Refugees asked to fish for themselves: The Role of Livelihoods Trainings for Kampala's Urban Refugees

As refugees’ average length in exile becomes longer and the world’s number of displaced people rises – currently estimated at 60 million1 – there is a dire need to focus on assistance that extends beyond the emergency phase. Long-term aid for refugees is commonly known as development assistance’. This aims to enable refugees to ‘secure the basic necessities of life, such as food, water, shelter and clothing’2 while also ‘contributing to poverty eradication in refugee hosting areas’.3 UNHCR has highlighted livelihoods as a main tool for fostering refugee self-reliance in impoverished countries, and has dedicated substantially more funds to livelihoods programmes since the 2008 creation of its Livelihoods Unit. The importance of livelihoods is emphasised in the 2014-2018 Global Strategy for Livelihoods, which introduced thirteen priority countries for livelihoods initiatives. Uganda is one of these countries, and serves as the basis for this study.