Chapter 5 Encampment: post registration in Zambia

Material factor: capacity concerns

On a material level, capacity issues post registration remain a dominant factor in the continuance of the encampment reception policy. As discussed below, these concerns appear both at the national and international level. As examined in the previous chapter, government officials cited capacity concerns as a key reason why refugees remain long term in the settlements. These include a lack of funds, as well as the need to prioritise poverty reduction and social protection of the national population. Beyond the initial granting of the land to build the settlements, UN officials confirmed that national funding for the two settlements has remained minimal since their inception.

In interviews, government officials within the MCDSS did show openness to the idea of increasing funding to refugees in the settlements (and beyond). However, any action could only ‘take place with the cabinet approval’, and with core line ministries having shown little appetite for investing in these spaces over the last sixty years, the likelihood of this happening remains remote.² In addition, funding for the humanitarian and development needs of refugees remains understood as an international concern and thus outside the responsibility of the national government. Underscoring this belief is the lack of inclusion of refugees in the government’s development planning. For example, regardless of the lobbying by the UN, the Seventh Zambian National Development Plan 2017–2021 made only minor reference to refugees and migrants.³

Most of the funding for long-term hosting of refugees in Zambia therefore comes through UNHCR.⁴ Indeed, as confirmed by government officials working in the settlements, the funding for government programmes and services ultimately originates from UNHCR and its donors. This also includes the wages of government employees who administer the programmes. Thus, the conditions and quality of the overall reception granted to refugees post registration in Zambia are directly connected to the levels of funding from the international level, rather than from the government.

Significantly, the bulk of the funding allocated to refugee matters is confined to the settlements. UNHCR officials cited capacity as the reason for this spatial focus. For example, UNHCR’s budget in Zambia was decreased by a third in 2018. An official confirmed:

The priority is to reach the most people possible – in the settlement we invest our funds in services provision. We reach more people than if we invest our money cash assistance for individuals in Lusaka where cost of living is much higher.⁵

The reduced funding is therefore earmarked for immediate goods and services and essential farming equipment. Once refugees are registered, they are given plots of land within the settlements and offered specific non-food items such as farming equipment, for instance ploughs and spades, and domestic essentials, including blankets and kitchen utensils. All refugees in the settlements have access to rudimentary services, such as health and education provisions, as well as banking and financial services. In addition, via the MCDSS, UNHCR has implemented other projects, such as a Cash Based Intervention (CBI). This involves giving new arrivals K100 (US$10) per month.⁶

The CBI and the handing out of essential equipment and food demonstrate the presence of the global refugee regime within the camp space. In contrast, these services are generally not provided to urban refugees. During 2017, there were a few notable exceptions, for example, Caritas Zambia (an implementing partner of the UN agency at the time) maintained a network of outreach centres and programmes focused on self-reliance for urban refugees in Lusaka. However, due to funding gaps, UNHCR urban livelihood programming in Zambia ended in 2018 (UNHCR, 2021b). Significantly, this type of initiative outside the refugee camp demonstrates that the national government is not actively preventing the UN agency working in urban areas.⁷ Indeed, when speaking to UNHCR officials in 2017, the reason given for the emphasis inside the settlements was not the national camp reception policy per se, but rather capacity concerns. The same official stressed, ‘but by and large we have limited resources in assisting in Lusaka and it would only be a pull factor’.⁸

There is an element of logic to confining implementation of the refugee regime to a designated area when factoring in the above-mentioned capacity concerns. By restricting the regime to the refugee camp, limited funds can be used in an efficient way to reach large numbers of people, particularly those deemed to be in vulnerable situations. Nevertheless, refugees are effectively faced with a fait accompli, whereby to gain access to the protections of the regime they are required to give up their freedom of movement. In many ways, this approach is more in keeping with care and maintenance models of the past than with recent pushes by the UN agency to focus on urban settlement.⁹

