RPN 18 published January 1995

7. Development in a refugee situation

The case of Rwandan refugees in northern Tanzania by Richard Reynolds

The standard response to large influxes of refugees has been to set up refugee camps and provide the refugees with basic needs such as food, water, shelter and health care. These initiatives can be termed 'emergency responses'. Typically, UNHCR is given the lead agency role; various local and international NGOs with experience in these particular fields are then appointed to implement programmes under the emergency response. The approach is 'relief' orientated; speed and numbers serviced are the priority rather than development issues.

This standard response to the Rwandan crisis and the influx of an estimated 450,000 refugees into an isolated part of Northern Tanzania resulted in the setting up of a large refugee camp near Ngara called the Benaco camp. However, unlike many other refugee situations (Sudan, Thailand and Mozambique), UNHCR in its emergency phase also started to consider activities, under the title 'community services', that were more development than relief orientated.

Christian Outreach and Tear Fund, two UK based NGOs under the umbrella of Christian Outreach (CO), developed during this phase a programme aimed at involving refugee communities and individuals to a greater degree in the running of various community services. The following paper will outline this more developmental approach, how it aims to improve the position of refugees and an initial assessment of the programme's performance.

The emergency phase

UNHCR, acting through its implementing partners, started setting up various programmes in this emergency phase. The Tanzanian Red Cross (TRC), CARE and Concern took responsibility for camp management and all distributions; Oxfam and UNICEF managed the water supply, and the MSF agencies, TRC, IRC (International Rescue Committee) and IFRC (International Federation of the Red Cross) managed health and sanitation within the camp.

These programmes were set up with a heavy expatriate staffing, little community involvement and an emphasis on serving large numbers of people as quickly as possible. Given the scale of the problem and the logistical difficulties of the region, the programmes were well implemented and effective in meeting basic needs. Although the population had been traumatised by the killings in Rwanda, their state of physical health was reasonable and these emergency response programmes sought as much to maintain this situation as to improve it.

Community services programme

UNHCR appointed a community services field worker to coordinate agencies interested in implementing community projects in the camp. CO, having expressed an interest in this area, recruited a consultant to develop a programme.

As a result of the evaluation of the situation by the consultant, CO has adopted a combined approach of community and business development, a decision based on its experience in the refugee camps of eastern Sudan. The former concentrates on group and community development while the latter focuses primarily on individuals. The provision of social services to particular sectors of the community has also been included.

The camp, which at that time had an estimated population of 250,000 people(1), was clearly too big to be managed as a whole and UNHCR therefore identified three sites to which people would be relocated in groups of about 80,000. It was decided to focus the attention of CO's work in the third site, known as Musuhura Hill.

Since the term `community services' is rather vague and essentially means any activity outside the traditional relief and health fields, it is important that a strong level of coordination is achieved. UNHCR has therefore appointed a lead agency as coordinator for community services in each of the three camps. The unusual part of this is that agreements with new agencies are made through the coordinating agency. This means that the lead agencies have a much stronger control over activities of additional agencies.

1. Community development

The community development approach is based on facilitating a large number of communities to choose what they need. In a refugee situation people, often over night, lose their country, home and livelihood, and are told or ordered where to live, what to eat and what they can do. Refugees suddenly become disempowered and dependent on others. There is very little room for either individual or community choice in emergency situations. This programme seeks to redress that by helping communities to be involved in influencing some of the factors affecting them.

The Rwandan situation is unusual in that in many cases whole communities have fled together. Therefore some existing community structures are in place. While these tend to be very feudal and non-participatory in nature, they do represent community groupings and provide some stability to the populations.

The programme has chosen to exploit this by focusing on the smallest community structure in Rwanda. This is known as the Cellule and in the camp these are typically made up of communities of about 500 people. There are approximately 200 such communities in each of the three camps.

Each community will be assisted in identifying the problems it faces, prioritising them and then planning how the community can seek to resolve them. A fund will then be made available to each community in order that it can have access to resources to meet the needs identified. In addition a separate fund will be available for each community to employ a number of staff in any services that the community wishes to run. For example, this could help a community which has listed a community centre as a priority to provide literacy classes or a pre-school administered and staffed by people of its own choice.

However, on further investigation and discussion, it was decided that as well as working on a community wide programme, groups would be targeted in each cellule for support. Groups were defined as any group of people (three or more) who demonstrate a level of organisation and have been able to start some activity together. Economic activity was excluded from the programme due to UNHCR guidelines. The type of groups that will be approached include a small group of parents who have set up a secondary school for their children. Such a programme could be supported with funds for materials and building materials but would remain very much that group's project.

