian refugees for example the out of the the exercise of out of country voting was restricted only to legal expatriates this means that the person who who would be eligible to vote should have left the origin country legally with an exit stamp and of course in most cases this is not this is not the case when one person has to flee their country and because they are being persecuted and in the case of Afghanistan out of country voting was exercised in the first transition elections but in 2004 and there it was only possible for refugees that were based in neighboring Iran and Pakistan or which are the countries that were hosting very high numbers of Afghan refugees but it was not accessible technically possible for Afghan refugees that were residing in any other country in the world and until then there has been no possibility for out of country voting despite the existence of legal provision in the electoral framework that says that refugees can so it is it is not a mobilization but refugees can exercise their right to vote in emphasis abroad as far as as we know today there has been no special arrangements for the exercise of out of country voting in the upcoming other elections which are due later this year on the other hand we also looked into the cases of participation as a candidate and this is a this was this was a very interesting case and it has a lot it depends a lot on whether or not the host and the other countries allow a dual citizenship we saw that for example in the case of Somalia so Somalia has been as you know it has been in a constructed situation of conflict since 1991 so many of the refugees especially the ones that have arrived in Sweden they have been naturalized after giving so many years in the host country so they called Swedish citizenship but still hold the Somali citizenship also and we saw that in the in the period in most recent elections in 2016 and 2017 the diaspora and candidates from the diaspora played a big role in in the elections either participating as candidates it is remarkable that almost half of the of the presidential candidates were dual citizenship holders and the person that was actually elected as president that is currently serving as president is Somali America but we also saw that the diaspora can play a big role in supporting political parties or candidates of their choice through other means for example the european union assessment mission and the Somali elections found that the Somali diaspora played a big role by sending remittances and financial support for the campaigns of several candidates although there is no concrete evidence of this and also this came up during the interviews with Somali refugees in sweden who said that the diaspora can play a big role because they can advocate and they can support certain candidates and also convince or try to convince family members back home to support and to vote for these candidates another interesting case is the case of and now and we go into the non-formal political participation another interesting case is the case of the afghan diaspora in the uk the interviews revealed that before the latest elections in 2012 there was an online there was an online platform that was established by afghans living in the uk where people could debate about politics and about the and participate in the electoral campaign and view and express their views about one candidate or another and as and as it was noted by many afghan refugees technology helped us overcome the barriers of refugee life so the role of social media and the role of technology is an important aspect when it comes to non-formal political participation when even when people don't don't have the right to vote they can still express their views and they can still try to influence the political situation or the outcome of the electoral processes back home and other needs of non-formal political participation that is included was included in the research and in the reports is the participation in civil society organizations and we will hear more during the second session of the day and civil society organizations either established or led by refugees in the host country and doing activities to support the refugee communities and to engage to engage in civic and political life the refugee communities either in the host country or in the origin country again an example of the Somali refugees in sweden a positive example of civil society organizations that are established in the host country but implement projects in the origin country projects that involve capacity building leadership building skills and civic education human rights education border education that is led by civil society organizations basically host country but actually operating in the origin country or supporting and collaborating with CSOs in the origin country and last but not least the role of protests the role of informal the role of informal initiatives which often mobilize refugee communities for raising awareness towards the political situation in their origin countries in order to put pressure on the international community to put pressure on the government of the host or the government of the origin country and to vocalize their opinion and and their complaints about the the situation back home i will stop now here and maybe we can take one round of uh questions and oh yes okay let's let's look into the recommendations now yes okay so um so we uh report in the end comes up with a number of recommendations right and uh just more here so that you have a look at them before I proceed the uh challenge that we had methodologically with this report is that we had eight uh various uh countries of host countries in five countries of origin all of them with their own uh you know trajectories of development their own political dynamics socioeconomic uh circumstances quite different from one another of course and so um you know we could either come up with numerous recommendations for each host country and then for each country of origin which would have been very tiring and most likely not effective at all or go for the other option which we did which is to uh come up with a concise number of recommendations not too many of them which would apply which are basically divided into two categories what category uh targeting specifically host countries and another one targeting specifically the countries of origin but uh once the recommendations are aimed to be as so-called as actionable as possible right for the uh addresses concerned at the same time they are sort of general enough so that they can apply to all these different countries regardless of whether we talk about Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Lebanon and so on and so forth and uh they're addressed to different so stakeholders uh they target the governments respective governments of these countries they target political parties of course as they uh as key players in enabling or not enabling participation of refugees into politics they of course target civil society organizations we talked about the non-formal mechanisms of participation and they target of course uh regional and or international organizations who also have a very active role to play such as UNHCR for instance IOM OSCE and so on so forth and I was here that are represented to the sort of such organizations in the audience here today and so without going through all of them uh one by one I will just quickly mention a couple of them the one the first one we mentioned naturalization and access to citizenship or the obstacles to naturalizations as being uh that key factor that uh enables or doesn't enable refugees actually to participate politically formally in the host country and so one recommendation makes sort of a call to um build the governments of the host countries to do more to be more proactive in terms of implementing article 34 specifically of the 1951 refugee convention or even in the African context the 1969 organization of community convention right now we understand that each country has its political dynamics we understand that saying the case study of Uganda um there is a very uh long process to naturalization and naturalization might not even happen regardless of the duration of the state of refugees in this country there are the cases such as a Germany that have made progress in the last decade or so in reducing the number of years that a refugee needs to to be in the country in order to be entitled to citizenship right but I think regardless of which country we are talking about out of all these cases that we are mentioning there is really room for each government of each host country to revisit the refugee convention specifically article 34 that talks about naturalization and assimilation of non-citizen residents particularly refugees um as at some point um of the duration of their stay in the host country this becomes their country and so in order to participate politically in order to completely be able to completely fulfill their right to express politically um they need to naturalize naturalize and that's free condition and that's why we make a call for maybe a more practical implementation of that particular commitment we uh of course there are other recommendations and so far as the host country is concerned I will just maybe quickly mention the second one which is to enhance support provided to migrants and to uh uh and to uh migrant representative bodies and to uh expedite those lengths between uh the migrant representative bodies we mentioned the consultancy bodies we mentioned rwc's in the Ugandan context and the local authorities right to be more practical in terms of empowering those bodies that whose aim and objective is to represent the interests of the refugee communities and to advocate for their for their rights as far as international and regional organizations is concerned to support the implementation of mechanisms for engagement with participation consultation um there are other recommendations that uh refer to international and regional organizations um but more on that is uh we can talk about those later on and also you can find them in the report and one last point that I want to mention is the uh we mentioned the ocb's the out of country voting mechanisms right it's a very complex undertaking logistically technically politically and we understand of course the intricacies around it we mentioned that Afghanistan had a successful round relatively successful round but then that went down but I think there is still a lot of room uh for the countries of origin in this particular case to at least put some kind of legal framework in place that aims to uh accommodate the right of the diaspora communities to have the right vote and whether that right vote comes into operation is uh is pending on those on overcoming those some obstacles that I mentioned above but at least there is really more room for countries of origin particularly to to uh work in the uh in the process of out of country voting I'll stop here because I'm told that we are in for the team thanks so uh we will uh we will not take a round of questions now uh we will rather continue with the with the following panel that will present each of the cases of Ugandan, Kenyan, and South Africa and then we can take the questions for both for the report and for the case studies separately so I would like to call to the panel uh Miss Pirana Zaharyan the author of the case study of the case of Congolese and Southeast refugees in Uganda, Miss Mukundi Peia the author of the case of Congolese refugees in South Africa, and Victor Miyamori refugee officer of international Kenya Pirana Mukundi and Victor will give us a brief overview of the situation in these three host countries and let's start with the case of Uganda, Tigran the floor is yours thank you everybody I'm very happy to see such a diverse group of people here with us for those of you who are standing I know that they are bringing more chairs so please bear with us my name is Tigran Zaharyan I have the privilege of offering the Ugandan case study which specifically looks at Congolese and South Sudanese refugees their abilities to to engage in the political processes both through formal and informal political platforms here in Uganda as well as through civil society and diaspora organizations respectively and then in the same light it looks at their ability to impact the democratic processes or lack thereof in their origin countries and the platforms that exist for that so Uganda's refugee policy overall has been a very positive reputation internationally for its ability to accommodate mass flows of refugees and asylum seekers into its borders and so the question is what exactly happens after the reception of refugees in the sense of how they establish their livelihoods and their decision-making abilities both in terms of humanitarian efforts development and then how do they actually go about making decisions on repatriation or moving forward to another third country there's three formally there's three um durable solutions for refugees which I'm sure all of you know it's repatriation to your country of origin global integration to the country of asylum or it's resettlement through a formal platform to a third party country now the question is how compatible is that with the current refugee management structure and especially in the case of Uganda where refugees are not given the formal platforms to politically and civilly engage so my studies explore what are the ways that refugees and asylum seekers look beyond those restrictions and the creative means that they go about both engaging in DRC and South Sudan effectively and then also establishing a sense of political participation and the civil engagement here in Uganda so the data that was collected just to give you an overview it was in Nakavali refugee settlement in Singiro district where we where we sampled the Congolese refugee community where you have longer standing Congolese communities who have been here since the 1990s all the way until more recent arrivals of Congolese asylum seekers as well as Ajmani district in West Nile where four different refugee settlements were sampled and I don't know for those of you who have been to Ajmani or know about it there's about 22 or 23 different settlements and they host various ethnic groups as well as refugees from various regions of South Sudan so we make sure it's sample at least four of the settlements to make sure that it was as inclusive as possible and at the time when we did the research it was in April of 2017 March March and April 2017 and took the chance of going to Bidi Bidi knowing that there would definitely be some restrictions because it was just emerging out of the emergency response with the with the major influence in Yubei district and I think it was definitely a good choice to go there because we were able to see rapidly in the sense of how refugees are actually starting to organize themselves and establish a sense of normal livelihood structures following their flight and of course we sampled Kampala for the urban refugee communities who for those of you who don't know urban communities here in Kampala actually don't receive any forms of humanitarian assistance because the assumption is if you have foregone a refugee settlement then there's a level of sulfur lines you can exercise here in the urban communities so it was it was interesting to to get that aspect and of course we used existing refugee leadership structures so the refugee welfare committees as Armand and we have mentioned in the settlements as well as diaspora associations and civil society organizations throughout the settlements and in Kampala and we also will of course engage the office of the prime minister department for refugees and various i and geos international non-profit organizations that are working specifically with with refugees and asylum seekers so to go into the details more or less and I think all of you actually have the full report so I'll just be using a brief overview the refugee act of 2006 and the regulations of 2010 are the provisions legal provisions that manage all refugee related activities in Uganda and the way that the Ugandan refugee management context is very different from other countries that were included in the consolidated report is the fact that refugees are actually they're used as an agent of development here in Uganda meaning that they're integrated into the national development plan as well as in the local district plans for development refugees are a part of that factor and that's to include a more inclusive way of development both for host communities and refugees and to promote positive social cohesion between the two communities however looking at beyond humanitarian development initiatives when considering political participation in Uganda um conventional means through formal participation in national or local elections access to political parties the right to assembly they're not extended to refugees or asylum seekers in Uganda and within the refugee act article 29 explicitly states that refugees have the right of association as regards to non-political and non-profit making associations of trade unions but political activity either at a local or national level is prohibited further a recognized refugee shall not engage in any political activity within