The proclivity to fall back on concepts from historic care and maintenance models by UNHCR Zambia is illustrated by the agency’s response in 2016 to one of the only major recent incidents of xenophobic violence seen in Lusaka. The outbreak of violence lasted forty-eight hours and caused many refugees to flee to churches in the city to find safety.¹⁰ UNHCR’s reaction was to arrange for the refugees to be moved to one of the main settlements. A refugee expert, who was caught up in the violence, commented:

UNHCR sent us to the church and then a bus came and took us to the Mayukwayukwa camp … I stayed two/three months in the camp … before getting a new gate pass and returning [to Lusaka].¹¹

The type of circular movement between the camp and urban space illustrated in this quote will be examined further below. For this point in the discussion, it is telling that when faced with protection issues in an urban area, the response by the UN agency was to move refugees to the camp or ‘regime’ space. During this unprecedented time of unrest, and with limited funds, the response seemed sensible to many in INGOs. Nonetheless, it does aptly illustrate how UNHCR continues to act within countries such as Zambia. The agency relies on historical institutional understandings of ‘protection’, with refugee camps (rather than urban areas) seen as the most appropriate location for providing safety and security to refugees.

Finally, the capacity issues within the settlements also create a temporal component to the humanitarian assistance offered. Food and cash hand-outs generally end after the first year of residence in the camps. The underlying expectation is that refugees will be able to grow their own food and sustain themselves after this point. This was described succinctly by a refugee expert who has resided spasmodically in the Mayukwayukwa camp for the past five years:

First they give you a chicken, knife, vegetables etc., blanket, bucket, socks etc. K100. Take you to camp. For a year – then … self-sufficient.¹²

In addition, discrepancies and variations in the implementation of these programmes are widespread. The same refugee expert noted that implementation was ‘not always the same’, and that it was typical to not receive any money for a while and then ‘get K300 [Zambian Kwacha] after three months’.¹³

This time-related aspect to the provision of essential commodities for refugees conforms with the framing of the settlements as development sites. By giving refugees farming equipment and land (albeit limited in nature), they are expected to become self-sufficient within a year. Nevertheless, with no genuine development assistance or investment seen for decades, the settlements have largely failed to evolve beyond long-term humanitarian sites (or permanent reception sites). As a result, the temporal restrictions to goods and services add an extra level of unease to the conditional form of reception afforded to refugees in the settlements in Zambia. This, in turn, intensifies the precarious and paradoxical nature of the reception offered, whereby refugees are allowed to settle in these sites long term but remain as permanent guests.

Ideational factor: the ‘regime refugee’

The modern system of states is premised on the idea of ‘sovereign’ states, whereby membership of a state is needed in order to demand rights and protection (Arendt, 1951). Persons outside of this system of states – such as refugees – are viewed as ‘helpless objects of pity who must be assigned to some political community in order to have an identity at all’ (Aleinikoff, 1995:267). In the majority world, UNHCR and the humanitarian machinery that has emerged to support the regime over the last sixty years, has regularly worked within this ideational framing of the refugee. Refugee camps are set up and maintained to offer immediate protection to a group perceived as homogeneous, sedentary victims (Daley, 2013). Through this depoliticised humanitarian lens, containment approaches for refugees can be justified. In this way, the global refugee regime empowers host states more than refugees.¹⁴

The legal framework in Zambia has always limited the spatial dimensions of refugee reception, with the hosting of refugees officially restricted to the designated settlements. Yet the original intention for the settlements was different to this framing of refugees as victims in need of protection. As set out previously, the initial aim was for refugees to become self-sufficient within the settlements. Nevertheless, a lack of investment by the state and international agencies, overuse of the land for farming and the isolation of the settlements (sited away from large urban areas) have permanently stalled this objective. When discussing the settlements, refugee experts and leaders were adamant that the development strategy had failed. One refugee expert commented, ‘you can’t stay there … the life in [the] camp is very difficult’.¹⁵ Another interviewee, a refugee leader, saw the current situation as an ‘archaic system of looking after refugees’.¹⁶ Indeed, with desolate living conditions in the camps, most refugees who remain immobile in these spaces are reliant on hand-outs from UNHCR’s implementing partners to survive – particularly for the first few years they are there.