A system of visits and guides for project proposals were devised in order to assist the community mobilisers in ensuring that communities and groups were empowered through the process rather than just viewing the programme as an easy option for gaining funds.

One of the big difficulties for this programme is the need for it to produce results fast and yet at the same time maintain a developmental approach. The Rwandan staff and particularly the community mobilisers are the key people in this process. CO has been fortunate in that the growth of Musuhura Hill has been slower than the other two camps. At the same time, the quality of Rwandan staff means that it is realistic to expect the mobilisers to understand and adopt a developmental approach.

2. Business development

Business development will focus primarily on credit and vocational training. Refugees want and need to work. It surprises many people unfamiliar with refugee camps that a flourishing market starts almost from day one. For example, one young man obtained $10 from doing an interview with a journalist. Over the next two weeks he was able to buy one and then two crates of soft drinks and start selling hot cakes and tea. These businesses vary from the trading of refugee goods(2)

to service and small manufacturing businesses such as tailoring and shoe repairs. In order to develop the business sector and its associated job creation opportunities, programmes were targeted at vulnerable groups as well as existing businesses. However, UNHCR guidelines meant that CO was unable directly to assist existing businesses. As a result, the following two programmes have been initiated:

2.1. Credit for single parents: This programme will specifically target single parents and provide them with micro-loans ($10) to help them supplement their rations with income from petty trading. Three different types of group credit schemes around the Rwandan savings and credit system known as `ikimina's' will be piloted with 30 groups over three months before a decisin is made as to which type of group credit is adopted. The key criteria will be a repayment level of 90%, although this is combined with an analysis of the benefits of such a programme on the recipients. While the administrative costs of the programme will be covered by the agency, the level of such costs will be lower due to the use of peer pressure and a group loan system.

2.2. Vocational training: This will seek to provide training opportunities, particularly to young men in the camp. This will equip them with valuable skills but also provide them with something to do. Many of the youth have been involved in the violence in Rwanda and there is a need for their energy to be diverted into productive activities.

It was decided that the best approach to training was to use the existing businesses as trainers through some form of apprenticeship programme. This means that the training is focused on the skills that micro-enterprises need to run a business in terms of both hard and softer skills. Such an approach also has the advantage of providing some assistance to existing businesses in terms of materials and tools that are paid in exchange for training.

3. Educational and social services

A programme has been developed for the construction of 20 schools in two of the camps. A system of prefabricated classrooms has been developed: the wall frames and roofs are constructed in a central workshop and can be assembled by communities on site. The walls are made of reed mats made by refugee women in the camp.

While the schools programme has been developed by UNESCO and UNICEF, CO plays a role in organising the schools and ensuring that the teachers are paid.

The final programme focuses on setting up a network of refugee social workers to meet the needs of unaccompanied children and their foster parents. It is estimated that there are 9,000 unaccompanied children in the Benaco camps. The majority of these are being looked after by other families or relatives while a few live as street children.

As an alternative to institutionalising these children, the programme will encourage placement of street children with suitable families. The social workers will seek to support and advise all foster families and to monitor closely each situation to ensure the needs of the child are best served by the family which has assumed the caring responsibility.

Conclusion

This type of programme challenges the typical view that the relief approach to the early stages of the refugee influx is sufficient. While it is obviously critical to deliver relief services, it is also important to remember that refugees, like all poor communities, are disempowered. They need to be given opportunities to maintain their dignity by being involved in the decision making processes that affect their situation.

The critical need to move from a relief mode to a more developmental one as early as possible in the emergency phase becomes even more apparent when the time frame is considered. In refugee situations the future is always uncertain but it is important to consider the longer term as well as the immediate future. It would appear that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) is set to dominate Rwanda. In such a case, the return of the mainly Hutu Benaco refugees seems unlikely, at least for several years. In such a scenario it is critical that a long term approach to refugee work is adopted, geared to self reliance and community participation. If this does not happen, the refugee population will, over time, become increasingly dependent and later attempts to initiate development approaches will, as a result, be more likely to fail.

Richard Reynolds, a PHD student from Cranfield University (UK), doing field work in Durban, undertook two consultancies to northern Tanzania for Christian Outreach and Tear Fund in June and November 1994.

1. Officially the population was 330,000 by mid June 1994 but estimates from nutrition surveys indicated a much lower figure of 250,000.

2. Refugee goods are those goods that have been distributed to the population. These are often sold because either people do not want them, preferring something else, or people have additional rations due to leakages in the distribution system.

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July 1997