Uganda whether at a local or national level and they're they're not allowed to undertake any political activities within Uganda against any country including his or her country of origin so that those are the bylaws uh respectively as you can see um and the restrictions on refugees engaging in Uganda politics or the political threats of their origin countries are generally justified as the need to disengage from the bad politics that have caused their exile so that's the justification meaning they have they have fled their countries for political reasons therefore they should stay away from politics that have they should stay away from the politics that have resulted in their flight um and that was echoed multiple times both by those working in ingo's service providers as well as government officials so the question then is that uh beyond a welcoming asylum policy uh what actually exists for for refugees to have that sense of self determination to to decide on okay can i engage in the in the political processes of my origin country i've pledged due to instability and due to bad politics but how can i change that while i am in exile many of the people we interviewed they also talked about the positive aspect of being in Uganda the fact that they're able to to enjoy a sense of physical security for instance um many times what i hear is yes i'm not able to have the basic freedoms that i have maybe in my country of origin when it comes to political participation but i don't hear bullets when i sleep at night and i'm able to have that sense of physical security and people are indeed thankful for the fact that Uganda has granted them asylum uh so when we're talking about formal means of political participation and i think that was that was demonstrated in all of the eight country studies is is there a legal path to citizenship for refugees and asylum seekers here in Uganda we have multi-generational refugees at this point whether they're in the urban areas or in the camps we have refugees that have been here for multiple generations that are born in Uganda however the path to legal forms of citizenship remain limited for them the Ugandan constitution says that you need to be in Uganda for at least 20 years to to naturalize however when we were doing this research we found that through the formal channels of naturalization there have been no successful cases so far it was confirmed to us by the office of the prime minister that they are working with the ministry of internal affairs to there's a select group of refugees who have been here for a protracted period of time and they are making recommendations on those who should be eligible for status so perhaps that's a follow-up project for us to do in the future um and as i said the Congolese and South Sudanese refugees commonly uh expressed their gratitude uh to the government of Uganda for the physical security and safety but conveyed their frustrations for the fact that they continue to have refugee status over and over and over again and they don't feel a sense of security by just merely being called a refugee okay i'm a refugee one year five years ten years but i can't continue to be a refugee my entire life so what what are the implications of that and talking about citizenship it wasn't necessarily the fact that people felt a deep sense of national allegiance to Uganda but it was the fact that they felt that they would be able to compete against the job markets and exercise a higher level of integration if those those formal means of naturalization were available and open to them in terms of the further formalities the refugee welfare committees their structures that exist within the refugee settlements and they have elected leadership and they serve as liaisons to the office of the prime minister most of the time the issues that they are handling and i know we have a few rousy leaders here in this room so please engage with them during the open dialogue it's it's to really engage in the day-to-day realities of what it means to actually manage a refugee settlement so everything from food ration distribution to making sure that communication is mainstreamed to their communities to handling more household community-based conflicts but people didn't really understand where their mandate starts and where it ends and the sense of how deeply can i engage with the stakeholders whether they be the government of Uganda donors i and gos those working on my behalf how deeply can i actually serve my community and be consulted and also have a sense of of voice in terms of advocating for the needs of my community so it was expressed to us as a one-way stream of communication in terms of the refugee management overall and then of course we go to the non-formal political participation and a lot of this was again along the lines of refugees can organize themselves through politics sure not i'm sorry not politics um non-political activities so church arts cultural practices as long as they are non-political and what we found was that people found ways of getting creative about that so yes they're not able to directly politically engage but they did it through leadership training education and other means because it was it still was fueled by this long-term vision of yes we are refugees here in Uganda but eventually if we have the hope of going back to our countries we don't want to be idle and we don't want to waste this time we had as refugees and we want to make sure that we're developing the skills and progressing in a productive manner that's when we go back to our origin countries we're productive and we can contribute to our society and of course there and also lies that paradox and that challenge because the longer people remain exile and are outside of their countries of origin they also lose credibility it among the local communities in their countries of origin for various reasons right so i'm sure for those of you who have the diaspora experience beyond just being a refugee you can relate to that and then in terms of formal participation both in while you're a refugee in south Sudan and DRC at the moment i mean we're all aware of the peace efforts that are taking place in south Sudan and that is something that has happened following the research that we undertook but south Sudanese refugees there's this collective memory that many have about i believe uh there were about 12 000 south Sudanese refugees that voted for for referendum in south Sudan for south Sudanese independence and there's this collective memory of being driven to the border point between Uganda and south Sudan and casting their vote and you know there's a quote i have to i have to read just to give you some context in terms of both the memory and the disappointment they now feel because the refugees again so someone i interviewed he said this is my third time running to Uganda the diaspora were the ones who struggled for independence we struggled for this referendum so it can be a safe country all of the women struggled so there can be peace yet we are the ones who suffer while men can run to the bush it is useless for us to participate now if there is a new person not to hear a mature we might struggle and cast votes otherwise any voting would be meaningless so that should just give you a sense of the feelings there are now in terms of you know there's people who are multiple times become refugees and at some point you establish a sense of normal normalcy here in Uganda or maybe it's Ethiopia or Kenya and then you repatriate you go back to your country of origin and then you end up as a refugee again so the research really revealed both a strong willingness to engage as well as a willingness a lack of willingness to engage at all both among the the Congolese and the south Sudanese communities and in Congo we haven't seen specifically a drive for refugees to be included in in the political transition of power there the government has announced that they will hold elections in 2018 but there haven't been talks of actually including the Congolese diaspora or the refugees in in that process and when we interviewed refugees particularly in the settlements and in the urban communities people talked about the technicalities of what would also prevent them from voting and in the sense of not having access to national ID cards and all of the bureaucratic measures that they would have to take in order to actually cast a vote and on top of you know taking the very serious risk of going back to Congo because there are no out of country voting measures I'm out of time but let's definitely engage more in the recommendations so I welcome your questions on that and thank you thank you very much Steve Rana thank you for this very interesting overview and uh I will turn to Hukondi Hukondi please take the microphone Hukondi has conducted the research uh in South Africa uh interviewing respondents from uh the DRC Hukondi the floor is yours and we're learning in the meantime while we're waiting super thank you um so as introduced my name is I did the case study on a South Africa specifically looking at Congolese refugees that are residing in South Africa but also asylum seekers um before I start I want to make um an offer if you like I live within Botswana and I do a lot of the interaction with the refugee community in Botswana as well so in my presentation I'm going to make um comparison comparisons or comparative remarks about the context in Botswana just so that we see South Africa and um its policies and approaches within a regional context um because they are quite a few similarities but they're also quite and about differences um you'll excuse my voice I have a horrible cold that I'm struggling to shake off um so my title slide as you can see can we have our political rights please um this is I think at the heart of the discussion that we're having today um that's being a refugee or an asylum seeker being forced to flee your country mean you abandoned your political identity but also your political participation and political rights do you have to choose between survival being alive and being politically active and what it is what is it that entitles us as citizens in other countries to have these rights that others are denied and where are they supposed to have them and what are we doing to facilitate that access hence my title slide um host country context South Africa as most of you probably know came out of a um historically unjust political system where minority a small minority ruled um an overwhelming majority in majority um in a system known as opportunity um and in 1994 we had our first democratic elections where for the first time one person over the age of 18 was allowed to have one vote regardless of color race or creed um and this gave birth to what is known across the world as the rainbow nation of course we know at the end of the rainbow they're supposed to be a pot of gold and that is what we are all seeking including people who migrate to South Africa South Africa has historically been a migrant destination um even before the dawn of democracy people used to come to South Africa to work in the mines people from neighboring countries and skilled semi-skilled labor um you will also know that during apartheid um some of the provinces or districts in South Africa were actually countries um that were recognized only by South African internationally so some of the tribes smaller tribes and the medium on zoos vendors process and so forth um were actually countries on their own that sent labor to South Africa um come the end of apartheid now we became one country and all of a sudden it became citizens and no longer migrant workers working in South Africa um but because of the political situation in the country South Africa was also a refugee sending country a lot of people who were um in political exile went to neighboring countries some came as far as Uganda Tanzania um east south east and other southern African neighboring countries were the main destinations and that was um the migration pattern in South Africa before and during apartheid and before the dawn of democracy come the end of apartheid 1994 um we have a very big population we are sitting at about 56 million people um give or take because statistics are a problem generally um very diverse because we are merging different cultures different ethnic groups who also historically have got their own tensions a very youthful population um that is characterized also by high unemployment and dependency on government grants and um social systems and social welfare um we have a high number of unskilled and semi-skilled people within our population these are um citizens of South Africa children born in South Africa who have just not gone to school because of apartheid system and what we inherited add to that we've got poorer spoilers poor security um a big geographic space to manage um and also the issues of crime and corruption it means migration happens very easily into South Africa but also out of South Africa migration of people including smuggling and trafficking but also migration of arms illicit goods and so forth um this sounds very attractive if you're in the business of organized crime but also if you're looking for work in southern Africa we've got a big um unemployment problem we've got a big skills problem so a lot of people come to South Africa looking for the cut of gold at the end of the rainbow um and they use whatever means is available to them unfortunately there's no migration policy in South Africa that caters for unskilled and semi-skilled labor South Africa is trying to attract um highly skilled scarce skills um as they call them um and everyone else falls between the cracks um and because there's a non-encampment refugee policy where it's quite easy for people to come in and lodge a claim for asylum and get a an entry permit while the the claim is being adjudicated people come in generally looking for work but come and present themselves as asylum seekers um the adjudication process takes anything between six months and 16 years give or take so within that time you're able to move around the system you're able to work you're able to go to school establish yourself establish business and bring family and that is what has led to an inflation in the refugee and asylum seeker statistics of South Africa it is because of the permitting and policy gaps that are there um of course the promise of possible progression to citizenship um also is a cold factor for many people who want to come to South Africa unfortunately with the time um things are not as easy and the progression is not as smooth um but still it is better than being unemployed being hungry with is poor um social support and services in your own country so that is the host country context um looking specifically at refugees and asylum seekers who are they um it is a mixed group women children men some come in families some come in young people um individually looking for opportunities but also generally um fleeing persecution um because of the political uh context and the evolution of the political dynamics in the drc some are more refugees than others this means people that come from eastern drc find it easier to to get into the system to be accepted also as refugees then people who come from kinshasa where the world is led to believe that there is peace um but also this has got its own tensions and other dynamics that it creates amongst the refugee community themselves um there's of course intergroup conflict because people have got different political experiences different political opinions um and they want change and see it coming in different ways um but within that there's also intergroup conflict um for example the combatants um who is a certain group within the companies um refugee community who are seen to be against kabila and are a lot more militant um amongst themselves don't have a common position on the strategies and tactics that they should be applying and you'll find um some of the issues or um tensions that they face are around a violent and non-violent struggle but uh political engagement versus diplomacy using the media and so forth so there is also um a lot of tension even amongst themselves as refugees but over and above that um refugees and asylum seekers in south africa just really want to be given an opportunity to live and um create a conducive environment for themselves and their children to be able to um prosper and grow unfortunately having a lifelong label of being an asylum seeker or a refugee does not allow for that opportunity um but if you just suppose this experience with the wuzana one in some ways south africa is a bit better in wuzana you come into the country as an asylum seeker and upon presenting yourself at the border you're put into the center for illegal immigrants which is basically a prison why your claim is being educated you can be there for anything between a month and years the typical prison like conditions where they lock everybody up at four o'clock and you come out the following day women children meant everybody was in there um once your application has been assessed and you are successful you get sent into a camp there's only one camp um which is about 500 kilometers from the capital city and you basically go and stay there on your life until there's a cessation clause and then you are