“Giving out their daughters for their survival” Refugee self-reliance, ‘vulnerability’, and the paradox of early marriage

The following report examines the widespread occurrence of early marriages in Uganda’s refugee settlements and how this phenomenon relates to the ‘vulnerability’ and selfreliance paradigms which underpin official protection and assistance. In seeking to understand why so many refugees engage in early marriages—which are illegal under Ugandan and international law and widely recognised amongst refugees themselves as harmful—it argues that the practice must be viewed within the broader context of Uganda’s settlements. In these settlements, restricted freedom of movement limits the majority of encamped refugees to subsistence farming, and affords them little or no opportunity to escape a life of poverty and physical insecurity.