Merve Erdilmen, McGill University

Witness Ayesiga Sosthenes, University of Dar es Salaam

Executive Summary

The idea of strengthening local humanitarian actors’ capacities, and access to funding and information, as well as making local non-governmental organizations essential partners in strategic decision-making processes, has been around globally since the early 1990s. Localization efforts have gained momentum since the World Humanitarian Summit (2016), alongside other international platforms and commitments, including the Charter for Change (2015), the Grand Bargain (2016), and the Global Compact on Refugees (2018). Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the essential role local actors play in responding to the crisis.

Amid greater efforts to realize localization ideals in different parts of the world, many have raised concerns about the issues at stake in these initiatives, and the factors that affect their success or failure. Hence, it remains important to better understand localization efforts in various contexts, the opportunities they provide, and challenges they pose.

This paper provides a general overview of opportunities and challenges for localization initiatives in Tanzania. Our research has aimed to understand the impediments faced by local nongovernmental actors and the sources of impediments to localization of humanitarian assistance and refugee protection initiatives in Tanzania. During our five weeks of field work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, we employed a mix of in-depth stakeholder interviews, participant observation and process tracing. Our findings show that even though the localization process has made important progress globally, it remains to be studied how international political economy concerns and power inequalities embedded in humanitarian action inform localization initiatives on the ground. Our paper provides the first analysis of this link in localization between global and local. Furthermore, we also provide several recommendations for policymakers and future research.

View the full LERRN Working Paper Series here:

DOI

Citation

Erdilmen, M., Sosthenes, W. A. (2020).Opportunities and Challenges for Localization of Humanitarian Action in Tanzania. Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN).

This year’s World Health Day comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping the globe and putting millions of lives at risk. It’s important to highlight that refugees are more vulnerable to infection due to their precarious living conditions in camps. As the world continues its attempt to flatten the curve and find a cure for the virus, it’s crucial to consider and include the particular vulnerabilities of marginalized populations to ensure an inclusive and effective global response.    

Faith Mario Mjalilla, Program Officer Legal Advocacy and Communications at   provides insights into the response in Tanzania and the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for refugees:

As the Arabian proverb goes, “He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.” For refugees and asylum seekers who have been forced to leave everything behind in their countries to find safety in a foreign land, health is their greatest wealth.

Recently the (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a pandemic. On 16th March, the government of Tanzania confirmed its first case. COVID-19 is a global challenge due to the absence of a vaccine and treatment. While COVID-19 does not discriminate and we are all susceptible, the precarious living conditions of refugees increases their vulnerability to the disease.

Likewise, the response to the virus should not discriminate; it should include those who are most marginalized like refugees. This is important because the best way to manage COVID-19 is by breaking the chains of transmission, which cannot be achieved if some individuals are excluded.

The Regional Administration and Local Government of Kigoma developed a COVID-19 Contingency Plan (KCP) which integrates refugees and asylum seekers as well. 244,629 of 287,160 registered refugees in Tanzania live in refugee camps that are located in Kigoma, a region bordering DRC and Burundi. Kigoma ranks second priority risk region; luckily, there are no officially confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of now. The government of Tanzania, , and civil society organizations (CSOs) are working hard to ensure that refugees in camps are safe from COVID-19 by further scaling up health, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Currently, refugees in camps are being provided with extra soap and additional litres of water to 20 litres per person to reinforce personal hygiene practices. Hand-washing facilities have been established in public places and offices to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Nyarugusu refugee camp in the western province of Kigoma, Tanzania. [Photo © Aaron Amy Tate]

In urban settings, only a portion of the legally recognized refugees and asylum seekers with permits to reside in urban areas have been provided with sanitizers and soaps. The majority of urban refugees depend on UNHCR for their humanitarian needs, because they are not allowed to work, purchasing sanitizers, soap and enough water is a luxury they cannot afford with the little financial support they get from UNHCR. The situation is harder for refugees without permits who reside in urban areas. They do not receive any humanitarian assistance, and most have no jobs. They can barely get three meals per day, which may likely compromise their immunity.