voluntarily repatriated there's no possibility of um access to citizenship at any point um you have access to basic services schools medical attention and so forth but only up until the end of high school there's no opportunity for the government to sponsor you for um formal education beyond high school um but the the the first voluntary repatriation for me is the most problematic because even if you stay in that country for 30 40 years get married even with locals at the end of that refugee status internationally you are forced to leave the country and whether that leads to separation of the family unit or not is immaterial whether you've got roots in your country of origin is also immaterial so if you don't get things in that perspective South Africa is not as terrible as it could be um the issue of political participation similar to um to the context um outlined we have to be joking outlined by lina and and and tigrana uh legally it's very difficult for refugees and asylum seekers and non-South Africans in general to participate formally and in political processes um free 1994 there was a draft constitution which actually made provision for um residents permanent residents to vote so in the 1994 election there are some respondents that i interviewed who said that they had actually voted um as non-South Africans in the South African um in the South African presidential and local government elections um but outside of voting and being members of political parties is that reaching political parties um people participate through civil society organizations they organize themselves but um one of the good things about South Africa again is that people are allowed to express political opinions what about those South African politics but also politics at home so unlike um in the case in Uganda unlike the case in Botswana it is not a an offense to express political opinions about the situation in your country but also the situation in the post-country and the people are free to to protest peacefully as long as they get permission or inform authorities and people are basically allowed to go about their business i think this is also related to um the non-income because uh beyond offering permits the government doesn't provide any services to refugees and asylum seekers at all so um by giving them an opportunity to get organized and interact with others they also give them access in some ways to like legal opportunities and i think this is part of the trade-off that has to be made um i will skip this slide um because it's quite it's covered quite deliberately in my paper um but in conclusion i think that what we are seeing um as the refugee situation in in South Africa is really an interconnected set of enemies the DRC and South Africa have got very intricate complex political business and other linkages that make it difficult for the South African government to take a decisive stance in resolving the political crisis in the DRC and this unfortunately has been a direct consequence on the lives and livelihoods of refugees and asylum seekers um related to this of course is the issue of corruption which is something that we are struggling with and dealing with as South Africa but also as South Africa in particular this also has led to a politicization of state and administrative functions so permitting is suddenly a political issue um accepting and and and accommodating refugees migrants asylum seekers and so forth is a highly politicized issue in South Africa every single day people are being deported every single day informal houses are being um demolished and there's widespread xenophobia in South Africa because of our own internal socio-economic challenges as well but the police are also playing a role in this politicized state function application there's of course political interference and conspiracy some of the people that I interviewed said they only go to a certain um to a certain number of doctors who are pre-selected because there are some doctors that are colluding with the government to murder or kill refugees and problematic asylum seekers who make too much noise about the regime in the DRC and this raises issues of also the rule by law versus rule of law um sometimes giving uh not giving permission for protest to take place and applying the municipal bylaws and citing certain requirements that are in the book just to make it difficult for people to express political to express different political opinions and also to embarrass visitors usually the protests happen when President Kabila or his representatives are in town and usually the response will be an administrative note that makes it impossible for the protest to take place so the the law is being used to deny people their rights lastly we are seeing a decline in the policy environment South Africa recently passed the white paper on international migration which seeks to further limit access to citizenship by refugees and asylum seekers before it used to just be a natural progression within a timeframe of between 15 and 20 years now they are delinking completely time spent in the country and citizenship and they actually are tying it to either being able to invest heavily in the country or having special skills so in addition to fleeing persecution you need to find a pot of gold somewhere and invest in the country otherwise you remain a refugee or an asylum seeker permanently thank you thank you very much for before this comprehensive overview and as one remark on the last your last sentence about the requirements for for naturalization as as Victor will elaborate more in his presentation the moment when the time when the length of required length of presidency starts counting has been controversial issues also in other countries including in Kenya where so we have the case we have cases like in Uganda where there is a legal path to naturalization for non-refugees but there are legal ambiguities as to whether or not naturalization is possible for refugees then we have cases like South Africa and Kenya where there is a legal path to naturalization again for non-refugees but when it comes to refugees there is a big question mark as to when exactly and if the time starts counting for the fulfillment of the residency requirements and now we we turn to our last panelist Victor Nyamori Victor is a refugee officer for Amnesty International in Kenya and has peer reviewed the Kenyan case study and provided feedback throughout his development thank you very much my name is Nyamori Victor I work with Amnesty International I'm based in Nairobi Kenya and our office in Kenya covers the region specifically the East Africa the central part of it specifically the Great Lakes and the on of Africa so briefly on this topic today political participation of refugees and I'll specifically dwell on the Somali refugees and the South Sudanese refugees in Kenya I can finish this presentation in two minutes by answering the questions the following questions now but maybe you can go deeper and understand what's the historical view about it do refugees have political participation in Kenya no do they have a right to citizenship in Kenya no do they have a right to organize in Kenya with freedom access to other things yes but a bit limited so in short that summarizes the situation but if you look at it deeply in terms of the Kenyan situation and specifically I will look at the Somali refugee situation I mean you you might be all aware I mean the Somali refugee situation between Kenya for quite some time people look at it for over 25 years but the first wave of refugees started in the 90s into Kenya currently we are talking about over 276 000 Somali refugees in Kenya but then some years back in 2010-2011 the population shot to over 400 000 Somali refugees in Kenya this was because of the all-Africa drought and these refugees are mostly located in the north eastern side of Kenya which is a location known as the Arab refugee camp and that camp mostly started many years back and has been there for quite some time it's a big enterprise and it's continuing there uh on the on the on the western side of the country the other biggest population that we've also had is South Sudanese refugees uh we've had a wave of South Sudanese refugees in Kenya for quite some time also the first even the first time when the conflicts started and when they went back during the voluntary repatriation process but then also another wave of the people that arrived in Kenya but there is a conflict in South Sudan so currently we are hosting about 113 000 South Sudanese in Kenya Overall in total all the refugees uh that we both in Kenya we are looking at over 480 000 refugees compared to what Uganda is hosting quite a minimal number but over a period of time our population has grown and reduced over time in 2010-2011 in this region Kenya was the largest hosting refugee city in the country in the region uh the currently in in in terms of in the context the Somali refugees have faced a number of challenges in the country for quite some time and this is because of the securitization of the refugee situation in Kenya and specifically the issue of Al Shabab and terrorism the Kenyan governments uh have designed modernities of trying to limit rights of refugees in Kenya by not giving them opportunities of space but this I mean that if you look at the issue very well with the rise of security related incidents in the region and specifically Kenya the government started tightening up the space for refugees and making it more difficult specifically for the Somali refugees to access asylum and a number of terrorist related activities happened in Kenya and so in response these the government once started arresting and detaining refugees Somali refugees basically and procedurally and also sending them and deporting them outside the country but then also on the other side the Somali the South Sudanese refugees who have been there for who have been also been there for quite some time who are hosted around Kakuma one of the areas that we also try to look at the numbers quite large Kakuma refugee camp is quite a small town but if you look at the number that are being hosted there especially the South Sudanese but a large number of refugees the Kenyan government charity is trying to identify something known as the settlement program by starting a new camp a new settlement known as the Call of A but there are discussions whether these are really settlement or a refugee camp considering the numbers and the opportunities that refugees that are having in terms of access to rights refugees don't have voting rights in Kenya they don't vote they can't influence and they can't form anything this is because our national legislation requires that people who have rights to vote are citizens and refugees do not have access to citizens and this has been a debate for quite some time like I've been mentioned before with Lina in terms of what how do people acquire citizenship it's quite a big debate in Kenya right now because one there issues that are claimed that a number of people acquire citizenship probably I think by beating the system and accessing citizenship documents probably from the government there's also an issue within the northern Kenya where most Somali refugees are hosted it is worthy in the last census it came to the attention of the government that the population had multiplied three times compared to any other population in the region the last census for that northern side of Kenya where the DADAM, Garita and other Somalis are were not released publicly because the government was short of the population the discussion here was are these citizenship are these are these citizens or are these Somali refugees who are who acquired citizenship in Kenya it's quite a big debate also but we have seen in the recent paper in Kenya where it is said that the population of Somali is quite a big number and so we should be able to praise ourselves by accepting the fact that their numbers will be high regardless of the fact that there are some refugees who are hosted there I will give you an example in terms of access to proper documentation if you still have challenges on this in Kenya I I tried hosting an event that included working with refugees and one of the things included bringing refugees from the refugee camp and I mean putting them in a hotel in Nairobi another place when I presented the refugees to be able to book them to a hotel I mean the hotel refused they could not be able to take in documentation from the refugees that's so hard to use my national ID to book the meaning to the order so these are the challenges in terms of access to documentation recognition of documented issues that refugees have but unfortunately the bans are now realizing the rights of this they are realizing their business in the refugee sector so they are allowing refugees to reduce their documentation to register for mobile services and phone bank accounts and all that in terms of access to civil society refugees have access to it I mean when I come to Uganda I'm always very surprised and very encouraged by the kind of situation the kind of very active civil society and you can hear that you can hear refugee organized in the community somewhere in the village somewhere but not outrightly as it is again I don't know why maybe something that what's looking out for but historically Kenya is known to deporting people who engage in issues that does not touch well on the state two people south Sudanese abducted in Nairobi were deported claims are that what they were returned back to their country because they made comments that the Kenyan government was not happy with in social media and they engage in politics that they felt the government felt was not happy a human rights lawyer was also south Sudanese actually human rights lawyer was also picked up in Nairobi and also reported back we still don't know the way about but there are indications that this person was deported back so those are challenges that civil society and all these other organizations have in accessing the rights but interestingly also we have an encampment policy with all this kind of discussion we have because of the security the lack of interest limiting the rights of refugee the government is pushing for encampment policy uh illegally still debatable in courts and refugee organizations like national refugee organization not refugee-led organizations are challenging this process in court refugee are not allowed to move freely and you can imagine obviously if you don't move freely your access to other rights get limited and you cannot come to such kind of conference where you are found outside there you'll be asked for which kind of documentation do you have if you don't have proper explanation you'll be spooked up in jail and if you don't have a good amount of money to pay you'll wait for up to the time when you are charged or this so these are normal situations in Kenya and lack of movement lack of freedom of movement make refugees not be able to exercise their rights to access to other things but also one thing that now it is coming up strongly refugee leadership there is informal leadership in the camp where we have refugee leaders the specific zone leaders uh then thematic leaders people who deal with wash people deal with food distribution there are specific leadership within that but then also there is the overall leadership in the camp camp leadership but the discussion that have come up that these people are always selected on specifically on uh to advance one the government interest and also other international organization interests and don't independently speak about issues that affect refugees i'll give you an example when the DAP was government gave an order for the close of the DAP most of the time when donors get into the camp just to hear about refugee situation the you'll hear refugee saying i mean the interest to go back home is quite good and all this kind of and so they all were willing to support and mashal all these other colleagues members to be able to get back to Somalia but when amnesty international approached the camp and also talked to the leadership we selected a number of leadership we asked the community to give us quite a number of leadership to be able to speak to donors about their situation and we brought them back all the way to Nairobi and give them around a book close to the discussion like this and the discussion was totally different from what some of the donors will always be receiving when they go to the camp so it tells you that even if the leadership are there is always mis-conceived and mis-way of how to express challenges and issues that are affecting refugees but then also the active political activities in the camps and the situation in the camps in Kenya most of this leadership in the current Somali government some of them came from that and so that has been an encouragement to some of the refugee leaders and also people in the camp has to be able to try and uh participate on issues that are affecting them back at home yesterday i was speaking to one of the colleagues here also a south Sudanese who mentioned that Kenya played a big role in this in the peace agreement sometime back like places like Naibasha Machakos all those so in one way or the other the political government influence how the political government in the