West Nilers are onto something with their engagement forum

It is not easy for neighborhoods to adjust to a sudden influx of foreigners and how that upsets age-old traditions. The makeup of schools, entertainment, cuisines, the economy, jobs, everything. It changes.
The fallout and sociopolitical tensions that are so evident in today’s Europe are a result of those changes and how the nationals are dealing with them. And this is for countries with the means. What happens to those whose ends can barely meet?

I had the opportunity to attend the West Nile regional engagement forum, hosted in Arua, last week. The event, a coming together of local government leaders from the 11 districts that form the Northwestern region was convened by the Dutch NGO, VNG International. Other regions may have some version of this - Toro PeopIe’s Conference, Banyakigezi Convention, and Buganda Conference come to mind. But this was a little different.

For many people, it is hard to appreciate Uganda until you isolate the pieces from the whole. Meetings like these are crucial ingredients to that understanding. We shall leave it to the tour guides to talk about Nang Nang, the historical sites, the falls, and the mountains in this part of the world. Let us focus on another interesting tidbit - the fact that the region also plays host to the biggest refugee settlement - Bidibidi - in Yumbe district in Uganda. With a reported 270,000 refugees, mostly from South Sudan and DRC, the camp is also one of the biggest in the world.

But even for the well-intentioned leaders in the region, having that many people show up at your doorstep, in one go, can be unnerving. From schools to health centres, land, water, and housing (especially in urban centres), they exert pressure on every available resource. And that is before you get into the cultural clashes, crime, and insecurity.

So, while the centre passes the policies and scampers around for resources, it is the leaders on the ground who have to deal with the daily realities of playing host indefinitely. To get that process going, they decided to start talking to each other. To share whatever challenges and fears they had and whatever models and best practices existed to be borrowed. That, in essence, is the objective of the engagement forum.

There are things you don’t think about when you think about the refugee-hosting situation. For example, the fact that refugees receive cash which they use to buy food distorts supply and food security because people start farming for sale without factoring consumption. Or the fact that new people also lead to a spike in crime and there isn’t enough manpower to prevent, investigate, and apprehend because that would not have been planned for.

It was, therefore, refreshing to watch them discuss the challenges that come with hosting refugees without lamenting and crying to an oftentimes unresponsive centre to hold. Instead, they talked about what can be done under the circumstances. Community solutions for community problems.

It is unlikely that our tensions could explode to the levels that we see in the West. There is little to separate the people of West Nile from their kinsmen to the north in South Sudan or to the west in DRC. Only a national boundary that was drawn by colonialists, a little over 100 years ago. Yet we also know that it doesn’t take much to spark a conflict that consumes everyone - especially in situations such as these.

Nobody understands this more than the local leaders who deal with the daily pushing and shoving over the limited resources available to the refugees and their hosts. That is why they are motivated to make things work, without waiting for directions from the top. You often see regions ravaged by persistent problems that you won’t necessarily find in other places in Uganda. The hope is that soon, their leaders will be trooping to West Nile for benchmarking visits.

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds. [email protected]