Uganda’s Generous Open-door Refugee Policy is Breaking Down

This Story was Originally Published by The EastAfrican

When Uganda enacted the Refugees Act of 2006, the international humanitarian community celebrated it as a decisive and laudable step forward. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, described Uganda as a “world leader in refugee policy” and a “model for the world”. Here was an African government that chose to do what wealthier nations would not: provide refugees with land, freedom of movement, and the right to work.

The UN and donors held up Uganda as a poster child for the world’s most welcoming country, and lined up to pledge support. The World Bank stepped in with financing. Consequently, Uganda’s “self-reliance model” quickly became a reference for what a durable solution of refugee and displacement looks like.

Yet, nearly two decades later, this model looks like a far cry, not because Uganda’s generosity has waned, but because the framework is under tremendous, overlapping strains. Additionally, Uganda recently signed a bilateral agreement with the United States to accept deported migrants. Some of the deportees have already arrived in Uganda.

The model rested on three critical assumptions: that Uganda would provide land for the refugees, that donors would reliably fund the refugee response, and that the two combined would enable refugees to become self-sufficient.

Recent Refugees International interviews with refugees, aid workers, and UN and government officials reveal that today, all three underlying assumptions of the “model” refugee policy are facing mounting crises driven by policy failures. Stabilizing the model will depend on rebalancing its core pillars: Securing adequate land, restoring donor support, and implementing a more strategic land management and tenure system.

The Promise

When the Refugee Act entered into force in 2006, Uganda hosted approximately 160,000 refugees, making the model plausible at that scale. As of October 2025, that figure had reached 1.96 million, making Uganda the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa.

The refugee population has grown more than tenfold since the law’s passage.

The land has not kept pace. Each refugee household is supposed to receive a 30 meters by 30 meters — 900 square meters, or 0.09 hectares plot for shelter and cultivation. But this was already insufficient for food security at the outset. Now, with nearly 2 million refugees spread across 13 districts, land is running out fast. Assessments repeatedly confirm that the allocations are too small and poor in quality to support even basic subsistence, let alone surplus.

Land Tenure System

Uganda’s land tenure exacerbates the land question. Uganda’s 1995 Constitution recognizes four systems operating simultaneously: customary, leasehold, freehold, and mailo. Customary tenure, which is communally held, clan-administered, and without a formal title, accounts for between 75 and 84 percent of all parcels nationally. Freehold land grants full ownership rights, which allow the owner to use or transfer it as they wish. Mailo, a uniquely Ugandan system, involves estates where landowners have overlapping rights with tenants.

In the refugee-hosting districts of West Nile, home to more than 800,000 refugees in places like Yumbe, Adjumani, Madi Okollo, and Obongi, land is chiefly governed by customary tenure.

In the southwest, where Nakivale, Kyaka II, Rwamwanja, and Kyangwali are located, freehold and mailo-adjacent arrangements create a different but equally complicated web of overlapping claims.

The upshot of these overlapping tenure systems is that the government cannot acquire land or redistribute it. For instance, when the Office of the Prime Minister designates a settlement, it must negotiate with customary landowners and offer adequate compensation or provide community consultation.

As refugee numbers increase because of conflicts in the neighboring countries, settlements overflow, and the pressure on the land increases. This leads to rapidly worsening environmental damage from deforestation and soil exhaustion. If these trends are left unchecked, conflict between refugees and hosts is no longer a remote possibility, but a real prospect, threatening to destabilize the response.

Donor abandonment

The second pillar, donor funding, has declined significantly. Uganda’s response is severely underfunded, and by the end of 2023, only 35 percent of the required funding had been met. In 2025, this shortfall became acute. Major donor cuts, including reductions tied to the suspension of USAID funding, left the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR’s) Uganda budget with just 17–25 percent of the money needed by mid-year.

The consequences are significant. Food aid, already cut in 2023 to the bare minimum for most refugees, has been cut further and is now given only to the new arrivals. Health services shared by refugees and hosts are under tremendous strain due to staff shortages and reduced supplies. A single mother of three who spoke to Refugees International lamented that she receives 25,000 Ugandan Shillings (about $7). Still, her insulin now costs 24,000 Ugandan Shillings (about $7), leaving her with hardly anything to survive on. She relies on the goodwill of her community for food. Beyond food and health challenges, the cuts are also affecting protection and education. Schools are overflowing. A once celebrated model that attracted refugees and donors’ praise now risks falling.

While Uganda has kept part of its bargain – granting refugees land, legal status, and freedom of movement – the donors have not kept theirs, leaving Uganda and refugees carrying the burden. The system is buckling, and the consequences will be severe.

Self Reliance

Proponents of the self-reliance model argued that combining land, labor rights, and freedom of movement would enable refugees to build their own livelihoods over time, eventually reducing their dependence on aid.

There is some evidence of success in specific sectors and settlements; however, aggregate data temper such optimism. According to a 2020 vulnerability assessment, even with food assistance, more than two-thirds of refugee households in Uganda lived on less than $1.68 per person per day (PPP). When food assistance was removed, that figure rose to 80 percent. These assessments were conducted before the most recent funding reductions, indicating that present-day figures may be worse.

Self-reliance has always been an aspirational end state. The conditions for its success, adequate land, stable markets, physical security, access to credit, and steady food assistance, have not yet materialized. The result: refugees are asked to be self-reliant, yet not given sufficient tools to be so. Informal coping strategies proliferate, including reducing meals, relying on community support, withdrawing children from school to work, and being forced to turn to informal explorative work to survive, undermining the central plank of Uganda’s refugee policy.

The self-reliance approach also has a political dimension: it has justified donor reductions in assistance while providing the Ugandan government with a framework to attract development finance. The World Bank’s investments through the IDA refugee sub-window have real value. Still, these cannot substitute for the humanitarian funding that keeps people alive while self-reliance is being built. Both tracks must operate simultaneously; substitution will not work; it will instead weaken both.

Despite the challenges outlined, the promise of Uganda’s refugee policy has not been lost.