host country influence how political situations happen in countries where refugees are and that has been a special example on the so on the south Sudanese refugees i'll briefly stop there and i'll be happy to share and answer more questions when we discuss thank you thank you very much victor and that was a very very good and interesting point that uh a host and origin countries do not exist in a vacuum they very often interrelate in they interact and there is a a big impact on the origin country uh of the policies of the host country and vice versa we will now open the floor for questions and um i would like us coming to circulate the microphone um just to say for those of you who uh came before after my announcement um this event is being as you can see recorded and um we hope live streamed um so uh just just for your own individual situation please bear that in mind um that it is going out live um and being recorded for future use as well i just wanted to make sure that everybody was fully aware of that so that they can uh pose their questions accordingly so uh let's take the first round of questions um yes over there i see two hands please identify yourself and one more hand here thank you uh the presenters uh i'm gola mania joseph i'm a south student as refugees for the second time i just would like to make a quick observation in all your presentations is like most of the government the host country government are playing a role of blocking refugees from actually getting engaged into politics either of their country of origin or the country that is hosting them i didn't clearly understand maybe it could be another subject of research why should they feel so much insecure about refugees getting involved into politics yet the situation that has forced refugees to come to their country is actually it's a political situation so it keeps me wonder as to why i've lived in yuganda here for quite a long period of time and i must appreciate the transitioning that the yuganda government is uh undergoing through issues of refugees the refugees have been in 90s is not the same refugee now i'm seeing that the south sidenese refugees undergoing it could be a different situation in nakiva but the situation of south sidenese refugees it could also be different because they have these cross border tribes which are directly related to them so maybe it is because of these intertribal linkages that's why the situation of refugees is different so it is making me confused as to why exactly this is happening thank you thank you very much and there is another question in the back thank you so much my name is kudiloshim sekami bekoz i'm a refugee human right defender i'd like to have to understand just briefly three comments one is in the presentations i haven't seen actually an argument where we are thinking about the policies much as we say the gaps in the terms of policies but i haven't seen with a way forward in terms of addressing these policies both if you look at the UN convention 1951 it's there so two limiting refugees in their political um as fails the refugee the yuganda refugee policy is the same the second um my second comment is that um i'm wondering about that the whole topic in terms of in terms of politics in itself and engagement is more of available services which can encourage people to be more involved in this um and if you look at the the situation the responses from either the international organizations or local leaders organizations around they are not this kind of um a phenomena where you find that they are encouraging services which can drive people to understand better the situation and to be involved in watching political activities and my last comment is that exactly in the yuganda context i'd like to be much enlightened to understand better what they define as politics because this has been one among the issues we are we are we are grappling with as refugee leaders whether a civic engagement whether asking for accountability whether saying that i can mobilize my my fellow people either refugees or host communities the way i live for a rally for a better service as the political is a political activity and these are some of the the key issues i'd like to understand from this research if it covers them out thanks so much thank you and we have one more question here in the front and thank you so much i work with internet use for africa uh but also did not say me yesterday we were here yesterday um i don't produce for the past time i was pushed in my country uh which i don't want to be a rovingy um i have a lot of questions uh instead of from my sister from south africa uh as you started about the case study of kongolese in south africa um i'm wondering apart from uh is there any other services to provide to kongolese who are living in south africa because now in uh according to your presentation you said that uh they have a camp which they cannot access to come to urban uh i don't know whether the government of south africa allow the kongolese to have a citizenship uh and that is a question and another question go to my uh and your brother at big time is working with hamlet's international we have been advocating for the issue concerning about the region uh in kina as a country is a part of international treaties about 1951 uh rovingy convention and also is uh inside other treaties i'm wondering whether kina polo the international law one international human rights law bloodings uh international human rights law because now it will be meaningless uh for the country to be a member of united nation and which uh they don't implement those and such of human rights in united nation about the case study of uganda yes when you look at the country of uganda uh we can say that yes there are some services and provide to south sweden ravages maybe in other ravages in uganda there's a and there's a freedom of movement you can you can go anywhere you want you can do your business and we is the good uh part we need to appreciate the government of uganda for that so uh when you look at the issue of the work i don't know whether the south sweden is ravages maybe and uh and other ravages can allow to work in the public institution for the reason i was in uganda for 10 years when i was looking for internship uh i was told you cannot get internship in government institution because you are foreigner when i was looking for internship in kcca campala capital city authority uh because now these are the issues will be raised but now we need to involve other lawmakers when i would discuss yesterday here in the room in order to understand and and what is going on in the region victor i don't know whether amnesians nine provide the services to the ravages who are maybe the victim of rape uh maybe the killing and the dresser in so we are aware of what is going on in kina i was in kakuma last year to make an assessment on the gender based violence i seen what i i saw there uh even and the good thing you are honest uh thank you so much thank you very much uh for all the interesting questions um maybe we can start with tigrana and then we go to a second round of questions you start with tigrana then conti and then victor thank you so i think i'll um tackle two of the questions because i find them to be fairly interrelated why should host countries be threatened by refugees getting involved in political situations and or political dynamics of their origin countries if i understood you correctly and peckas to your question um what do you gondons or the you gondon policies define as politics or to be political so to answer the first question um not to become completely controversial or dive deep into this topic anything specific to forced migration uh in the great lakes region and you gonda being at the epicenter of that is political in terms of the geopolitical dynamics meaning what's happening in south sudan in congo somalia doesn't operate in the vacuum it's not exclusive to somali politics or political dynamics or south sudanese politics or conglies politics it's all intertwined with with one another and uh there is an element of of involvement in in in the region in terms of neighboring countries um dappling into each other's politics so in terms of refugee protection that is that's where the boundary has to be drawn in the sense of you've become a refugee and now it's it's as i had said you shouldn't be talking about the dynamics which led you to be a refugee because you have been granted safety and asylum and anything further than that is going to directly challenge and dive deep into well what are the realities that actually drove me to be a refugee so and that's where things become quite complicated and challenge the status quo upon which refugees are are mandated the international protection that they receive um i think i won't really go further into that but i uh i think you understand where i'm going with it in terms of um what do you gondons define as politics so that's a very complex question but i think uh that's going to be anything from direct political involvement into the Ugandan political dynamics as well as refugees being involved in advocating for the political processes of whether it's drc south sudan and actually being vocal about what is happening in that country and uh but having it move broader than a one-on-one conversation where actually communities are being mobilized and there is mass organization in that way but also it's the reality is that refugees are put into a box where they are recipients of humanitarian aid and a lot of times decisions are made on their behalf and uh that's not something that is necessarily fair fair but that's the reality and so it's it's not very clear where the line is drawn because a lot of times refugees become stigmatized when they want to be involved in the decision-making processes of humanitarian service delivery development initiatives and the organizations working on their behalf here in Uganda and i would agree with victor in the fact that refugee-led civil society is very strong and there are a lot of refugee-led initiatives that have been born out of the need to respond to the gaps they're seeing in the services that are provided to them and arguably they can probably work as as efficient if not better than many of the organizations working on their behalf not to discourage not to discredit anyone but just to bring into the context of the fact that they many times decisions are made for refugees on behalf of refugees but not by refugees for themselves and that's where they become stigmatized in the fact that they don't have access to the same resources to the same access to donors and all of those things because you know that's where we get into the politics of oh well there isn't accountability or we need more capacity building and all of these things where that's not necessarily true because i don't want to be making a decision without properly consult consulting refugees and working on their behalf it should be an an inclusive dialogue but sometimes when you push on those boundaries it also becomes political so i don't know if that answers your question pecos but i think it's a it's a long-winded reality so thank you thank you thank you the first question i will link it directly to my case study so why is south africa blocking political participation of kongolese in the drc um well besides national interest there's also which i mentioned in my brief presentation the issue of business linkages corruption and political patronage um the a nc government and individuals within that government have got a direct interest financial interest in instability in the drc so it does not make good financial sense for south africa to take a decisive stance against the kandila regime those are facts kill um sorry i let go i lost my diplomacy in terms of policy reforms what are we suggesting or recommending as policy changes um in all honesty i think that the policy frameworks to a large extent are there it's about implementation and politicization of how the the the implementation of policy is done we also need to bear in mind that refugee status um is supposed to be a temporary thing to start with right so it doesn't really make a lot of sense for us to create permanent frameworks um for something that we should be um breaking down in terms of how long it has lasted for it we cannot um legitimize the fact that people remain in limbo for 20 30 40 years and that is what we need to tackle so how how do we as a collective contribute to building stability and putting pressure um on the regimes that force people out of their countries this is what we need to address rather than trying to create mechanisms to accommodate this bad behavior which is what we are discussing now um so what are the durable solutions and what are we doing to facilitate and and impose them i think that is probably where we need to go in terms of policy direction um and this has to do a lot with um elections um practice and application of democracy in our different countries it is wrong that we send big delegations of election observation missions from all over the world who come in describe rigged elections as free for incredible it's just wrong um this is where we it has to start um so i think we all have to take a collective responsibility um and and really look at how we contribute to perpetuating the problem um the third question around the extension of services in South Africa South Africa doesn't have an incumbent policy my brother um maybe i i i confused you because i referred to the system South Africa when you arrive they give you a short term permit you can work you can study you basically sort yourself out they offer no services besides the documentation once you have been given a refugee status they give you a refugee document that um is basically a migration permit for two years which can be extended that you can use to open a bank account find a job and so forth um the government is also supposed to issue you the travel document the only challenge is legally you are required to come with a letter from your embassy stating that they cannot give you a travel document as their national and that is the basis upon which South Africa gives you um the international travel document which is really bizarre given that um you are risking your life going to get that letter in the first place but that is the law so those are some of the policy reforms or legal reforms that we need to look at but i think we we we really really have to look at start looking at refugees and asylum seekers as people before anything else and as our equals in our societies and that will help us also address questions around their status in a more compassionate and and sustainable manner thank you yes i like the point you mentioned about the election being free and fair we had the same situation in Kenya but anyway i'll start one one question that was posted Kenya is a signatory of all these international treaties human rights standards in principle but is the question is is it implementing it it will still depend on which side of the plate you want to start from if you hear the atonic general give a presentation of what Kenya has done in terms of progressive human rights standards uh international in all this international conference you you'll want to come to Kenya because it will be a glossy kind of a very nice kind of a situation but sitting on a human rights organization point of view we totally have a different picture because all these standards as much as they are there they are just loftier aspirations in terms of paperwork in terms of just aspiration that the government is science the same situation and we look at the voluntary repatriation process in Kenya of the Somalis from the position i stand with is not a voluntary process to return back to Somalia because the decision being made is not well informed and the Somalis don't have options in terms of choosing whether to stay or just to go and the circumstances are pushing them to live but these are well protected in the international standards but then from the government side and from other international organizations side things are fine it's a voluntary process and before just going back home so it all depends on each side that you want to stand with uh then there was a also a discussion on the way for uh for uh for us in Kenya it mostly for uh on this political engagement of refugees uh and i'm looking at political not on the capital p but on the political small p uh where i think the the role of county government that in county government in Kenya we mean local government uh coming out very strongly because they have realized where refugees are especially kakuma refugee camp the doubt refugee camp that is the that is the cornerstone of business and that is where they get most of their resources in terms of tax uh taxing local business and resources so local government have started engaging in planning and all this kind of process in this in in these places where the camps are but then this should be graduated to the effect that now refugees also have an opportunity to also to engage and question the local government on policies and issues that affect them uh i don't know this one was handled very well thank you very much thank you victor and mukondi we are already overdue but we will take three last questions before the coffee break