They do not have access to enough water and cannot afford sanitizers or extra soap. How they will stay safe from COVID-19 is a mystery.

UNHCR, CSOs, and the government in refugee camps have been raising awareness to their staff, refugees, and host communities regarding COVID-19. They use posters prepared in different languages, seminars, and loud speakers to ensure that the message on COVID-19, preventive measures, and best health practices reach everyone.

The same is not done for urban refugees. It may be assumed that they have the same access to media as most Tanzanians in urban areas, but most of them are struggling to get their daily meal; they cannot think of buying a TV, radio, or newspaper. They are then at the risk of being misinformed hence risking everyone.

WHO and health care workers insist on social distancing. Refugee camps in Tanzania are already congested, making it easy for COVID-19 to spread rapidly. Like everywhere in the country, the government, UNHCR, and CSOs have been promoting social distancing in camps, and all schools are closed. These measures have brought many aspects of life to a standstill, but a strict response is necessary to stay healthy and to protect everyone. As refugees practice social distancing, the exercise to repatriate Burundian refugees is still in progress! While many countries have closed borders and suspended all the unnecessary movements to contain the virus, Burundi and Tanzania have not. Repatriation puts repatriating refugees and everyone else in danger.

The government and UNHCR have undertaken measures to improve the conditions of hospitals and creating isolation centres at refugee camps and villages of host communities.

The approach being taken to control the spread of the disease further demonstrates that it is necessary not only to see good health as the absence of illness. It is a fundamental part of daily life in which people attain their needs and cope with their environment to achieve physical, mental, and social well-being.

Faith Mario Mjalilla is a Research Assistant and Program Officer at DIGNITY Kwanza who particularly focuses on legal aid, policy advocacy and communications.

Leonard Chimanda, University of Dar es Salaam

Stéfanie Morris, University of Ottawa

Executive Summary

In the summer of 2019, Leonard Chimanda, a Masters candidate of Laws in Migration and Refugee Law at the University of Dar es Salaam and StĂ©fanie Morris, a researcher at the University of Ottawa were tasked to evaluate whether there are gaps in Tanzania’s current national legal and regulatory framework.

In the summer of 2019, Leonard and StĂ©fanie were tasked to evaluate Tanzania’s national legal and regulatory framework.

Discrepancies between international law and policy and local practice have proved significant in Tanzania in recent years. As a country that has hosted refugees since its independence, with no end in sight, the protracted nature of this situation has challenged the government’s willingness to cooperate in the implementation of international policies.

Leonard and Stéfanie drew on legal texts, recent academic literature, reports from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and findings from semi-structured interviews with local and international actors. The research found that the Refugees Act allows for a great deal of flexibility in interpretation, while policies and practices have increasingly restricted the lives of refugees in Tanzania. Additionally, recent actions by Tanzanian authorities have contradicted some of their legal commitments and suggest increased collaborative, local research as a tool for future advocacy.

View the full LERRN Working Paper Series here:

More about Leonard

Leonard is a Tanzanian citizen who received is pursuing a Masters of Laws in Migration and Refugee at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is passionate about migration and refugee law and spent several years volunteering with various humanitarian organizations such as the and the . Currently, he’s also a tutorial assistant in law at the University of Dodoma, Tanzania.

Leonard is happy to be a part of LERRN because it gave him the opportunity to put the knowledge and skills he learned in university into practice.

“I recommend the LERRN project as one amongst the appropriate forum through which refugee treatments in various countries in the world can be improved. I am delighted to continue with my passion and works on humanitarian assistance especially for refugees and migrants and it is my heartedly wish to keep in touch with LERRN.”

View Leonard’s full bio here.

