Refugee camps zone need sustainable development plans

The money is to be used for implementation of various development projects around refugee camps. Norway has consistently been on the forefront of caring for the sustained upkeep and plausible managerial capacity of some forgotten spheres of development needs, out of the broader donor community. It greatly assisted in wildlife zones conservation, and is playing a key role in refugee zones development.

One reason why the international community, with clear exception of Norway and some other international agencies appears to have given up or forgotten about this zone is the time frame. Usually refugees are people who are temporarily displaced and after a definite time framework has eclipsed, they are integrated where they live and become part of the wider development process. This has only been partially realized in the northwestern zone, prolonging the problem.

Many among the 1972 extensive massacres in Burundi were absorbed in a gradual manner, while many others have trickled back to their home country. The situation with Rwanda originating refugees is rather different as their time scale is newer than the first wave of Burundi refugees, but much older than the more recent wave from the same country, as late as 2015. Many are trickling back, similarly.

One problem is that the status of the refugees has remained a personal issue for each of them, and many factors intermingle as they agonize about making decisions on their future. In countries enmeshed in civil war, finding one’s original village and portion of land still remaining is virtually impossible. Returning is thus difficult.

One drawback about the policy environment surrounding refugees in the camps is that their relationship to land is still seen in an old fashioned manner, where they are supposed to go back to some home village. Those who grew up in refugee camps have a lesser expectations of making such claims so they have to figure out if they go back to seek for occupations like petty trade in the home country of seek to integrate in the country of displacement. Here they are confronted with being non-citizens, whereas it would greatly help if there was capital allocation to purchase idle portions of land and ease into the community. UN agencies can examine that aspect too.

In a sense it would help to make the surrounding communities more dynamic as resettling people purchasing idle land portions add capital in the community, and thus it is a win-win situation. So far the government donor countries along with UN agencies have focused on the social and economic infrastructure in the zone, but without property movement taking place, no investment in the future can be made. The idea that refugees will simply be absorbed into their original villages is impractical, so they up being a pattern of living in dependency for too long, unfair for themselves and a burden to the wider environment. This can be tackled with greater plans, definitely.

Since we are already moving not just into the East African Common Market but into a more systematic Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the Continental African Free Trade Area (CAFTA) the issue of refugees should be integrated into this wider space. They should be formally assisted to resettle and the citizenship issue be deferred; it is easier to sort out if they are settled.