thank you so much my name is singa liwali i'm a refugee from drmc first of all uh thank you so much for your discussion um comparing to to kenya uh refugee situation i have to congratulate again once again the government of Uganda uh they're not doing 100 but they're trying their best because we uh can go to business as we know that in kenya the way i see our people they are suffering there so i'm going to my sound comment first of all uh my sister from south south africa thank you for being very open you know that south africa some key individuals that they have input in the gongris crisis and good enough you have mentioned it so i'm trying to ask now mr suma is out and he was a the key player can we our people there can they expect a new reform the new president the second one amnesty i think you are witnessing things in kenya but the complete input of the amnesty to this situation of refugee in kenya are you quite because maybe the government is very heavy on you we are trying to push something and how are you pushing and then uh i want also to come uh because as mr people's have been trying to explain the first kind of politics on my understanding this politics is we are not allowed to participate in the gandhan politics ten of us in this country to gandhaki and our housing country why this country can also can't they empower refugees to participate in their own politics the politics of our country of origin if you're not allowed to participate in gandhan politics why don't we participate in our own politics because being a refugee we still have rights then i don't know maybe this one will be the last one the last one is uh madame you're trying to bring the presentation but i didn't hear where you are trying to think about the because we are refugees here and we were not born refugees we somewhere maybe were grown that may be forced to be refugees why don't we think about these gaps the origin of being refugees one i thought you think about the origin this is the poor leaderships in in our country of origin thank you so much thank you the gentleman in the front and then uh two more questions here but please stay very brief thank you very much i will recognize the president of everybody in the house and by name john my check it's also then is i'm going to highlight some of the things and then i go straight to my question at the when you look at the international system there are five major issues that are affecting one country to another country one of them is climate change the second one is economic crisis the third one had uh civil wars at the coast route the what the refugees and of course refugees crisis and then terror attacks which is also another cause of refugees crisis now these things affect one country to another country because you have seen so many civil wars in syria is damaged liviya is also problem south sudan the country where i came from is also in crisis smalia and the rest of the country they are in deep crisis so so the political participation political participation of the refugees whatever we do the government or let me say the leadership remain the key player whatever we do in a given country the leadership remain a key player and we cannot avoid politics even at the family level there's politics so my question is if we don't allow refugees into politics how can we get things that are affecting them things that affect them how can we get apart from the academic academicians who can go to the refugees come carry out the site and then they come with it is not adequately right but when we interact with them i think we can be able to get things that are even solutions but if we don't involve them how are we going to solve the problems the national problems the local problems and even at the international problems so that the question if we don't involve the disadvantage group how are we going to get things that are affecting them and how are we going to get the solution to solve the problem thank you very much thank you very much for your observations one more question the gentleman here thank you so much i am a leonard co-ops in canyons i am a uganan by bus and i am a guandan by nationality i have 40 years in yuganda i am still a water lake i am a human refugee human rights defender in yuganda with a lot of experience in lefty i my question i would like to ask the organizers uh are you aware that the water refugees in yuganda are facing a very dangerous problem of killing and kidnapping by one another government supported by a small group which is very powerful because one government is is curing them is financing them to hunt proud people who are fighting they are paid to buy just one kilo of sugar and one kilo of potatos are you aware of that problem thank you so much thank you very much and the last question the gentleman over there and unfortunately this will be the last one it's not because i don't speak english because it's my company it's my my regulation is my resistance my name is mango alex i am a congolis refugee i am the founder of an organization in activale settlement huacati foundation i have a question to both uh if there were no wars and if there were no refugees what would be the role of the united nations we are talking about states and we are talking about the respect for conventions haven't these countries signed the treaties of the united nations thank you okay i will kindly ask the panellists to give a very brief response unfortunately we are overdue but i hope that we can continue the discussion during the short coffee break that will follow so let's go to a very very short round of responses so thank you i think this is the conversation that is ongoing in terms of the origin of being a refugee and of course refugees are civilians before they were refugees they were nationals of a country they were civilians and they have crossed an international border for reasons oftentimes beyond their control and for political reasons and that is something we can't divorce ourselves of of that reality so if you have crossed an international border you become a refugee for a political reason of course that requires a political solution and everyone should be empowered to engage in a political process in order to take destiny and ownership of why you have become a refugee why you have been forced into exile why you have left your country and take ownership of the the platforms that exist in order for you to go back to your country of origin and now in the great lakes region both historically and arguably currently we're growing up with generations of young people who are seeing the only way there can be a transition of power is through force it's not through democratic processes of platforms and i would really encourage to stay brief i would really encourage a lot of the service providers whether it's humanitarian development initiatives that any of us are a part of it's really incorporate leadership training skills for young people into your program because as much as a lot of the development initiatives i've seen in terms of basket weaving and soap making and cultural dance and all that is great but we need strong leaders to be groomed while they are in exile so they can go back to their country's origin and prevent other people from their countries to become refugees absolutely i would i would agree with that that reality so let's continue that conversation during the coming break thank you very much thank you rana um colby one last comment um i think to sum up all the questions that were asked in this um in the second month um i just have one statement to me war is an expensive exercise but it's also a very lucrative business that is still sitting in one question was what is i'm doing uh matches of going on in canaan but two examples one we were part of the organization that challenged the culture of the damp refugee camp another example we we currently work with selected kind of everything uh parcels to train them on i'll focus in my campaign skills so they can be able to see parts parts and parcel of change thank you all very much and many thanks to the audience for listening so patiently and for posing these very interesting and valid and provocative questions i hope we can continue the discussion uh off camera for the next 20 minutes and we will resume uh the 2012 for the second session thank you very much with regards to their origin countries um we'll take the four presentations similar format we'll take the four presentations and then we'll go to questions and answers i'm just going to go through the list uh as as it is on the agenda so um handing over to saman thank you so much this morning i'm just going to leave the and so it's up to the refugees whether he stopped the war or so why do i say that political participation is very good it's a very good thing and a very good idea for the refugees because these are the people that are facing all these atrocities all these political miscalculations in their countries of origin so if they have given any space to make sure that uh they at least contribute in bettering where they come from or where they are right now i think they can easily keep up the all of humanity why do i say this uh when i came in the year 2000 i was just eight year old i didn't know why we were leaving uh what i just know is that we are who used to fight in our area but i didn't know whether it's something that can force me how to my place of origin or not so when i reached university i settled with my brothers after one year they went back so i remained as an acrobat minor so after growing in Uganda and seeing all this transition from a fairly restricted setting in the 2000 to at least a flexible uh Uganda currently i believe Uganda refugees have a bigger hand they have like some opportunities to participate either non-formally or at least formally why do i say non-formally non-formally because the environment here in Uganda people can see look at it as something which is very clear but uh there's no revolutionary that can allow the regional ideas to be passed for the next generation in their own and their country why do you guys say so they can the person who is in power right now came through the support of refugees who were in Tanzania by then so NRM was supported by refugees in Tanzania that's when they came to power so do we think the same NRM government can allow refugees to participate openly in all maybe changing or inventing the situations of their country back home the second thing is the issue of trust i could give here in Uganda have so much blame they are saying there is a perception that Uganda is so much contributing so much into here being here in Uganda it's also that we just didn't think the same is the one ruling our country we only have like a governor who is that side the conglomerate will tell you we so much contributing to uh supporting a DRC disability so how through are you that the refugees here can be flexible can be like freely to say that yes we have to participate when they know that the environment here is open to this project for example in 2016 last year south of them here were leaving they were saying no since Uganda is participating fully in this war it's not better for you to be a refugee in Uganda when you're in south Sudan most of us are the people that were hitting origin they say the war is not going to be safe for them because the seven is supporting the government so they were running away to Kenya others were running away to Ethiopia so according to me political participation can be something very important because one if you take these young people who are in the camps they have to dominant young people and women that politics is something that you cannot avoid because if the price is also it is determined by the political uh the political institutions that are taken in parliament and in the head of what the head of country so if these young people are not taught they are cultures if they are not taught uh the political instability like the things that happen the history of south Sudan where will they end i started here in Uganda i'm going to go and buy equation i started here in Uganda but i don't know the politics of south Sudan i even don't know who the Arabs who were ruling us so if i'm not taught in my car in the it is really political uh actors in the country so i was supposed to go and register for agriculture in the final year because political leadership was avoided so how possible is it here in Uganda according to me as a refugee i love it and in in case there is but in a chance so there will be an election in south Sudan i'll even go back and forth thank you so much thank you Simon um i'll pass on now to uh jerry who is a company's refugee here in well um with uh my colleague one is uh my my name is uh i am a refugee from drc of in Uganda for the last 10 years i am a co-founder and the director of program of our new fan hat initiative well um when we look at the the policy that has been designed here in Uganda where refugees i mean as along seekers are given um support and conditional support on entry as they come to Uganda um it is really great because somebody who is in fear and maybe running a persecution and then is given as a lump sick unconditionally that is really great and that is something to to to praise but the question into Uganda and is it within Uganda some of them flee when they are singles others came with their siblings and children and then they end up spending like um 10 to 25 years in this country um children that are born here uh are not given space you know to to to to have um like to be given uh citizenship in Uganda simply because there is friction in their laws um that the refugee cannot be given a citizenship at birth which i think mr innocent with us here will maybe elaborate more on that um all this makes refugee to be more vulnerable when it comes to political participation because once you keep on holding the refugee status for a long time uh you will be unable to participate in formally in politics um i will not repeat the mr grana uh underlined the the the refugee act how it says i'm sure everybody has heard what it says um yeah it gives refugee opportunities to engage in community activities in association about their social so of course they have to tackle um uh social challenges and this has given us an opportunity to come up with initiatives as the communist refugees in Uganda we have very many initiatives that we have come up with and what we do in this initiative is to train young people in entrepreneurship um using a bottom-up approach whereby um they are given an opportunity to think out of the box they are given an opportunity to to come up with the solutions towards the challenges that they face in their community and this we are trying to bridge the gap between both refugees and our community youth because we we normally include both of them and this is just um an example of my organization because that's the work we do but we have very many other initiatives um that refugees have come up with some skills and language uh trainings others are doing uh human rights activities um that is really great um i think when i go back again to this article uh the 29th g of refugee act you will find out that there is a lot of confusion because this is already politics president Kagame once said once you engage yourself in community development work you actually doing politics and uh i think we allowed marchers into bracket not formally and maybe there are things that um yes we cannot do but i would i would really encourage that this initiative that has already been taken to be um to be really put into practices so that because there is a lot that refugee can contribute um when it comes to peaceful coexistence in their country of of origin uh maybe um i would conclude by saying that um two refugees um politics it is not taking guns and you know trying to kill each other but to us refugees politics it is good governance it is um depending for the rights of uh of of people it is um the community development work that every single individual of us uh is doing it is demanding for um accountability it is demanding to be given what belongs what belongs to you thank you very much thank you Jerry um so i think you know uh throughout today this sort of conversation of what politics actually means and you know it's it's coming through constantly and i think you know this is this is part of the problems because it means something different to every single person you know there are probably many of you in the room who who would not consider community development as politics but obviously Kagame does um and i think this is this is where it's really sort of uh important and then thank you to both of you guys for presenting the sort of complexity of the refugee situation here in Uganda as well which feeds into that because uh we have refugees here who and and and in the room who have been refugees multiple times who have returned to their countries of origin and then have been further displaced um again due to conflict for the most part and their experiences are so very different um you know Simon was educated here he's he's had had a Ugandan education other people are educated in their home country and even within that dynamic each person has a different interpretation of what political means with the with the small p um and you know then when you