How Donors Can Better Support Urban Refugees in Kampala and Nairobi

To illustrate these, this paper focuses on the needs of the 136,887 refugees and asylum seekers based in Kampala, Uganda and the 96,348 refugees based in Nairobi, Kenya (UNHCR, 2023a; 2023e).2 They represent eight and fifteen percent of the total registered refugee population in the countries, respectively. [...] Uganda’s refugee settlements house 92 percent of their registered refugee population and are largely based in two regions: the north-west of the country (the West Nile sub-region), close to the border with South Sudan and the DRC; and the south-west, close to the border with Tanzania (Figure 3; UNHCR, 2023e). [...] HOW DONORS C AN BE T TER SUPPORT URBAN REFUGEES IN K A MPAL A 6 AND NAIROBI provided about how and where to obtain one, approvals appear largely arbitrary in nature, and the duration of the pass is up to the official (NRC, 2018; Lugulu and Moyomba, 2023). [...] It is difficult to compare urban-based refugees to camp- and settlement-based refugees and to urban-based hosts; refugees are rarely included in censuses and citizen-wide surveys, and ad-hoc HOW DONORS C AN BE T TER SUPPORT URBAN REFUGEES IN K A MPAL A 7 AND NAIROBI surveys may not always be publicly available or comparable (World Bank and UNHCR, 2021). [...] In Nairobi, the cost of rent eclipses our dreams, testing resilience in our pursuit of a safe haven.” The high cost of rent may be driven by the lack of affordable and adequate housing in Kampala and Nairobi, especially in areas where refugees reside (Parker, 2002; Mbaka and Njogu, 2021).