More about Stéfanie

Stéfanie has a Master’s in Public and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa and a Bachelor’s in Sociocultural Anthropology. She has worked on a number of qualitative and ethnographic research teams on subjects ranging from transnational families in India to refugee family reunification in Canada, and now Tanzania’s legal framework for refugees. She continues to work as a researcher for the University of Ottawa and as an analyst for Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada with the hope of contributing to improved conditions for migrant and displaced persons, domestically and internationally.

View StĂ©fanie’s full bio here.

Watch the video below to learn more about Leonard, Stéfanie and their work:

DOI

Citation

Chimanda, L., Morris, S. (2020). Tanzania’s National Legal Framework for Refugees. Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN).

The DIGNITY Kwanza team.

DIGNITY Kwanza believes that every person has a potential value of his/her own and everyone within the society should get an opportunity to show this potential, achieve self-fulfillment, and contribute to the country’s overall development. Through education, support and empowerment, Dignity Kwanza works to promote and safeguard humanity and dignity of marginalized and vulnerable populations.

DIGNITY Kwanza has several notable projects that fall in line with their mission.

Economic Resilience Project

DIGNITY Kwanza started an innovative entrepreneurship training program aiming to empower and create new value for vulnerable urban refugees and poor host community members in Dar es Salaam. Refugees and host community members work in pairs to develop business ideas and are supported with kick start money to implement their business plans. In this way, the project builds economic independence and promotes peaceful co-existence and mutual support.

The first phase of the project, funded by the French embassy in Tanzania, provided business training to 50 vulnerable individuals, and kick start money to five pairs of individuals to implement their business plans. Community leaders were also provided with capital to establish businesses that would benefit their community members. The second phase, funded by the Amaris Foundation, is focused on mentorship, coaching, provision of legal and technical support, and project monitoring.

This project has many success stories, including individuals who now run their own restaurants, tailoring marts, and a poultry farm that has grown to the capacity of 600 chickens which are sold to reliable permanent customers.

One of the individuals who was able to implement their tailoring business plan thanks to DIGNITY Kwanza’s entrepreneurship training program.

Empowering Communities at risk of Statelessness in East Africa – Tanzania.

Working alongside the Kenya Human Rights Commission, and the International Refugee Rights Initiative in Uganda, DIGNITY Kwanza launched a project to empower stateless communities in East Africa. Their goal is to empower and equip groups affected by or at risk of statelessness with tools and knowledge to enable them to advocate for access to citizenship.

As a result of this project, the Makonde community in Zanzibar who are at risk of becoming stateless, were able to organize themselves, register all community members, and present their case before the government. They have been granted audience before the House of Representatives where they will present their concerns on their own.

DIGNITY Kwanza continues to provide legal aid to people at risk of becoming stateless.

DIGNITY Kwanza launched a project to empower stateless communities in East Africa.

Working together to prevent Gender-based violence and Sextortion to women and girls

DIGNITY Kwanza is committed to addressing Gender-based violence (GBV) including sextortion affecting women and girls both in migrant and refugee communities, and within Tanzanian host communities. DIGNITY Kwanza assists women and girls who have been impacted by GBV to develop safe spaces where issues can be discussed, and where they can obtain legal assistance. Paralegals within their own communities are educated on the legal procedures for when cases of GBV arise, such as reporting mechanisms, preserving evidence/proof, and case pipelines.

DIGNITY Kwanza also works with local government officials to address GBV issues in communities, and is part of the coalition advocating for community and social institutions to combat GBV, for example, the establishment of family courts.

DIGNITY Kwanza assists women and girls who have been impacted by gender-based violence.

Legal aid to urban refugees/ asylum seekers, people at risk of statelessness, vulnerable migrants, victims of GBV and people living in extreme poverty

DIGNITY Kwanza provides individualized and group legal assistance to their target groups. Legal aid includes legal advice, legal representation, legal drafting, education and empowerment through training on legal rights and procedures. For example, individuals are educated on refugee status determination procedures, how to file applications for naturalization or how to lodge certain complains as the law provides. This is to ensure that their target groups can live with dignity by obtaining legal status, opening the doors for economic and social rights. Since July 2019 DIGNITY Kwanza has succeeded in providing legal aid to 48 Beneficiaries.

