Refugee Haven, Kampala has become a global example of how best to help people who flee their home country
	Independent news
	03/08/2015
	http://www.independent.co.ug/news/news-analysis/10487-refugee-haven

Uganda is a developing country with meagre resources but despite that, the country is leading the way in terms of refugee response. For this, says Charlie Yaxley, the UNHCR Associate External Relations Officer in Kampala, Uganda deserves special praise. “Uganda has a unique policy towards refugees,” says Yaxley, “It already has land which has been designated for refugees before they even come.

In addition to the free land, the refugees have freedom of movement around Uganda. They are also allowed to seek employment; they are able to get jobs, to try and sustain themselves.

“They can try and open businesses if they wish. This is opposed to so many other countries which require refugees and asylum seekers to stay in camps all the time”.

Yaxley told The Independent in a recent interview that UNHCR commends the government for this “exceptionally generous policy.”

Pecos Kuliloshi’s refugee life in Uganda is perhaps the best example of how Uganda’s refugee policy which is praised around the world as one of the most progressive works.

Kuliloshi fled his home in Kiziba village in Bukavu, South Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in November 2000 at the age of 23. This was at the peak of the Congolese civil war that led to the ousting of the late Congolese president, Laurent Kabila, from power. Kuliloshi was a member of a human rights advocacy group.

Full of ideas and bubbling with energy at the time, Kuliloshi remembers demonstrating against the foreign armies’ massive violation of human rights of eastern Congolese. He fled when he got to know of plans to neutralise the leaders of the group.

He remembers being helped by Catholic priests from Bukavu who gave him some little money and transported him through Jomba via Goma to Southwestern Uganda.

“I crossed with the Father to Uganda as if we were going to buy groceries,” he says. “I later boarded a bus headed for Kampala to seek safety, hoping to return home as soon as the situation normalised.”

It has never.