come and how long you stay also will impact on that if you come as a young child and go home as a as a young adult you may not be so engaged if you come as a young child stay through to becoming a parent and and an an an adult you may want to get involved and if you have children here or if you you know this is where the the refugee situation in Uganda is so very complex because we're not talking about people who unfortunately we're not talking about people who come for two years and then go home um so with that sort of all in mind with the complexities that we are facing here in Uganda and um with the individual interpretations of political with a big p small p and etc let me now hand over to our two Ugandan representatives on the panel today first um it's Peter from chapter four Uganda thank you so much and thank you for the clarification I'm a Ugandan citizen a refugee and um the only the only major difference possibly from many others that Ugandan citizens who might be here is um I come from a community that has hosted refugees I think for the last um I don't know since 50s first was the Randiz refugees and when they left we had around 10 years without refugees and then we have Congolese refugees that is in uh Ramanja refugee settlement in a Kamainge district so my discussion will look so from the perspective of a Ugandan who has lived closer to refugees I'm also a lawyer and I've I don't like to call it a chance but I've interacted with the refugees including representing some refugees some of them have been unfortunately deported back to their countries despite the fact that courts in some of those cases had ruled that they have they they should be staying in the country so uh when we talk about uh political participation one of the things that come into our mind is that people think of elective politics so the moment you say political participation of refugees I think what the person thinks first is elective politics and that's where I think the the first Hado comes because before I go into the Hados.com is the general treatment of refugees in Uganda has been um we have citizens who are a bit like pure and refugees who are less pure so there are two levels and uh it whether it's government whether it's an NGO anyone dealing with refugees the NGO or government comes in the perspective of we are helping you we helped you to get land we helped you to stay here so don't ask questions that is the the kind of of of relation we have so because don't ask questions don't even interact with citizens because we're not expressed but you are less than the citizens so when you say I want to participate in politics you are not and that is when you look at Uganda's laws for example if you look at Uganda's constitution it creates those rights they are rights for citizens and they are not available for non-citizens if you read through there is where it says a citizen of Uganda shall have a right to do this then there is where it says any person has a right to do this so I'll give you an example uh it says every Ugandan citizen has a right to participate in affairs of government individually or through elective elected representatives that's article 38 of the constitution not it says every citizen of Uganda so it doesn't mean any other person it also says every Ugandan has a right to participate in peaceful activities to influence the policies of government through civic organizations so that is limited to citizens then you have other articles like the rate of access to information even caught ruled at one time that that right is only available to citizens uh the the right to a clean and health environment it says every citizen of Uganda shall have a right to a clean and health environment so possibly if you're a non-citizen you can't claim that right now it creates from the beginning we create that and then we we move to the fears now the fears of refugees participating in politics when it creates the fear of foreign influence in local decisions if you've been in Uganda during election time you'll hear stories where people say yeah some Rwandese voted uh some citizens of this country were ferried to this place so there is always that fear and so that will become a bit difficult to put them the other one is the fear of antagonizing the neighboring countries and it's on record that um uh the late Rijeman Kagame of Rwanda where refugees in Uganda and uh we know what happened I don't need to report the to repeat the history they formed a group uh at the country and now there is a new government which has been there for 20 or so years in rwanda a few claims of refugees from DRC who also participated in the overthrow of of um so there is always that fear that we might have these refugees antagonizing the foreign countries as well as our own countries because it's also on record that during the bush war that brought the nrm government into power they relied a lot on refugees who were soldiers to fight the obote government so if we are talking about refugee participating in politics that fear has to be overcome and understood uh and that fear also goes into other laws I've already mentioned about the constitution but um I've seen some laws for example the the new NGO act it came into force in 2016 and it makes it quite difficult for a refugee to start an NGO or a CBO in Uganda and yet this is a small unit of organization where you can advocate even if it was to advocate for a clean environment where you are staying you will need approval from the district approval from the cow recommendation from the ministry the light ministry then you are able to start how available how would a refugee in Rwanda where I come from access might be the ministry to get a recommendation to start an NGO it's quite a a hard task same happens to the cooperative act when it comes to forming circles where you can save some money and do that so that becomes a bit difficult but I had recently engaged there is a funner situation there are Somali refugees in Kisengi Kisengi is one suburb of Kampala and these people because they are Muslims every evening they would converge somewhere and pray and police issued them a letter that if they are going to have that association in police eyes that was an association they'll have to register it and our question where to Ugandans do not register what they call sales for the case of Christians when they are praying so why should refugees register theirs secondly is there's this freedom of worship so if we came into this room every evening and prayed why should we be required to to register but that points to the point that there is some fear of the unknown when they go into that room do they only pray or do they do something beyond prayers so we need to control it we need to know what they do to be able to yeah so that's uh that's the challenge then um I noticed these issues when we are dealing with refugees in Uganda we have a policy that everyone has prized and they know that everyone has prized however in practice there's a clearly drawn line between citizens and refugees uh there is even when you go to the community like in Ramanja people will tell you that's a refugee school and this is a school so they are always that those lines and those make it difficult but our approaches for refugees tend to be short term we approach them more to where we think they will soon go back so we don't look at their political participation after all they are here to go back anytime that's how you find the approaches the other approach is that uh we we use top down approach and this is a cross board whether you're an NGO opium name it we sit here and we say refugees need food we look for money and dispute the food tomorrow there's a crisis in the camp we sit somewhere and decide what to do tomorrow we do it no refugee ever sits in those meetings we we decide for them all through and uh that points to the kind of political participation I think needs to be adopted the kind of political participation should be around equity representation refugees I don't think they need to be presidents of Uganda or members of parliament but I need that equity where they participate in decision making especially decisions that concern them if you're going to make a decision about a refugee camp how what structure do you have and how do you involve that structure of refugees in arriving at that decision that kind of inclusion is what I think we need to be pushing for we need a few recommendations we need to reform some laws and I can tell you that's going to be a huge task now that I've shown you that the constitution creates us and we sorry us and them so some positional issues will come into play but acts like the NGO act the local government act could be amended local governments could possibly look at inclusion of refugees in decisions that they are making at their level local governments have powers to make bylaws and if you host local government possibly you could make a bylaw that seeks to have some representation for example you can copy the lc system into a refugee camp and have it effective working the way it works outside the refugee camp for civil society my colleagues I think we also are responsible for this we don't engage refugees that much we decide for them we don't evolve them in the decisions we make we look at them as people who will complain as people we are giving extending a help for as people basically who can't make a decision we should decide for them and what we've decided is what should be done so I think we need to a paradigm shift from the civil society start including some of these people as we arrive at the decisions that one will eventually lead to some political participation I had people say the big p and small p I don't know which of the two but political participation that will lead us somewhere thank you so much thank you Peter and I think um I think your point about the fear of the unknown is one that you know is within all of us in in any environment and I think you know it's it's easy to default to that and I think we have to be very proactive and as you say a paradigm shift of assuming that there should be no fear of these people who are coming in and if we can start from that perspective we probably will be able to move further forward in these conversations and completely agree with you that the refugees particularly and especially on issues that directly affect them must be engaged and consulted and if we can even get that far then then we've already made progress I believe but yes there's still much more longer ways to go and given the length of time people are staying and and you know recognizing that refugees bring their own personal and positive experiences into Uganda um you know the diversity of knowledge is something that we should all be embracing and learning lessons from other environments can only be a positive for our own operating environments so again if we just start looking at it from that perspective um that we could find that there'll be a lot of ways that we can benefit from what everyone brings to Uganda um so let me hand over to Innocent to present from the Uganda office of the prime minister perspective thank you very much Andy distinguished participants ladies and gentlemen uh my name is Innocent Dahirui I work with also the prime minister in the refugees department and honored to be part of this discussion I saw an email on earlier this week with these subject perspectives of refugees political participation in foster and control of origin you know countries and quickly I asked myself okay this is something I've not even probably thought about that we can convene or sit in the day and discuss refugees participating in Uganda's politics I also imagined if this came saying tomorrow's news daily front page what would be the reaction of the Ugans what would be the reactions of the countries of origin where we are receiving refugees uh what would be the reactions of our political leaders so these are the questions I uh that already came to a man I said okay here you will never stop amused this is I said I really was anxious I wanted to come actually from yesterday but I already had other engagements I asked my colleague to come but I really wanted to hear these views and uh especially on this kind of subject I also went ahead to check has someone really done a research on this before oh it's actually first time and interestingly I got a gentleman or a lady Eric Anderson did a research on this in 2013 political rights for refugees in Uganda a balance between stability in the state and respect for human rights our interest all of you to to read it and also see it and in this research actually he was studying the question I think because asked that question what amounts to political activity and in his research realized that probably he also does not give an answer so I'll start from the government position also the prime minister for us definitely a Meloia Manatone I go and advise the my prime minister per the legal framework we have the refugee act which the researchers here have ably uh really quoted that refugees cannot participate in politics and actually that is the only right that refugees don't have in Uganda with everyone these days when I'm in meetings within the country out of the country before I even address the meeting Uganda has been mentioned possibly five ten times with its progressive refugee policies and all that I've even asked myself is it why we've lately had this negative publication because before everything was good good and at one time even asked myself how are we going to improve if everyone is saying we are we are doing good you know you get worried is it possibly some people it's it's a new door are they not being they are telling you you're smart everyone you're smart so Uganda refugee policy it's very progressive they have all the rights they have they give everything so I'd say what are we not doing so should we see it so uh the law gives refugees as you've had all the rights except the right to participate in politics and I want to share with this gathering that actually in early 2000 when they were discussing this bill that time the refugee uh bill which became the refugee act 2006 they had included the right to participate in politics they built before parliament if uh my colleague peter and others who can access parliamentary hazards there was the original bill they had given the right to participate in national politics not politics of the refugees home countries but in Uganda politics but my friends you should have been there you should read the parliament the member of parliament's reactions to that and in fact the committee on presidential and foreign affairs had to be tasked to respond to that and it is that committee that framed that section uh 35 uh d and e you see so section 35 close e was added in that bill and it became what it is today and uh we of course Uganda we also have um sign treaties international treaties I want to also ask you to look at other treaties you've had perspectives from Kenya from South Africa what does the OAU 1969 convention say on that what does the 1951 convention say on that okay so you'll find that all these are actually talking the same thing naturally states have that principle of sovereignty all of us here Ugandans uh Congolese Rwandese Germans we have a country we call our country lately we've seen the even when you have the resettlement programs you have seen the United States of America changing you know so there is that fear which problem Peter and my previous colleagues have said as nationals everyone want to say no this is my country so wave is coming in as a visitor uh as a refugee there there is that natural you know positions from right away the constitution actually if we had to even amend these acts we would have to start in the constitution chapter four has elaborately talked about chapter four probably Peter didn't tell you what it means I think it comes from the constitution chapter four these are really human rights but uh I think they also probably I didn't know uh that they have limits actually I was in law school uh that was part of the issues where do human rights uh stop and they really 360 degrees but you realize that possibly they are not so that's where I think uh Uganda comes in and as an individual I want really think that Uganda has actually opened up more than most of the countries on the that Uganda will even probably even they say political activities they all they all close an eye even when there are some political activities going on which have actually almost brought us as government even issues in the name of trying to give some space in the name of trying to you know let human rights uh go on in the name of letting gatherings people be like I will say the right of movement current for refugees which is quite unique which other countries are now trying to to emulate it's now bringing us issues we thought it's the best everyone will be happy but now when you say refugees have the right to move to say to anywhere now we are being asked to account for refugees say in Lachiba we have ten thousand ten thousand people registered there but five thousand after registering I've moved to Barara others to Kampala others to Ghul so when word food program goes there they are only five thousand on the ground and they say so the other five are ghosts where they we don't