This post was written by Faith Mario Mjalilla, Research Assistant and Program Officer at DIGNITY Kwanza with a special focus on legal aid, policy advocacy and communications.

Merve Erdilmen, PhD Student, Department of Political Science, McGill University

Executive Summary

This paper provides a brief review of the literature on the link between humanitarian and development approaches to durable solutions for refugees. By shedding light on the meaning, scope, and timing of durable solutions; strengths and shortcomings of traditional durable solutions; the emergence of alternative solutions; intersectional approaches to durable solutions; and the roles of international organizations, non-governmental organizations, as well as refugees themselves in the pursuit of durable solutions as they relate to the humanitarian-development nexus, the paper aims at examining the gaps in the literature and avenues for future studies and policies. The paper has three main findings. First, while the literature on the humanitarian-development nexus as it relates to durable solutions has received remarkable interest from scholars and policymakers, the links between the humanitarian approach to emergencies, durable solutions for refugees, and development lenses on the solutions are not always clearly examined in the literature. Second, the extensive literature on the durable solutions to displacement appears to focus mostly on experiences of flight and displacement and remains limited in exploring the struggle for solutions. Finally, most of the work on durable solutions studies solutions in the Global North, which is the destination only for a small proportion of refugee populations, rendering the focus on the pursuit of solutions within the Global South limited. There is a need for a deeper understanding of which “solutions” work in which contexts, recognizing the difficulty of reaching general conclusions about processes that are shaped by context-specific histories, cultures, socioeconomic conditions and experiences. It is also important to articulate the gap between refugees’ everyday practices and the policies of international organizations that contribute to solutions, the meaning of achieving a solution, and the perspectives that guide the conversation on the humanitarian-development nexus as it relates to durable solutions for refugees. The fundamental questions like solutions for who, by whom, how, and when deserve more attention, especially within the context of the Global South.

View the full LERRN Working Paper Series here:

DOI

Citation

Erdilmen, M. (2019). Durable Solutions and the Humanitarian-Development Nexus: A Literature Review. Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN).

In the piece, he highlights that “the adoption of the Convention appears to have accomplished little in reducing the problem.”

Khoti suggests that the Convention’s anniversary should be “an opportunity to reconsider the long overdue issue of review both of the Refugees Act, 1998 along with the National Refugee Policy, 2003, along with the adoption of Regulations to the Refugees Act.”

Congratulations, Khoti!

Read the full article here: The Citizen 02 October 2019

Khoti also gave a lecture at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ in May 2018 on the challenges of North-South research partnerships.

Watch the lecture here:

In the spirit of collaboration which is so central to LERRN, we’re writing this post together. We do this not only to highlight our research in Tanzania but also to discuss why local-international research partnerships are the bedrock of this undertaking. In what follows, we alternate between separate and combined reflections on the first four weeks of our partnership in studying the national legal framework for refugees in Tanzania.

Professor Khoti Kamanga, Stéfanie & Leonard at the University of Dar es Salaam, August 2019.

ł§łŮĂ©´Ú˛ą˛Ôľ±±đ:

Since I’ve previously been introduced in a post, I’ll jump right into introducing my research partner: Leonard Chimanda.

Leonard is a Tanzanian Master’s student in Law at the University of Dar es Salaam and his interest in refugee issues began long before he joined the LERRN project. During his advanced secondary studies, he was part of the voluntary team that went to Ulyankulu Settlement in Tabora (central Tanzania) to teach Burundian refugees as they prepared for secondary school. He also participated in national and international moot court competitions for International Humanitarian Law in 2017 in Tanzania. During these sessions, he was deeply interested in the forced migration caused by armed conflict and later, during his undergraduate studies in law, he continued to study this subject by taking a voluntary course in refugee law.

