Is Uganda’s progressive refugee policy equalizing the food security of national and refugee households?

Abstract

Abstract Uganda is the largest refugee hosting country in Africa and third in the world. The country operates a progressive refugee integration and self-reliance policy whereby refugees are allowed access to land and other productive resources. The effectiveness of this unique approach to refugee integration has not been empirically investigated. We estimate a multinomial logistic regression model to investigate whether the food security of refugee households is not significantly different from that of Ugandan nationals. We use cross sectional data collected in July 2019 from 2400 national and refugee households across 10 control and 10 World Food Program (WFP) intervention districts in Uganda using a randomized control trial (RCT) design. As we hypothesized, Ugandan citizenship together with size of land holding, livestock ownership and consumption of animal source food, marital status and geographical location enhance the food security of the household. However, our study found surprisingly that households currently receiving WFP support remain food insecure compared to those not receiving support, something we did not anticipate finding. Another surprising finding was that women headed households were more food secure than male-headed households across other socioeconomic parameters. Our findings hence suggest that in terms of equalizing the food security of refugees with that of Ugandan nationals, Uganda’s progressive policy on refugees remains work in progress.