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Recent debates on "refugee participation" and the "localisation" of refugee programmes have focused on the potential role of refugee-led organisations. In this article, we explore the engagement of humanitarian actors with South Sudanese refugees in Gambella (western Ethiopia) in order to problematise this focus. There are no formally registered refugee-led organisations in Gambella. Community organisations operating in the region tend to be informal, highly decentralised, networked, transnational, fluid, and under-bureaucratised. They are organisations that strictly hierarchical, centralised, and intensively administered humanitarian agencies find extremely difficult to fathom or work with. We argue that a serious commitment to localisation and participation would require aid actors to explore how they could make their own modes of organisation and operation more relevant to the networked, transnational structures already present in the daily lives of people – even when these challenge the frameworks based on which aid is commonly delivered – rather than encourage the formation of new refugee-led organisations mimicking the priorities and structures of the humanitarian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of refugees has continued to grow in post-independence Africa, host governments across the continent have developed stringent refugee policies that are detached from historical transborder relationships in which refugees and host communities interact. The stringent policies are underpinned by the assumption that host communities view refugees from the state-centric perspective of non-citizens as undesirable foreigners or outsiders. Host governments' insistence that the solution lies in refugees eventually repatriating to their countries of origin drives refugee policies that undermine solutions instead of building and capitalizing on solutions generated at the level of host communities. The exclusion of local histories and social dynamics in host regions has led to policies that neither hold up to humanitarian standards nor serve their intended non-integration objectives. Some host governments are reluctant to implement local integration and have maintained exclusionary policies for a long period of time when the realities in the host communities show that refugees are included and participate in various community activities. Host governments perpetuate this disjuncture between policy and local practice by assuming or pretending that refugees will wait for repatriation instead of finding solutions in the host countries where some of them have lived for decades. Contrary to the non-integration objectives of official encampment policies and scholarship that assumes that the absence of official integration policies deters integration, many refugees have defied the stereotypical portrayal of refugees as "bare life" which denotes prioritization of mere survival as opposed to the quality of life. They have managed to find solutions and live their lives as active and productive members of their host countries. This article specifically addresses the situation of Somali refugees in Ethiopia and Kenya. It argues that the absence of local integration policies or reluctance by host governments to implement them where they exist does not automatically mean that refugees are unable to integrate in their host countries. Host government policies against integration are mediated by refugees' self-initiative and resourcefulness. These characteristics are facilitated by host communities whose ties and mutual dependence with refugees, cultivated pre- and post-flight, play an important role in engendering solidarity and circumventing policies that hamper refugees' quest for long-term solutions. Based on the research findings, the paper recommends that host governments pursue policies that are informed by the shared needs and interests between refugee and host communities and that build on the social dynamics and relationships in refugee-hosting regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced displacement continues to be a major challenge to human security across the globe. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the global population of forcibly displaced people increased by 2.3 million people in 2018, and by the end of the year, more than 70 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide (UNHCR 2019a). UNHCR also estimated that, in 2018, 13.6 million people were newly displaced as a result of conflicts and droughts (ibid.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]