The inherent construction of refugees within the global refugee regime as victims in need of protection has continued to empower states to adopt reception approaches that contain refugees and restrict movement. In the context of Zambia, by focusing its work within the settlements, UNHCR is essentially confining the global refugee regime to these spaces and in doing so it is undermining its ongoing negotiations with the national government to loosen freedom of movement restrictions. The reception of refugees, and by extension the construction of a refugee, remains framed by the spatial confines of the refugee camp.

This analysis of the ‘regime refugee’ in Zambia also shows how refugee movement is often distinguishable from other types of migrant movement and, as such, is easier to regulate, manage and control. Refugee movement is potentially less threatening due to the intrinsic protector/protectee relationship between the refugee and the host state. As observed previously, all forms of cross-border movement are commonly framed via a security lens and therefore seen as a risk to the stability of the nation state. Nevertheless, approaches to regulate movement (such as refugee camps) are easier to justify via this ‘protection’ lens – in comparison, for example, to the long-term detention of migrants in immigration centres. In addition, the official policy, and the continued framing of refugees in this manner means that refugees in urban areas can be returned to the camps at any time, for instance, if their numbers increase to the point that they are deemed to be a destabilising presence.

Institutional and ideational factors: divergence and contestation in approaches to the settlements

The final subsection on factors that are maintaining the encampment reception approach post registration examines the ideational and institutional contestation at the national and international level that relates to the overall framing of these long-term reception spaces. As examined above, UNHCR’s overall approach to refugee reception in Zambia is reinforcing a camp-based policy. In turn, this approach also shapes and fortifies the state’s understanding of the settlements as fundamentally being long-term humanitarian sites. In contrast, the empirical evidence also highlights opposing ideational and institutional structures within UNHCR and other UN in-country agencies, which still regularly frame the settlements as development sites (in keeping with their original purpose).

Gate passes and urban residence permits

Post registration, official opportunities to leave the refugee camp remain restricted in Zambia. This means, as one might expect, that the overarching approach by the state broadly conforms to the national legal framework, with refugees expected to remain in the settlements. Nevertheless, COR has a long history of adopting approaches that allow for some movement between the camp and urban space, which suggests a ‘soft’ application of the legal framework by the government department. Currently, URPs and gate passes are the only official ways for refugees to leave the two main settlements once they enter the post-registration stage of reception. Both permit refugees to travel to other areas in the state and by doing so enable them to engage with local communities and government structures outside of the refugee camps. The two procedures share several commonalities relating to their overall ephemeral nature and the dominant focus on control and regulation of movement. Nevertheless, they diverge sharply in terms of the length of time granted in urban spaces.

In terms of gaining access to gate passes or URPs, the processes for obtaining both are ostensibly open to all recognised refugees in the settlements. Yet both official pathways have numerous barriers that are either built into the procedure itself or have emerged due to bureaucratic and institutional contestation. The consequence of these obstacles is that the numbers of permits and passes handed out are consistently limited.

The procedure for URPs is, at least on the surface, well organised. In addition, as a former COR officer confirmed, the number of rejected applications by the sub-committee remains low, indeed, ‘not more than 20 per cent would be rejected’.²⁶ In practice, however, there are several material and institutional barriers blocking access for most refugees. These include security concerns, associated costs and the bureaucratic complexities involved with making an application. For example, with the urban permit allowing refugees to live outside of the camps for one to two years (which is also renewable), there are security checks completed at the decision-making stage. Depending on the specific reason for the permit request, refugees may also have to go through different government offices and undergo complex processes to obtain the required forms and/or visa. Even though the cost of visas and permits (for instance, for education, employment or self-employment purposes) are provided at a reduced rate for refugees, the price remains prohibitive for the majority of refugees in the settlements (Ochieng, 2023). For example, a refugee leader in Lusaka observed, ‘the self-employment permit is …, it’s like basically an investor’s permit for any other foreigner and that’s very prohibitory for regular refugees’.²⁷ Consequently, while the exact number of refugees in Zambia with residence permits is unknown publicly, civil society actors suggested that the number remains low.

