^^^ Oh yes, I get why people want/ need to come. I would too. I am just wishing for a different kind of world where third world countries were no longer Third World, and people had better options.
Actually Uganda hosts the most refugees (per capita) in the world and Uganda is far from the richest country in the world.
Uganda’s policy towards refugees is the best in the world. Here's why
Compassion and empathy ... children from South Sudan play at the Bidi Bidi settlement, Uganda
We are on Uganda’s northern border with South Sudan. A beautiful area with rolling green hills scattered with small villages comprised of mud huts, mango trees and compact cotton and tobacco fields.
As Chief Adviser to the Education Commission, I am travelling with Save the Children UK’s team including its CEO, Kevin Watkins, on a joint
mission to discuss schooling for South Sudanese children and youth seeking refuge in the north of Uganda.
As we travel, the landscape gradually changes. The huts are replaced with small tent dwellings made from white plastic and emblazoned with the letters UNHCR. We have arrived at the Imvepi refugee settlement. A few miles further down the bumpy, laterite road, we reach the settlement’s reception centre.
The first thing that strikes me is the sheer number of people. Today there are more than 10,000 people at the centre – individuals who have traversed the long road to Uganda from South Sudan. More than 3,000 people arrive every day. It takes a Herculean effort to keep up with the surge.
This is because while neighbouring South Sudan gained independence in 2011, it did not gain peace. Today the country is faced with both conflict and famine and the immediate future is of grave concern. The UN has warned that the conflict could slide into genocide, while at the same time more than half the country now faces mass hunger. As a result, nearly one million South Sudanese refugees have entered Uganda. The sheer size of these numbers is difficult to comprehend. But what is clear is that this is one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.
A view from a helicopter shows Imvepi settlement camp
Image: Reuters/James Akena
At the reception centre, I meet Rose*, 16, and her younger sister Victoria*. They have travelled from South Sudan on their own. “Walk straight down this road and eventually you will reach Uganda,” their parents told them. It took the sisters four days, and now they are sitting in the centre’s unaccompanied-minors section.
Victoria tells me the schools are no longer functioning in South Sudan and she must continue her education. I have three daughters – I cannot imagine their parents’ pain in letting these two beautiful girls venture alone on that treacherous road to Uganda in search of hope in the form of an education.
We move on to the Rhino Camp resettlement area, home to 86,000 people covering 10 square miles. I meet Anni* and her 12-year-old daughter, Sylvia*, who have been here since November 2016. They fled fighting in South Sudan. Sylvia is back in school as part of Save the Children’s accelerated learning programme at Ariwa school.
Anni explains that her neighbours were captured and slaughtered as they slept. It took her five days to reach the border. It was then that her husband was killed in front of her. Anni says they wanted to kill her baby: “I told them, if now, if you want to kill my baby, it is better for you to kill me together. They got my baby and hung the baby facing down and they were holding a knife. I started calling Jesus name, be with me.” Her baby was spared.
Determined to keep her daughter in school, Anni does not have the money to pay for the small fees: “The importance of education is that, if you are learned, the little information you got will empower the child to be independent, to be self-reliant, to be able to handle issues and to be able to sit well with others.” Anni adds that if children do not go to school “… they will be like town dogs who roam”.
The next day we visit another settlement, Bidi Bidi, the largest in the world with around 270,000 people. Here I meet David*, a budding scientist and top of his class in South Sudan. He is sitting at the back of the class quietly reading his book when I approach him. I ask if I can look through his large blue hardback exercise book. His face lights up. He shows me with pride the work he had been doing at school in South Sudan. “I want to be a scientist,” he explains to me. On that long journey from South Sudan, most people brought nothing but themselves; David clung to his book and a desire to learn in school.
David with his exercise book
Image: Juozas Cernius/Save the Children
During our time in Uganda, we meet many more refugees. Their stories are disturbing, journeys horrific, and futures unknown. But coursing through the settlements and country is something not seen, but rather felt: Uganda’s compassion and empathy towards the South Sudanese refugees. In a world where refugees are increasingly vilified and in a region under great stress, this compassion and empathy is both humbling and uplifting.
Uganda’s work with refugees in partnership with humanitarian organizations, such as Save the Children, is of great importance. Save the Children and the Education Commission are working together to bridge the gap between short-term humanitarian responses and longer-term development in education. The Commission’s
Pioneer Country Initiative was launched in Uganda late last year when a delegation headed by former President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, met with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. Save the Children is now providing emergency schooling to refugees
across Uganda, top up classes for those who have fallen behind, and play camps that help children recover from their trauma.
Northern Ugandans have their own history of being uprooted and displaced. Even as recently as 2003-2012, 95% of the population – some 1.8 million people – were internally displaced. Throughout our delegation trip, we come face to face with the expression of Ugandan compassion and empathy. From the teacher at Kiranga primary school, a doctor at Ariwa health centre and the government official in Arua, to the minister of education and the minister of finance – the list goes on. This deeply felt compassion has resulted in an incredibly progressive policy towards refugees, one of the best in the world.
Read further https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/uganda-refugees-what-we-can-learn/
As Rich Nations Close the Door on Refugees, Uganda Welcomes Them
Queen Chandia, a South Sudanese refugee who cares for 22 children, harvesting land in Uganda that has been lent to her by local residents.CreditNichole Sobecki for The New York Times
ARUA, Uganda — President Trump is vowing to send the military to stop migrants trudging from Central America. Europe’s leaders are paying African nations to block migrants from crossing the Mediterranean — and detaining the ones who make it in filthy, overcrowded camps.
But Solomon Osakan has a very different approach in this era of rising xenophobia. From his uncluttered desk in northwest Uganda, he manages one of the largest concentrations of refugees anywhere in the world: more than 400,000 people scattered across his rural district.
He explained what he does with them: Refugees are allotted some land — enough to build a little house, do a little farming and “be self-sufficient,” said Mr. Osakan, a Ugandan civil servant. Here, he added, the refugees live in settlements, not camps — with no barbed wire, and no guards in sight.
“You are free, and you can come and go as you want,” Mr. Osakan added.
As many nations are securing their borders and turning refugees away, Uganda keeps welcoming them. And they keep coming, fleeing catastrophes from across this part of Africa.
In all, Uganda has as many as 1.25 million refugees on its soil, perhaps more, making it one of the most welcoming countries in the world, according to the United Nations.
And while Uganda’s government has made hosting refugees a core national policy, it works only because of the willingness of rural Ugandans to accept an influx of foreigners on their land and shoulder a big part of the burden.
Uganda is not doing this without help. About $200 million in humanitarian aid to the country this year will largely pay to feed and care for the refugees. But they need places to live and small plots to farm, so villages across the nation’s north have agreed to carve up their communally owned land and share it with the refugees, often for many years at a time.
“Our population was very few and our community agreed to loan the land,” said Charles Azamuke, 27, of his village’s decision in 2016 to accept refugees from South Sudan, which has been torn apart by civil war. “We are happy to have these people. We call them our brothers.”
South Sudanese refugees and Ugandans gathering fruit after working in the fields in Mireyi, Uganda.
CreditNichole Sobecki for The New York Times
South Sudanese refugees and Ugandans gathering fruit after working in the fields in Mireyi, Uganda.
CreditNichole Sobecki for The New York Times
United Nations officials have pointed to Uganda for its “open border” policy. While the United States, a much more populous nation, has admitted more than three million refugees since 1975, the American government settles them in the country after they have first been thoroughly screened overseas.
Read further https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/world/africa/uganda-refugees.html
