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Accessing Services in the City the Significance of Urban Refugee-Host Relations in Cameroon, Indonesia and Pakistan

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Accessing Services in the City the Significance of Urban Refugee-Host Relations in Cameroon, Indonesia and Pakistan ACCESSING SERVICES IN THE CITY THE SIGNIFICANCE OF URBAN REFUGEE-HOST RELATIONS IN CAMEROON, INDONESIA AND PAKISTAN CHURCH WORLD SERVICE FEBRUARY 2013 Graeme Rodgers/CWS ACCESSING SERVICES IN THE CITY THE SIGNIFICANCE OF URBAN REFUGEE-HOST RELATIONS IN CAMEROON, INDONESIA AND PAKISTAN Church World Service, New York Immigration and Refugee Program February 2013 Executive Summary This report considers how relationships between urban refugees and more established local communities affect refugee access to key services and resources. According to the estimates of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the majority of the world’s refugees now reside in cities or towns. In contrast to camps, where refugees are relatively isolated from local host communities and more dependent on assistance from humanitarian agencies to meet their basic needs, refugees in urban areas typically depend more on social networks, relationships and individual agency to re-establish their livelihoods. This study explores the conditions under which refugee-host relations may either promote or inhibit refugee access to local services and other resources. It also considers how positive impacts of these evolving relationships may be nurtured and developed to improve humanitarian outcomes for refugees. In 2009, UNHCR updated its policy on refugees in urban areas, highlighting the challenges of providing protection and assistance in spatially and socially complex environments. This initiative has encouraged the broader humanitarian community to explore more innovative approaches to understanding and programming related to refugees in urban areas. One of the effects of this development has been to highlight the role of the host community and the importance of considering their needs and perspectives. The present report contributes to this broader evolving discussion by exploring the significance of what are termed “refugee-host relations” in determining access to a range of resources and entitlements in the city, referred to here collectively as “services”1. The report is drawn from a field study conducted in 2012, which compares the experiences of urban refugees in Yaoundé (Cameroon), Jakarta (Indonesia), and Karachi and Peshawar (Pakistan). The results of the study suggest that factors that improve refugee-host relationships may also enhance the capacity of urban refugees to access services in the city. Importantly, the results also suggest that the opposite may be true, namely that improved refugee access to services strengthens refugee-host relations. This dialogic suggests a relationship that is mutually reinforcing as represented in Figure 1 below: Figure 1: Refugee-Host Relations and Improved Access to Services are Mutually Reinforcing 1 These terms are shorthand references to a range of practices and are clarified further in the main body of the report. 2 This as well as persons fleeing the effects of conflict that may choose not to formally claim 3 Case Studies and Research Methods The major social and economic variables that informed the selection of the four cities are summarized in Figure 2 below: Cameroon Indonesia Pakistan Yaoundé Jakarta Karachi Peshawar City Population 1,817,524 9,607,787 9 339,023 982,816 Refugee arrival period Medium Term Recent Arrivals Long Term Long Term Signatory to 1951 Convention Yes No No Strong UNHCR Presence Yes Yes No Yes Est. Refugees: National 100,373 1,006 1,702,700 Est. Asylum-seekers: National 3,298 3,233 1,624 Est. Refugees: City 10,000 2,000 130,000 N/A Origin or Refugees Neighbor/Region Distant Neighbor Border GDP per capita, 2011 $1,271.30 $3,494.60 $1,194.30 GDP Growth (an. %), 2011 3.8 6.5 2.4 Figure 2: Selected Social and Economic Characteristics of the Four Cities These largely demographic and economic variables enable the exploration of certain structural factors in shaping refugee-host relations. However, as explained in more detail below, representing these four sites as all uniformly “urban” in character risks concealing local social and cultural variation, including contextually specific historical traditions and institutionalized state practices for incorporating strangers. As outlined below, these play a potentially significant role in enabling and limiting relations between refugees and the local communities that they move into. The study focuses primarily on field data that was generated using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. This included a survey of 1,218 refugee households, supported by a total of 91 semi-structured interviews conducted across all four cities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with refugees and members of host communities as well as other key-informants that included UNHCR, government officials and other agencies. In addition, 12 focus group discussions were held in total in Cameroon and Indonesia. Observations and insights were enhanced by ongoing observations and informal discussions with relevant stakeholders. A “mixed methods” approach was adopted intentionally to enable site-based researchers to identify and focus on the most appropriate, effective and efficient techniques to operationalize the research questions. In pursuing this approach, however, the research team consciously sought to retain a reasonable degree of methodological overlap across sites, to allow for a meaningful comparison of data. The methodological approach was therefore refined through the ongoing exchange of information and insights across cities to reflect a balanced consideration of the more common or generic characteristics of refugee-host relations, on the one hand, and the contextually-specific historical, social, economic and cultural aspects of these relationships, on the other hand. This approach was therefore designed to engage directly with the important policy dilemma over the extent to which a “one-size-fits-all” approach to understanding and responding to urban refugees may take adequate account of important local variations and peculiarities. 4 Summary of Findings The findings of this study highlighted two general observations related to urban refugee-host community relations. First, much of the data suggested that urban refugee access to resources and services tended to improve over time. Some improvements were associated with greater frequencies of interaction between refugees and hosts, suggesting a possible link. This observation broadens the perspective of much of the existing literature on urban refugees that highlights the hardships that refugees face in urban areas at particular moments in time, without considering the fate of individuals and households over the longer term. Importantly, it also revealed varying rates of improvement over time, implying increasing social and economic stratification within refugee communities over time. It does not suggest, therefore, that improved access to services over time would imply an inevitable closure of any socio- economic gap between all refugees and host communities. This temporal dimension to refugee access to services supports the current international approach to urban environments as legitimate and potentially productive spaces for refugees to re-establish their lives and livelihoods. It suggests that urban refugee experiences of ongoing deprivation and suffering are likely to reflect either the effects of restrictive legal and policy regimes for refugee settlement or high levels of local mistrust of refugees, rather from any intrinsic qualities of refugee populations themselves. Refugee successes in overcoming these limitations were enabled partly by expanding social networks and strengthening refugee-host relationships. The possibilities for refugees to engage varied across individuals, households and communities and depended on a number of socio- economic characteristics, explored in more detail below. A second general observation that underpinned the findings of the study was that the major problem that refugees experienced in accessing services arose from their inability to pay for the costs associated with such services. By expanding social networks and relationships into the local host community, refugee-host relations represented strategies for urban refugees to access the resources necessary to improve their levels of access to services. Critically, where refugees were particularly desperate, refugee-host relations were more likely to take shape around enduring forms of exploitation and abuse of refugees. This observation also highlights a number of implications of current dominant approaches to refugees in urban areas. First, it stresses the importance of providing adequate protection for refugees in urban areas, to “level the playing field” for refugees to participate more fully in the social and economic aspects of urban life. Enhanced protection and respect for refugee rights reduces the risks of the emergence of refugee-host relations that are structured around exploitation and abuse. Second, it underscores the point that refugee-host relations are likely to improve in response to broader improvements to community infrastructure, income levels and social services. Broader improvements in community development are likely to reduce the intensity of competition over resources, which has a disproportionately negative effect on more vulnerable urban refugees. In light of these broad observations, the study identified nine specific findings that included a range of recommendations that consider how refugee-host relations may be leveraged to improve outcomes for refugees in urban
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