The process for obtaining the gate pass is less rigorous than for URPs, in part due to the shorter length of time it permits outside of the camp (usually one to two months and renewable). In addition, refugee leaders commented that the gate pass system is generally accessible for most refugees in the settlements. A COR official went further, asserting, ‘the gate pass – you [are] asked where you going, how long you going for, what is the reason. They will always get it.’²⁸ This concurs with previous research, with Jacobsen (2005) noting that gate passes are open to all – indeed she suggests this means that refugees in Zambia have freedom of movement.²⁹ The real level of access to spaces outside of the settlements is disputed by civil society and community leaders. Refugee leaders suggested that ingenuity was often necessary on the part of the individual refugee because the shared impression within refugee communities is that decisions to grant the passes are often arbitrary or ad hoc. Indeed, the same COR official later in their interview accepted that there is a great deal of disparity in how the policy is implemented across the settlements.³⁰

UNHCR has been working with COR to systematise the gate pass procedure. Yet, as explained by an ex-COR officer, ‘the problem is that every refugee officer [has] his [or her] own interpretation on the gate pass’.³¹ Finally, there is a general impression that gate passes are not granted to new arrivals nor immediately post initial registration. This was reinforced by a refugee expert who, when requesting a gate pass soon after arriving, was told, ‘no – expect to stay here one year’.³²

These numerous bureaucratic hurdles and security measures inevitably add an element of control and screening to the process of gaining access to urban spaces. Ultimately these procedures (and the variations seen in their implementation) have the effect of restricting and regulating the number of successful applicants of both forms of ‘travel pass’, especially during the first year of arrival.

The management of movement

Both formal pathways were created as a response to perceived increases of uncontrolled refugee movement into urban areas. Firstly, URPs were introduced into the formal reception policy of Zambia in 2000, as part of an overall approach to reinstate the camp-based reception policy (UNHCR, 2012). This shift in strategy was due to overcrowding and instability concerns in urban areas. Permits were seen as an attempt to regulate the movement of refugees outside the camps. As observed by a UNHCR official, this was particularly the case for large urban spaces such as Lusaka.³³ Gate passes were also introduced as a subsidiary element of the overarching refugee reception policy of Zambia. Again, the aim of the passes was to regulate or manage the number of refugees in urban spaces. As explained by senior UNHCR and COR officers, the original intention was that passes would allow the agency and the state to document people who had legitimate reasons for being outside of the refugee camp.

As examined in the previous chapter, during the early 2000s many in the national government became concerned about the number of refugees informally settling in urban spaces due to the destabilising effect this might have on the space and on the voting public. These increased numbers were, in large part, due to a broad relaxation of the encampment reception policy by COR. By allowing formal avenues of access to urban centres, the intention was to bring more control and regulation to this form of ‘non-rooted’ movement into the interior. At the same time, these processes were also designed to aid better implementation of the overarching encampment policy. Consequently, there was an acknowledgement that stopping all movement between the settlements and urban spaces was unrealistic.

