“Increasingly, refugees residing in refugee camps are living in protracted situations for which there are no quick
remedies. Existing attempts to address protracted situations for refugees engage with the concept and practices of the
Self-reliance Strategy (SRS). This paper focuses on the SRS in Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement. It draws attention to its disconnection from the social and economic relations within which refugees live in settlements, and the strategy’s inability to provide refugees with sufficient access to social support and protection. In this context, the
analysis highlights the failures of the SRS in terms both of shaping the conditions under which refugees experience
restricted movement, social divisions and inadequate protection, and of placing greater responsibility on refugees
for meeting their own needs with little or no humanitarian and state support. It also reveals how humanitarian and state actors, and their forms of assistance, manage the
lives of refugees and are implicated in the creation of new challenges for refugees in Nakivale.”