know where they are somewhere in Kampala other should we now talk so we are you see how dynamics sometime back it was okay it was fine security caution us no no no how will we prevent send your security in the whole country so if a refugee is registered in Lachibani and is doing some small business in Barara and he does anything contrary to the law then you'll deal with him you'll face a law he does not need to be in Lachibani confined there not to live there if he's to leave you must give permission and so on but now with these kinds of dynamics I don't know maybe they may again say confinement you see so it's the same thing when you talk of refugees political participation what comes to your mind if okay you're from south Sudan you're in south Sudan live around the current situation and this topic comes how would it be responding as government we receive we permit we are open to refugees coming in and when we receive and really give grant asylum we have pledged to protect all these refugees okay if anything happens to eight of them then as government will be tasked to account that's where we I had given some comments from the gentleman here a question about refugees being abducted so it becomes a serious issue so some of the activities or some of the things we have to do as government is to ensure that refugees live in a way that also does not endanger them okay if we are going to probably imagine if this law was saying it had kept the way it had kept would the situation be different from the way it is would refugees be more safe in Uganda than there or they would actually be more unsafe would in security be more if they are trying to kidnap them from Uganda when they are not participating in politics what about if they were and there is a certain political party or a left in Uganda who say in it here then how would Uganda relations in that country be so I want us to be open these are questions I have been thinking of around but on the other hand I also wanted to say that maybe with this topic it again triggers our minds as government to see how we can rate refugees or what kind of politics can refugees participate in more or less really leadership laws the word politics is heavy if you're going to define if anyone asked you when you woke up what is politics you'll not quickly think of it in terms of leadership in terms of the mind runs into elections the mind runs into subversive activities the you know so for Uganda we have said that let us have leadership roles let refugees have leadership roles within their communities in settlements where we have organized settlements we've let refugees have uh welfare councils welfare council one welfare council two welfare council three with the chairman welfare council three as the leader of the refugee community and our argument here is that it's to help us manage you can never be in a group even in prisons once you're reaching the prison they are leadership roles okay so that's our argument and that's how we've managed to sustain actually these refugee welfare councils so probably we should go ahead to see that these are legalized and see how maybe they can work even with the host communities but without necessarily going into the national the national politics actually i think i'll cross check in the local council regulations anyone can even if you're not in Uganda you can be a member of that committee okay in that area but still with the local governments act there is some kind of contradiction with it so it's a subject that we have to take with extra caution because it can in my view probably worsen the security of the refugees but if we can emphasize if we can ensure that refugees are able to within their communities in the settlements be able to have the leadership like they're having then we tap from that leadership kind of welfare committees to work with them in now discussing decisions in listening to their views in involving them even at national level like we have started doing under the comprehensive refugee response framework then we'll be able to have everyone involved in decision making on matters relating to refugees but the politics should be politics within refugees we've been asked why can't we have the same kind of approach in urban areas welfare council committees in urban areas but we are still studying this the issue to see how best we will do that in Kampala in Barara in Guru in every district because there is a tendency to also say that urban areas refugees urban refugees refugees living in Kampala what about those living in Barara town those in Guru town those in Arua town you see how do we categorize them they are urban refugees okay so let us look at for me I'll take this in a more or less of evolving refugees in decision making in matters that affect them from the settlement levels up to the national level then I want to talk some things more about naturalization refugees definitely can be able to participate if they are naturalized as Ugandan citizens there's been increasing concern that why can't refugees be naturalized in Uganda and as government as a office which manages or which deals with refugee matters we have also said that it's something we need to really explore and it's something we are trying to discuss as an alternative solution to uh you know refugee uh issues this issue was pushed so hard that it even reached our constitutional court uh I really I think unfortunately I didn't come with a decision but it would be very good for you to check out that decision of the constitutional court interpreting the question whether refugees can be Ugandan citizens can be naturalized can be registered uh and become citizens and that court uh mentioned categorically one that refugees were born in Uganda we don't have citizenship by birth at least one of your parents is a Ugandan two a refugee cannot be a citizen by registration the constitution also does not permit it but the court interpreted that a refugee can be a Ugandan by naturalization but they said that the petition which was before them had not brought evidence to show that they are refugees who had tried to apply for citizenship by naturalization and they had been refused okay so from what I find citizenship is under the mandate of the minister of internal affairs and it's the mandate of the board they have said that when you look at the act citizenship and immigration control act in a way I think section 25 also limits that provision because it says you can be a citizen by naturalization if you have been here among others you've spent 20 years but in the 20 years they say not as a refugee okay so the the spirit behind this is that when you fled or when you flee to come and you become a refugee you're afraid temporarily this is a temporal uh kind of gesture or act but recent times now show that we are having refugees who are spending even 20 years okay so there will be possibly a need to look at all these laws like my colleagues have said uh council peter to see how probably within recent times with now having this kind of protracted nature of refugee we can put all these laws in tandem to look at these kinds of issues my last one is on the question that was raised in the earlier panel on deportation of refugees I cannot also live here without responding to it we've had a few incidences and I'm glad to say that as government we don't condemn condone that and there is even a case on going in court with arrest of prosecution you cannot completely storm some criminal elements as government as states you will always endeavor to fight these criminal elements okay so there is a court case on going some people are preheated and they are before court being prosecuted so it's not our making and as government of Uganda will do our best that the refugees we receive in the refugees we get are protected to the best of our ability I thank you thank you so much innocent and I think um if nothing else I'm I'm sort of so pleased to hear that the uh the suggestion of this meeting at least provoke the questions that we've been able to discuss here at the at the meeting and I think for me what's really important is that uh you know if this is one of the fundamental things we need to be able to talk about these things to find solutions that are mutually acceptable and mutually beneficial and um you know we're as you said at the beginning Uganda ran into a small a positive problem recently of being the best place to be a refugee and where do you go from there so I think it's very um you know we we need to be evolving and and you're very right to point out that we need to make sure that the evolution is a positive evolution and uh we do have to be very careful that uh when we're advocating for uh changes that we don't end up with unintended consequences that are then detrimental and I think that's very uh sage advice for us all in this regards because I feel like everybody in the room here is is looking for positive involvement and and forward movement on these things um but we have to be aware that um that that that may be uh the the results of efforts may may not be to uh a positive degree but I want to thank all my panelists for uh they're very useful and and insightful contributions both from the perspectives of uh individuals who are in refugee situations currently but um whilst happy to be here for the time being actively I'm I'm assuming would like to go home and but also to get the perspective both from uh Ugandan government and uh representative of the Ugandan population um and NGO worker because I think this is this is what's important is that we have to recognize that this is a complicated and complex conversation and um I think for me as long as we can have these conversations we are already in a positive place there are many environments where these conversations would not even be possible and I think we shouldn't take that lightly um and that we these conversations by starting these conversations we can already um uh arguably maybe we are already engaging in politics but um let's not let's not worry about that today but I think um you know again looking at uh with the the report looking at eight different case studies in eight different countries we can also look at um and and recognize where where we are here in Uganda um look at positive examples from other countries but also recognize where we are presenting positive examples to some of the other countries in the case studies so I think that's why um I feel this report is is particularly um useful for us all as refugee advocates um both here in Uganda but also internationally um so please uh thank my panel but then we'll do the floor for questions but a round of applause unfortunately I can't seem to get the other microphone to work but if you can Lena thanks so much for the panelists friend for the nice discussions as I as I've said my name is Pecos one thing which is missing this morning let me take an example of the Congolese refugees here in Uganda I've been following the Congolese refugees in Uganda since 2000 when I came here the fact is the Congolese refugees do participate actively in politics here in in Uganda either at local level or either in Uganda or outside Uganda there are quite a number of interesting reports where Congolese refugees have been recruited to go and fight to back Congo these are the recent report of human rights watch in December indicated that refugees were picked from Ramanja went to Kinshasa killed people and came back so I think it's the question that at the local level let's talk about the other element which we haven't said at the local level there was see systems which Mr Inos have said they are Congolese actually there are Congolese refugees who are there was in that kind of systems but these refugees the question is who participates I think that's where are probably the what we called look into the broader situation and those who participate to find that they are more lenient to the regime or they are more lenient to the governments in place and probably what we'll find out what should have been the discussions of look into the other category of refugees would like to participate in politics but in a more independent manner that's I think one of the areas which is trying to to miss the discussions I have since this morning thank you so much thank you so much my name is Joye Mukisho I'm a refugee leader my question goes to Mr Innocent it's I wouldn't talk much about politics since my colleague has said quite interesting things if talking about naturalization of refugees we are looking at the durable solution for refugees and if naturalization which is a local integration is impossible why are we still looking at it as a durable solution because you are very clear there that to be granted a citizenship in Uganda you have to live in Uganda for 20 years but not as a refugee thank you jai pair comme le gouvernement des rougandas vient d'avoir pair pour l'intérêt de mon pays les congots pourquoi j'ai dit ça je l'ai dit parce que je suis avec un officier du gouvernement des rougandas je n'enquise pas mais je demande si c'est possible il n'y a pas de réfugiés la plupart des réfugiés rwandais pour on les sont devenis congolais en Uganda alors si tous ces réfugiés rentraient chez nous pour aller influencer la politique dans notre pays si c'était votre pays comment vous pouvez considérer ça ils ont changé like as congolais yeah that's one so uh yeah yeah you have understand me yeah yeah it's one it's no let me finish ah i'm not saying that i'm trying to protect them after 20 years all repeat the consequences it's true that i'm not in my country and i can't hope but all my identity i've been taken by moi je peux vouloir que si un réfugié venait en Uganda s'il a sa carte et s'il a sa son passport qu'on lui remet ça parce qu'il reste congolais d'abord i would like if the refugee can be in Uganda or in other country leaving his passport was the idea because of those refugees but he remained in nationality of my country mais attaquer congolais je peux proposer comment nous identifier au congo nous avons des chinois libanais belge français al map américain qui sont congolais aujourd'hui c'est comme les états et pourquoi ces gens sont congolais aujourd'hui pourquoi ces gens sont congolais aujourd'hui nous n'avons pas des gens congolais par ces gens mais nous sommes congolais par la culture et nos vies le gouvernement de l'organisation autorise d'être donné ou doctoire la nationalité congolais a déjà qu'ils sont pas des congolais sans pour d'apprendre considération de nos valeurs et de notre façon donc de nos cultures je peux apparaître congolais mais tel il apparaît soudanais mais par rapport à ces cultures il est beaucoup plus congolais que moi avec moi je connais toujours la nation zini et je vais les dire aussi à un officier de la nation zini si je vais vraiment vous allez m'excuser comment vous pouvez sélectionner les allemands mais ces allemands on sélectionne un allemand mais qui parle chinois merci thank you we have this mike back so i'll come to the panel it was pointed out to me and i and i i second this that we haven't had many women who have asked questions or commented from the floor so while okay so one already but while the panel are asking can some of the ladies in the room uh i mean if you want to um but please let's uh let's try and make this uh open lina you'll be the next after the panel speaks thank you okay i i think um just to respond to a few because the questions didn't were not specific to the issues uh my brother the the congolais i didn't record his name alex i find it interesting that um i come from western uganda i'm told to be specific and i find it interesting when i'm interested i'm interacting with the the hema in drc whom we share a lot in culture but uh if i was to interact with the lendo possibly i would be just from there so so uh yeah the cultures uh have good and bad and maybe we need to look at how to integrate that because um the truth be told uh when i'm in drc if i introduce myself by my culture in my culture we have pet names and all that so if i introduce myself to the hema with all that i'm as good as i'm in uganda but if i'm in a lendo community i would possibly have to hide my identity because of the so if we had lenders in uganda maybe it would be easy to integrate them and also look at how we can have the others uh there there was a pecos talked about um some congolais participating in politics and others like the the case he talked about in um uh in ramanja where some some refugees are alleged to have gone to drc and uh committed crimes we've also heard them i think uh my colleague would answer a few things around that and i remember there was a time when they came and removed some refugees because they were m23 uh or at least believed to be m23 but that's not the reason i think why we are talking about political participation we should draw a line between peaceful political participation and commission of crimes which is something totally anyone would be against so the congolais in uganda or any other refugees might be could be participating in having their voice heard representation or participating in issues that caused them to run away from their country without necessarily committing crimes that's what i think should be their way um thank you very much uh once again um i will not comment on all questions i will just comment on