The peripheral role of the global refugee regime in Southern Africa: Protection challenges in urban spaces
The following article was written by Nicholas Maple, a postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. It was published on the PROTECT blog on 9 June 2021.
Southern Africa is home to a significant number of refugees and forced migrants, with UNHCR reporting 1.1 million refugees and asylum-seekers in the region in 2020. To assist states in hosting these populations, the global refugee regime has been associated with offering protection to refugees in the region since the 1960s.
This assistance has taken a range of forms, from specifying and promoting international standards for states to adopt when receiving and welcoming refugees, to the role of UNHCR and other UN agencies in offering direct protection and assistance to refugees in organised camps and settlements.
Yet, with regional trends of urbanisation suggesting more and more refugees are rejecting refugee camps and organised settlements, to self-settle in cities and towns, some academics (particularly from within the region) now question the continuing relevance of UNHCR and the global refugee regime on the ground in southern Africa. Based on recently conducted doctoral research,[ii] this blog investigates the contemporary role of the global refugee regime in the reception of refugees in Zambia and South Africa.
The Global Refugee Regime and Sub-Saharan Africa
The global refugee regime is essentially made up of two core components: the regime’s main international legal framework – the 1951 Refugee Convention; and the regime’s key global actor – UNHCR.[iii] Traditionally, a great deal of academic attention has engaged with these two elements when research has examined refugee displacement in sub-Saharan Africa. For example, a key debate that has dominated scholarship over the last twenty years has been the role of UNHCR in responding to the mass influx of refugees into neighbouring states due to civil war or unrest. Indeed, the importance placed on the regime, and in particular UNHCR, has resulted in the host state frequently framed as a secondary or minor actor in the welcome given to refugees.
This attention has traditionally concentrated on the role of UNHCR inside the refugee camp. Certainly, since the 1980s the UN agency has been profoundly involved in the architecture of refugee reception in sub-Saharan Africa via establishing and running refugee camps for host states. Yet as a result of this overarching focus, the role of the global refugee regime outside of the camp space remains less clear to this day. This is apparent in relation to the engagement of both (i) international legal frameworks; and (ii) international actors (such as UNHCR), with reception policies in urban spaces in sub-Saharan Africa.
Of the academic work that has been conducted in cities and towns, it primarily consists of (i) key observations around how state responses to refugees in urban spaces often appear to come about through ad hoc local level policy and practice rather than international or national legal frameworks; and (ii) investigations into UNHCR global policies on urban protection and critiques concerning the lack of UNHCR’s involvement in these spaces. [Read more here.]