New initiative to integrate refugees

An ambitious project is underway in Zambia to integrate refugees into their host community while helping the local region to develop, UNHCR said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Zambia Initiative, proposed by the Zambian government with the support of the refugee agency UNHCR and several donors, is a "holistic approach aimed at linking development to relief assistance and addressing both the needs of refugees and the host population," the statement said.

Among its many aims, the initiative seeks to change the perception that refugees are a burden to their host communities. "We never thought that refugees could be agents of development," a local chief was quoted by UNHCR as saying. "We thought they were just here to cut our trees and use our water."

The initial pilot project is focused on the Western Province of Zambia, an area with a long history of hosting refugees. The region is home to the Nangweshi refugee camp and the Myukwayukwa settlement, and still faces continued refugee inflows from Angola. The number of refugees in the Western Province is estimated at 150,000, including a number of spontaneously-settled refugees.

The region faces challenging conditions, including the annual flooding of the Zambezi river plains and poor rural infrastructure. But it also presents great potential, with immense alluvial plains providing resources for cattle grazing, irrigated crop production or fishing, the statement noted.

Refugees are expected to be "agents of development" by contributing to the local economy. For instance, many refugees in Zambia have been allocated enough land to enable them to produce export-quantities of sweet potatoes, thus bringing much-needed foreign currency into the country, UNHCR said.

In January last year, the then Assistant High Commissioner for refugees, Soren Jessen-Petersen, visited Zambia and discussed the possibility of UNHCR playing a catalytic role in encouraging donors and development agencies to contribute to the development of infrastructure in refugee-hosting communities.

Concrete proposals for initially small-scale projects were put forward in four major sectors – agriculture, healthcare, education and infrastructure. The first proposed projects will represent an investment of US $5 million. Donors are now expected to provide small grants quickly to jump-start the initiative, allowing some of the projects to start as early as this year.

"The Zambia Initiative has the advantage of addressing both issues of durable solutions for refugees and burden-sharing with their host communities. It will facilitate the local integration of refugees and accord high priority to the development of refugee-hosting areas. It will also safeguard and improve the quality of the asylum system, since Zambia is considered a model in this regard," UNHCR said.