This almost paradoxical approach to regulating movement by opening new official opportunities for movement builds on previous analysis in relation to states’ understanding of the movement of ‘non-rooted’ persons and state stability. No country interprets freedom of movement as the unchecked or unconditional movement of all persons on their territory. Thus, political settlements today are in many ways regimes of movement. In essence, the modern state is ‘a system of regulating, ordering, and disciplining bodies (and other objects) in motion’ (Kotef, 2015:6). By understanding movement in this way, encampment reception policies in Southern Africa can be seen in part as a system of regulating and managing particular visitors (or ‘non-rooted’ persons). States such as Zambia do not have the capacity of minority world states when it comes to adopting increasingly sophisticated approaches to regulating borders and managing movement. As an alternative, the refugee camp (which is often funded by international donors) can perform part of this function by filtering the movement of refugees into the interior and the urban spaces. Therefore, the regulating of refugee movement in Zambia through the refugee camp allows for the possibility of some movement into urban spaces. Given that an aim of the encampment policy in Zambia is to regulate or control the movement of refugees into urban spaces, obtaining permission to leave the settlements is inevitably heavily restricted.

The temporality of access to the urban space

The adoption of settlements as the main reception policy frames refugees as guests on the territory. Their stay in Zambia has little to no official permanence, with routes to citizenship extremely difficult.³⁴ Accordingly, they remain visitors beholden to a specific and conditional form of reception by the host country. Nevertheless, since the inception of the settlements in Zambia, there has been an acknowledgement that hosting refugees is unlikely to be short term in nature. Indeed, as an officer at COR confirmed, COR and other elements of the national government appreciate that large portions of refugee communities will remain long term or simply never return to their countries of origin.³⁵

In contrast to this acceptance of the long-term nature of hosting refugees via the dominant encampment reception approach, both official pathways out of the settlements are characterised by their temporality. Residential permits are issued for a maximum of one to two years, depending on the specific grounds, with costs often accruing throughout the process. When they expire, the holder is expected to go through a process of renewal, which can incur additional costs or mean being returned to the settlements. Gate passes are granted for much shorter time frames, usually one to three months, with refugees historically expected to return to the settlement before the pass expires.³⁶

The temporariness of these options that allow movement outside of the official reception site causes regular circular movements between the camps and urban spaces, with refugees returning to renew their permits/passes. Refugee leaders and experts noted examples of refugees living in Lusaka for years who continue to return to the settlement regularly to renew the gate pass. In many cases, this can be ‘every three months – go back to camp for two weeks then come back’.³⁷

In interviews, refugee leaders reported a sense of uneasiness surrounding refugees who held either valid gate passes or residential permits. As one refugee leader with a gate pass observed, she has a pass, but she ‘is not free’.³⁸ Leaders of a refugee association echoed this feeling by emphasising how passes and permits inevitably expire (whether it is in a month or a year). This means concerns over renewal decisions, additional costs and the possibility of uprooting a family from the urban space, are never far away. Thus, the forms of reception that these two pathways open up at the local and sub-local level, which grant refugees access to local communities and the local economy in urban spaces, are equally affected by a sense of impermanence.

Alternatively, if a refugee remains in the urban space with an expired gate pass or permit, they run a higher risk of being arrested or, more commonly, forced to pay a bribe to enforcement officers. This was discussed by a former COR officer:

Yes – they turned a ‘blind eye’. It comes at a cost – on the migrant. Because they know if they say they are a refugee or asylum-seeker they are expected to have specific documentation that would allow you to be outside camp. So if you don’t have them, shouldn’t be there … you would have to pay a bribe.³⁹

The difference between the permanent/temporary dynamics at the national level in relation to refugee camp vs. urban spaces is an important feature of reception in Zambia. Official pathways out of the settlements connect and develop relationships between these two sites of reception. Yet the ideational understanding of the ‘temporariness’ of hosting refugees in these spaces differs considerably. There is an acceptance of the long-term presence of refugees in the settlements. In contrast, numerous barriers halt the permanent settlement of refugees in urban spaces. An eventual consequence of the temporariness of the official status granted to refugees in urban areas sees the dominance of the encampment approach to reception reinforced within government departments.

