Is Uganda’s progressive refugee policy equalizing the food security of national and refugee households?
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Refugee Studies
Abstract
Uganda is the largest refugee hosting country in Africa and third in the world. The
country operates a progressive refugee integration and self-reliance policy whereby
refugees are allowed access to land and other productive resources. The effectiveness
of this unique approach to refugee integration has not been empirically investigated.
Weestimate a multinomial logistic regression model to investigate whether the food
security of refugee households is not significantly different from that of Ugandan
nationals. We use cross sectional data collected in July 2019 from 2400 national and
refugee households across 10 control and 10 World Food Program (WFP) intervention
districts in Uganda using a randomized control trial (RCT) design. As we
hypothesized, Ugandan citizenship together with size of land holding, livestock
ownership and consumption of animal source food, marital status and geographical
location enhance the food security of the household. However, our study found
surprisingly that households currently receivingWFPsupport remain food insecure
compared to those not receiving support, something we did not anticipate finding.
Another surprising finding was that women headed households were more food
secure than male-headed households across other socioeconomic parameters.
Our findings hence suggest that in terms of equalizing the food security of refugees
with that of Ugandan nationals, Uganda’s progressive policy on refugees remains
work in progress.
Description
Keywords
Food security, Food consumption Score, Progressive refugee policy, Uganda
Citation
Bashaasha, B., Emegu, R. I., & Yamashita, M. (2021). Is Uganda’s progressive refugee policy equalizing the food security of national and refugee households?. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(4), 4572-4584. doi:10.1093/jrs/feab022