When frustrations about the refugee crisis response in Uganda boiled over, it took a local NGO to sort it out.
There were tires burning in the road.
What had begun as a warm welcome in Uganda for South Sudanese refugees fleeing violence had been derailed by ignorance, neglect, and broken promises, and the host community was up in arms.
Since 2016, refugees have poured into northern Uganda, and at first the rapid expansion of the camps—known here as settlements—was hard on local people. Unnecessarily so. Farmland and forests were taken without compensation, classrooms filled to bursting, shrines were desecrated out of sheer ignorance, promised new jobs for local people never materialized, and new clinics and water systems for the settlements put local facilities to shame. And when it came to coordination and decision making, local leaders had no place at the table.
So, by early in 2017, protesters in the town of Odupi were blocking the road to Omuga camp, intentionally preventing aid providers from reaching the refugees.
We will not betray you
A local organization could be forgiven for leaving this mess for the guilty parties to straighten out, but Feni Twaib, director of Oxfam partner ADINGON (the Arua District NGO Network) had a feeling his organization could make a difference. He asked local leaders to call a meeting of everyone in the community who had a stake in the conflict, and more than 200 people showed up. The tone was hostile: when Twaib and his colleagues rose to speak they were insulted and shouted down.
“They thought we were with the Office of the Prime Minister or UNHCR [the UN refugee authorities], and at first they were very bitter with us,” says Twaib. “They didn’t want to let us talk until we explained that we were a local organization. We told them which clans we were from and which sub-counties. We said 'anything that affects you affects us. We will not betray you.' Then they relaxed and began opening up.”
He went on. “We asked them to explain why they were protesting and took notes on what they said. They talked for more than five hours. We didn’t want to interrupt them. We told them we could help them and offered to conduct an investigation.”
“After that, we had about 50 meetings, following up on every allegation with both the accusers and the accused. We met with landlords, district and national authorities, elders, youth groups, and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). We visited farmland and shrines that had been destroyed, and buildings constructed without the permission of the landowner. Then we gathered representatives of all the groups under the same roof and presented our report. The report helped clarify which problems were real and which were simply rumor, and many of the real problems were then addressed.”
The Office of the Prime Minister compensated farmers for lost crops, he explained, and gave resources to restore the desecrated shrines. INGOs and the UN are taking more care to recruit local people when work is available, and host communities now have better access to schools, water, and health centers.
Lack of communication, coordination, and trust were at the root of the problems, he explained, so ADINGON helped set up quarterly meetings for NGOs and INGOs, the UN refugee agency, the Office of the Prime Minister, and the district authorities.
And by all accounts, the tensions have eased dramatically.
“ADINGON helped people understand their rights,” says Fendu Severino, a village elder. “If they hadn’t come, things would have been terrible. There probably would have been violence.”
Strengthening local actors
Oxfam’s partnership with ADINGON is part of a larger initiative known as ELNHA (Empowering Local and National Humanitarian Actors), which involves working hand in hand with country-based humanitarian groups in Uganda and Bangladesh to help them become stronger, more vocal, and more visible. Why? Because local organizations have local knowledge and networks that are critical to effective humanitarian response—but are often overlooked and almost always underfunded. Oxfam and ELNHA have provided trainings and small grants to help local groups not only develop their expertise as humanitarian responders but also improve their financial systems and management, to make them more attractive to donors and therefore more sustainable.
“INGOs used to look at local NGOs as useless,” says Twaib. “Now, they consider us important because of our knowledge of the people and their cultures.”
The trust is there
Severino stands at a religious site that was unwittingly damaged by the camp developers. It is an ancient shrine, he says, and his grandfather is buried there. It is a place for prayers—for rain, and for healing when medicines fail. Rather than rocks or monuments, the spot is marked by living things—bamboo and a shea nut tree. As part of the reparations offered after the ADINGON intervention, he and other elders were given money for a feast and cleansing ceremony here. Now, bamboo shoots are growing high above his head—a sign of regeneration—and he is pleased.
“Now we have peaceful coexistence,” says Severino. “The trust is there.”
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