Refugees in both reception spaces though remain inherently as guests throughout their stay in Zambia. As examined in the previous chapter, refugees in the settlements are accepted as long-term visitors, giving the reception afforded to them a quality of permanent temporariness. This is appreciably different from the uneasiness felt by refugees who move and attempt to settle within urban spaces on short-term permits or passes. Nonetheless, both distinct forms of reception have a sense of impermanence to them, which means that they remain entirely conditional. As such, movement can change the form of reception received but, in and of itself, it does not appear to end the reception process.

Institutional and ideational factors: contestation and the conceptualisation of refugee movement

This section examines the differing institutional and ideational factors surrounding the implementation of these official pathways and how different stakeholders conceptualise refugee movement and reception in the urban space. Policies that permit refugees to leave the settlements post registration have remained outside the scope of the 1970 Refugee Act and as such – up until 2017 – were not covered by the national legal framework for refugees in Zambia.⁴⁰ This has resulted in COR (with input from UNHCR) creating ad hoc procedures to deal with all refugee matters that do not specifically relate to hosting refugees in refugee camps. At the institutional level, this has created the scope for COR to slowly bring in specific facets of the global refugee regime (including key regime norms) to the broader national reception policy.⁴¹ Nevertheless, the lack of a legal framework, or even at times any policy in writing, to support these administrative practices has created a great deal of inter-governmental contestation. This contestation within the national government concerning differing conceptualisations of refugees and their reception is further complicated by UNHCR’s overarching approach to urban refugees in Zambia.

Mantapala: a ‘whole of society’ approach to refugee reception?

Incremental shifts in approach and attitude towards the reception of refugees in Zambia (particularly post registration) by the now former president and COR have been discussed previously. These have included Edgar Lungu making public international commitments relating to the New York Declaration / the CRRF and the Global Compact on Refugees. As part of these broad international commitments, a form of ‘whole of society’ and ‘whole of government’ approach was adopted in the design and implementation of the Mantapala settlement in the Nchelenge district in the Luapula Province.

The settlement was designed to embody a more inclusive development approach to refugee reception in Zambia. In contrast to the two existing settlements, arrivals from the DRC are given plots of land alongside Zambian nationals. A UNHCR official who had been working on the project since inception gave an account of the approach:

It’s about 6000 hectares plus. It is a type of settlement for refugees. Settlement in that the refugees will be supplied with plants to sustain themselves and also the host community there will not be displaced. The new concept is that the host community lives alongside the refugees. The local community will also have access to the services. Health, schools and boreholes will all be new and available to local community. We are also building the roads and the schools and the health centres.⁵³

As part of this ‘whole of government’ approach, there has been buy-in from key ministries and departments involved in the project, including those working in the areas of employment, health and education. In addition, there is participation and engagement by local-level government departments and officials. Also, District Joint Operation Committees were set up, which run monthly meetings as part of strategic responses to assist with new arrivals.

There has also been a concerted effort to embrace the CRRF and include partners not just focused on immediate humanitarian concerns. During interviews, UNHCR officials described the approach as a new way of working: ‘trying to bring in solutions and long-term solutions from the start, trying to bring in diversified partners including development partners from the start’.⁵⁴ With meaningful engagement by development agencies and the ability of refugees to easily interact with local communities, the hope is that lessons have been learnt from the experiences of the previous settlements and that this time refugees will have a realistic chance at ‘self-reliance and access to livelihood opportunities’.⁵⁵

Certainly, the inclusion of local communities alongside multiple government departments (including local government) in the designing and implementation of the settlement represents a key operational shift by the state in its approach to the reception of refugees. This is particularly striking given that the Mayukwayukwa and Meheba settlements have been neglected by the Zambian state (and arguably UN agencies) for decades. Nevertheless, it will take time to see if this approach is deemed successful long term for all stakeholders. At present, it remains unclear whether this project heralds a more permanent shift away from the current camp-based reception policy in Zambia or not.

