RLO reducing food scarcity and mediating conflicts in Rhino Camp

Findings from the ASPIRE project unfolds numerous examples of how young South Sudanese refugees contributes to peaceful coexistence in their communities and how they act in different ways towards a more peaceful future. One specific story from Rhino Camp in Uganda showcases how refugee efforts influence positive change, coexistence and collaboration between refugees and host-communities.

Teak Tree Initiative from local refugee-led-organization

In Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement, North-Western Uganda, lives Edward and John, two young South Sudanese refugees. They have established a Refugee-Led-Organisation (RLO), with one particularly interesting initiative, that works to meet the needs of their local community as well as building bridge between refugees, host-community and local actors. Through planting teak trees on host-community land and cooperating with local landlords and NGO’s, Edward and John are making sure that refugees in Rhino Camp can cultivate land and provide much needed food for their families, as refugees food rations are being severally cut.

Edward and John were able to lobby locally based NGO’s engaged in agriculture to obtain a great number of teak tree seedlings. As teak trees are a valuable asset since they grow fast and has a high market value, Edward and John went to local landlords from the host-communities near the settlement to negotiate. The RLO would be planting and tending the teak seedlings on the clan-owned land and in exchange refugees would be allowed to cultivate the fertile land around the teak trees. The landowners can keep the teak trees for themselves, and the refugees can cultivate otherwise inaccessible farmland. The NGO’s are furthermore benefitting from the initiative as they can report progress on green and sustainable indicators to their donors, with minimal coordination efforts and workforce.

The circumstances for conflict in Rhino Camp

Many conflicts in Rhino Camp are connected to overall lack of resources and food scarcity. Especially the dramatic cuts in refugees’ food rations, due to funding shortfalls, are fuelling multiple disagreements. In 2018 one person could get 12 kg per month and already in 2022 the amount was reduced to 4 kg per person per month (Degett 2023). Some families are receiving no, or very limited food assistance due to the World Food Programme’s prioritisation system, based on household vulnerability (WFP 2024). Until 2020, refugees could cultivate small plots of land surrounding Rhino Camp to supplement their food rations, but local landowners are continuously being effected by the worsening economic situation following the pandemic and are less prone to lend out their land to refugees (Degett 2023).

The limited resources can also easily intensify tensions between refugees and host-community, which in worst case can end up with fatal consequences. Some refugees keep goats, which sometimes end up grazing in host community members’ gardens, some host communities keep cattle that sometimes end up in the refugees’ gardens. This latter situation led to a deadly conflict between a local Ugandan community and refugees in Rhino Camp in 2020 (UNHCR 2020).

Learning from refugee endevaours

Given the conditions of resource scarcity, ethnically related conflicts and tensions between refugee and host-communities in Rhino Camp, Edward and Johns Teak Tree initiative forms a great example of how refugee endeavours and actions can help mitigate conflict and promote peaceful lives and peaceful social environments. Cooperating with both refugees, host-communities and local NGO’s, the RLO is building bridge and creating opportunities and co-dependence between the different actors. Understanding young refugees’ efforts for peace and how they seek to influence, interventions and decisions taken by humanitarian, development and peace (HDP) actors and political authorities is the backbone of the ASPIRE project. Continuously mapping refugees plans and efforts for peaceful co-existence will create knowledge on how to best support young people’s efforts on their own terms.