our pecos's question because the other question went directly to mr inocent and i believe that he is the best person to to answer them um i think that's the way i talked about um you know refugees being prevented from participating in politics it creates um a lot of danger actually because um now like this case that you've spoke about this is not uh participating in politics uh formally but this is again informally but which is really a danger situation to even uh refugees that are in uganda and even uh to the citizen of the country of of their kind of of origin i really think that um there is need um to give refugees a space you know to to formally participate in politics so that uh such issues can easily be mitigated and come up with a clear plan and some limitation on what to do and what not to do thank you thank you so much i'll just answer pecos question participation of refugee leaders uh specifically rwc's uh you mentioned us point that the people that are selected or that rwc's are more lean into the regime let's say the opm and un s era than to the refugees that they are representing my brother the whole equation is just complex because it is not only them the rwc that we have here are not people that present our voices what they give to us is just it's just one sided they only give information what are ideas from the refugees but they don't give us feedback and let me give you an example the the sierra he was mentioning here i was on the meeting on the 31st of january so they had six priorities that they were not selecting they said look in in vanda the refugees are going to be even water uh energies there is quality equation and all those i i i put up my name tag and i asked we are here in this room discussing prioritizing things that has been given to refugees but did you concern them this is the thing that they want if you go to naqibal and they need the same as those who are in ajuan those who are in ajuan might have just arrived on them uh they might just arrive from south sudan after seeing atrocities we just need uh biscuit we don't need food and here we're talking about quality equation when we have not even given access to education yet why do you prioritize quality education when access to education is not which is not in in place as as as plan i did not quote anything about the policies which are in place the guanan policies they say it's very important it's very good and it's being praised all over the globe but are there refugees that are working anyway or that are one creating their own jobs unhcr is responsible for refugees it is unhcr high commissioner for refugees but if you go to the office you will not see a single refugees not even a translator they only need you when when no one so we have these policies which are very good written they are global written but they are not applied so writing policies is one thing writing reports is the second thing but the third thing is implementing them these people are working on the system that are devolved they are not devolved in Uganda the unhcr system is not devolved in Uganda it is they are counted to the states another question i asked about to them was the accountability system that we are having it's only one side why do you know account to the people that give us the money and not account to the people that are receiving the money we are the people that are benefiting from the money that are that has been given to us but we are not given any space to us that this money should not be used for for things like things which are not reported to us right now the money should be used on this they are they are not accounting to us so if the rwcs bring all these questions on the table they are not being given an ear so when they come back to the refugees they have nothing to tell you they have nothing to report to you so what comes there's always a conflict that these guys are being leaned into a to the refugees regime but in actual sense they have the voices being forwarded but there's no one who's giving them any feedback there's no one who's giving them any room people say that we have like the political system we should be given the space to to engage politically if we're not going to credit ourselves there's no one who's going to give us the space so whether it's formally or non-formally we have to make sure that when you are at home you update your kids that you know what if you know you are born in Uganda your country is south Sudan one day we shall go back to south Sudan so you must know the history of south Sudan so if you don't know your history you have to teach your kids their history if they know their history one day they have to go back and then participate fully accountability is something very complex they don't necessarily give us money to be used among okay with the refugees situation here in Uganda and the people that are supposed to change their ways they look at things because they give UNSR and other agencies a lot of time accounting accounting to them not spending time with us you'll find them in the offices reply into emails reply like following our policies instead of coming to us and then talking to us so how do you how do you see that there's transfers in here it's something which is very complex thank you thank you very much Simon I really love seeing this young man passionate and able to express himself I think this is what the government of Uganda can best give that people should express themselves tell Andy that should not account for the donors but account for the the stakeholders so we are no longer in this alone Andy as OPM I think you can see and Andy it's really good and I think Amor is proud to be Ugandan because it's only here in Uganda where we even call the president anything and no one will even bother to come and say why did you say the president you find our president in a cartoon in a newspaper and nothing happens so I think we really have the space we have the space and our refugees have the space but again I push on let us not go beyond yeah okay sorry yes do not test again the other side you have you really we we have the space we can speak we can you know have refugee human rights defenders they can write opinions and we really they also inform but again let us not go beyond to make statements that can cause international or cause states to you know kind of have conflict and any of the day we might cause ourselves problems I don't mean by I say the message yes yes so and because you are you're informed to me that Congolese are going Congolese refugees are going to vote for me this is news and if it's happening it is illegal and we shall not recognize illegalities if it comes to really our our our attention property we're going to have taken it we're going to take it through our external and internal security agency definitely there will be issues it's not proper and I don't encourage the rules are clear and please refugees you cannot participate in the national politics or politics of your country origin if you want to participate in the politics of your country origin you can always go back and we have worries actually it's one of the challenges refugees moving back even without our knowledge and then come back without our knowledge using various Polish borders but it's not a good practice and let us if you're if you want to be Uganda's the national of your country be a national of that country because we also have them here and the rights are really all good so my hypothesis on that is refugees currently are not supposed to participate and if there are some who are doing so it's not proper it's illegal and you risk who you like to face then a refugee welfare council committees this has been even a big concern which has been raised in the recent allegations but we are it's under investigations we hope the reports will be able to tell us but I want to mention that as any elections even in this room if Andy said let us have an election on the reader or if I am at committee I can assure you there will be some co-presents after humanity they are bound to be and for refugee settlements because as I mentioned actually these welfare committee castles these are administrative kind of efforts so possibly moving forward we may need like we have the elections act the national elections act member of parliament elections act we may have the refugee welfare council elections act so that we know clearly who does what there is even an electoral body to conduct that but all this requires resources moving forward maybe in the long term it's what we have to do but these co-presents we've received them and I don't want to go much into we'll be able to get a report and be able to respond most probably on that but it's majorly naturally you'll find those kinds of efforts and Mogisha you asked why are we looking at naturalization yet we are saying it's not possible we all agree that it is very good and that's why for us who are passionate of refugee matters as one of the euro so we are trying to champion it we are trying to push for it to the extent that if there isn't any legal barriers we see how they can be amended or you know replied so that it is possible because I don't find it logical for someone to be here for 25 years and then you're saying I know only Uganda I mean if an alien or another national from Congo is here and it's not been a refugee and can be able to benefit from that why not a refugee and that's our argument and that's what we are trying to but it's something you must take cautiously as you know it touches some political interests so it's something we are pushing and it needs problem-making the acts we are trying to take it slowly to see that it can be one of the alternative solutions to especially protracted refugee caseloads and the last is Alex that Rwandese and Burundians register in as Komori's refugees well it's interesting and definitely it will call if it's happening to call for us to not only even work alone but also work with YouTube who can help us and tell us that actually this is a Rwandese Burundian not a a Kenyan or not a Komori or the other way around of course it also sends a message why is this being done okay because of that so is it because maybe they are security-related issues they don't want to be followed is it because one wants to be registered as Sudanese South Sudanese because South Sudanese are being given prima facie and they don't want to do individual status determination okay is it you to fear to be detected like some might say or yeah that's what I'm saying to get but we've got some cases I want to assure you but it's not easy I'll tell you I come from those who know where it is like Alex said we have people who are speaking but the same language in Rwanda we have the people who are speaking the same language you know the side of DRC so it's possibly myself who can easily detect that this is a Rwandese or this is a Komori the other time I was in the meeting in the Chigari Africa Africa Union but with my delegation every time you know I met the other participants every time we were thinking of Rwand because I look like Rwand so there are those challenges but they are all efforts to make sure that and this is the kind of criminal arrangements are given mentioned about why would you hide your nationalities and if we get to find out under the refugee act it is clear you will your status will be with the drone through the refugee eligibility committee so if you know any as people there as one later slow we shall be able to put that case in the refugee eligibility committee and the status can show that you is drawn according to the act because such a person obtains status through fraudulent or misrepresentation kind of needs so they don't take care of that and as for refugees handling their passports on the arrival you see when you seek asylum you've said my country is no longer able to protect me so you've given yourself to a country to protect you so we don't expect you when you're here as a refugee to again go to Colorado to your embassy to seek services okay that's why when you want to travel out of the country you will even come and we give you a conventional travel look at it so if you want to keep with your passport where do you want to keep with your passport possibly those will be the people who want to fly back to Chinsasa then back to a table then back so for me it does know how you hand it in to the last security measure it's done by security agencies they keep it when you want to go back you go back and they hand you over and you hand them back the refugee documents you can't keep both the documents and a few researchers will go to case actually Mirama Hills where some people were phoned with the refugee documents and again they were entering the country using certain countries passports they can assure you that matter reach to you in the year is excellent and it can't bring your problems that's why I'm saying you'd rather carry one document thank you I'm very sorry we are we're out of time but I think if we can discuss after a massive apologies for Lena for asking you to put yourself forward and then telling you that there's no time left to do so and also to everyone else in the room I'm terribly sorry but we are running out of time and we just need to close I want to I'll hand over to my colleague Anna who will do closing remarks but I just wanted to take another opportunity to thank you so much to this panel for your really sort of insightful views and the interesting conversation that has come about from the floor and and once again just to appreciate the environment we're in whereby we can have these conversations and let's let's all work together to ensure that that continues so thank you very much to the panel so Anna over to you thank you so much everybody just to briefly introduce myself my name is Anna and I work with the Russian Foundation and I complete working with Lena and Armand throughout this project in different phases I first of all I would like to thank Andy and Tigrana thousands of times more first of all for really doing the research and getting all the all the knowledge and all the information on the ground but also for who is gathering today because I think that the value of what what we're doing would have been not even approximately as we could not have this this space here to engage and then discuss I I'm very honored to be able to say a few words in the end it is a bit also difficult to summarize these these let's say complex issues in these central times but let me give you that try from the international relations department of the Robert Koch Foundation or believe that it's important to have an exchange on issues that happen in different parts of the world and really that it's important for people to be able to learn from each other also and this issue has been particularly interesting because it is also not so present in the debate which is in the end of the day was surprising because it it is issue that has an impact in the real life out there it has been discussed in the sustainable development goals are the goals of building peaceful and inclusive society both as a citizenship but also enabling or participation and yet again it puzzles many people when we when we introduce it in different for us and not only government will represent that if it puzzles really a lot of people who are happily state with a question that is not so much present because this is not have not been the dominating question when we have been discussing with democracy and I sometimes wonder why because in the end of the day we all are political beings if Diana the kind of I'm very rightfully suggested refugees are only citizens that for a particular time have lost their protection with their of their country fleeing itself in a way it's also sometimes a political act maybe not against a particular party or a government but it's an acting saying that I don't want to participate in war and that's a statement that many refugees do by being also and even in the in the in the spaces where there where it is difficult to participate as Victor mentioned discussing the cases in Kenya refugees still try to organize and participate and create these spaces of participation in a very local and very very small level in order to improve their lives so considering this not forgetting that also he's a complex issue because of different political context but also because of the personal situation of people who have fled because in the end of the day there is the maybe also the pressure to say okay uh this is a temporary situation and you're wishing to return or this might become a more permanent situation the reality sometimes shows that we don't know how it's going to turn out so considering this from a very individual perspective it's of course what is of course important is to maybe find ways to expand on these opportunities for people to try to to support people to develop also their political skills and to open up spaces in which these skills can be can be practiced whether that benefits the host country the country foraging or both in the end which I hope and assume will be the case that's a different question therefore I'm very very grateful for all the discussion of today thank you so much again for organizing the space in which we can we can do this and thank you thank you everyone for sharing your stories at the end of the day