All of these things led Leonard to where he is today: finishing his Masters of Laws with a focus on Migration and Refugee Law and conducting research with LERRN. We were introduced by email mid-summer 2019 and I was immediately impressed by Leonard’s obvious expertise and deep commitment to refugee protection. He can rattle off laws in a way only a truly passionate scholar can. As someone who had never been to Tanzania before, four weeks of partnership has taught me that I would be entirely incapable of conducting this research in a month without him.

Leonard:

Stéfanie and I were introduced by email in June and we set out to write our work plan and exchange information about refugee law. We met for the first time in person on July 23rd when she arrived in Dar es Salaam. From my perspective, the LERRN project is a special opportunity for me to practice, through research, what I learned in class. The story of Tanzania’s refugee laws is a familiar narrative to me. Being a party to the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of a Refugee of 1951 and 1967, and to the OAU Refugee Convention of 1969, Tanzania enacted the Refugee (Control) Act, 1966 as her first refugee legislation. This Act was repealed by the Refugees Act of 1998, soon followed by the National Refugee Policy of 2003. During the Nyerere years between independence and 1989, and in the spirit of pan-africanism and Ujamaa, Tanzania’s refugee policies and practices were generally considered open and welcoming. Due to these practices, the country received the as a recognition for its hospitality in hosting refugees. However, from 1990 to date, the country’s refugee policy and practice has changed and has become more restrictive. The current government has increasingly turned to restrictive measures for “managing” asylum seekers and refugees.

Based on the government’s current tone, reflected in the National Refugee Policy of 2003, refugees pose a threat to security, the environment, morality and development. Tanzania’s withdrawal from the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), in February 2018 only several months after signing on as a pilot country, demonstrates the shifting nature of refugee policy here. Currently hosting approximately , the majority of whom are from Burundi (74%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (25.8%), what the Tanzania government chooses to do has far reaching implications.

Both:

With this history in mind, we are attempting to trace how national law, policy and practice might be conditioning the implementation of global refugee policy. What factors create barriers and gaps in protection? And what can reasonably be done to create more favourable conditions for implementation and collaboration in Tanzania? We’ve begun by studying and summarizing the national laws and policy; interviewing local organizations (Dignity Kwanza, Tanganyika Christian Refugee Services), large INGOs (Oxfam, UNHCR, Danish Refugee Council) and academics (Professor Koti Kamanga); and by attending partnership meetings () and one conference event on Statelessness.

One thing has stood out in particular: the government of Tanzania is intent on making its own decisions, not necessarily those that suit the international community. In all of our meetings, partners have suggested that what is truly necessary at this time is to support local initiatives, to build capacity on the ground, and to localize research so that it will be Tanzania grown and Tanzania owned. Therefore, LERRN’s work is extremely timely and we are gathering what we hope is evidence that localized research is a vital tool for supporting advocacy efforts and increasing refugee protection.

ł§łŮĂ©´Ú˛ą˛Ôľ±±đ:

I chose to become a researcher for LERRN because I believe in its mission to co-create knowledge and centre the voices of local civil society actors in the conversation on international refugee policy. In my eyes, this research would be impossible without the direct local knowledge and expertise Leonard brings to our team and without the team of local organizations supporting our research.

Leonard:

I believe this research will influence the Tanzania refugee policy by making it less restrictive than it is as we speak. From the foregoing, it is lucid that, this research should not end this year, as I believe that influencing and consequently changing the current restrictive refugee policy and practice in Tanzania will be incremental and progressive.

Both:

We look forward to many more years of partnership and improved collaborations between international and local actors with the hope that the spirit of the international, regional and national refugee protection and human rights laws will be increasingly respected and implemented.

Leonard and Stéfanie with fellow LERRN researchers, Witness and Merve, University of Dar es Salaam, August 2019