Early warning signs: material and ideational contestation

When speaking to key stakeholders about the execution and development of the project, the responses were not entirely promising. As hinted at by a UNHCR officer, ‘it’s an ongoing process but it can be slow’.⁵⁶ Indeed, several key material, institutional and ideational factors that influence the maintenance of the dominant camp policy reappeared when interviews turned to the topic of the new settlement.

A familiar material factor that emerged was capacity and funding levels. In fact, concerns were raised around funding issues at three levels of state analysis: international, national and local. Firstly, INGOs noted how gaps in international funding (in contrast to the commitments made by donors) started to appear immediately. As one INGO worker observed, from its inception donors almost instantly switched attention to other ongoing global refugee situations, where the number of affected refugees were higher.⁵⁷ This tendency has only increased since the launch of the settlement, with the national government in 2019 publicly expressing frustration at the lack of international support (UNHCR, 2019c). Secondly, at the national level, from the start concerns were expressed around the lack of infrastructure and genuine engagement by key departments (such as health and education).

Thirdly, during the time of the interviews, key stakeholders were unsure about the exact role of local authorities. It was evident that there was interest at this level of government (and the provincial level) in being involved in the running and implementation of the project. Yet it was not entirely clear how much power would be decentralised down to the local level. To many, local government in the country is ill-equipped to function properly. Thus, without the re-allocation of funds, it is unlikely that local authorities will have the political and economic power to really influence the development of the settlement and surrounding areas.

Capacity issues also had a role to play in the location of the new project. Rather than selecting land that was close to significant urban settlements (with the accompanying existing networks and infrastructure to draw on), the space chosen was located in the second poorest province in Zambia. It is situated in the far north of the country and is over 1000km away from the capital, Lusaka. Furthermore, over 80 per cent of the population of that area live in poverty. When discussing the site, a UNHCR official noted:

It is an area that [is] basically the middle of a forest, it will also encourage all humanitarian and development actors to bring in essential services such as education and health. They will benefit both the local population and the refugee population and promote peaceful coexistence.⁵⁸

On a positive note, it is evident from this quote that the choice of land to host refugees means that any new development will also greatly assist a particularly poor area of the country and its locals. Yet equally, it underlines concerns surrounding the ability of a medium-income state to respond to new arrivals when the area selected for reception is already a precarious space for nationals.

The same UNHCR official confirmed this point later in the interview:

it is already a crisis area in itself – then you add traumatised highly malnourished displaced persons arriving that are in need of a lot of care and you have a major crisis because there is no safety net that is existing for the local population, let alone for the refugees.⁵⁹

Thus, before refugees could even be transported there, urgent international support was required. This took the form of essential infrastructure, schools, health services and other key services and provisions.

When you consider these capacity issues at each level of analysis, as well as the geographical location of the camp, troubling parallels start to emerge in relation to the existing settlements in Zambia. A project that starts out as an innovative development scheme can quickly transform into a halfway house between an emergency refugee camp and a development project: in essence, a humanitarian-style camp space.

Conceptualising refugees and refugee reception outside of the camp setting: a step too far?

A key ideational factor observed throughout the past two chapters has been the construction of reception sites for refugees in Zambia. By broadly maintaining a conceptualisation of refugees and their reception being within the confines of a camp space, refugee movement outside of that space is heavily controlled and regularly deemed as illicit by many within the government. The empirical evidence suggests that this framing of refugees as ‘regime refugees’ has carried over into the design and realisation of the Mantapala settlement.

The new settlement was established at a time when commitments were made by the former president at the international level to consider relaxing freedom of movement restrictions. In addition, the design of the settlement involves plots of land being given to both refugees and local citizens. Nevertheless, Mantapala remains a gated camp for the refugee inhabitants, whereby they need to request permission to leave for a designated period of time.⁶⁰ A UNHCR official framed the situation as a positive for refugee protection:

[It’s] sort of a loose gate pass. It’s more meant to protect refugees … if they need to be outside the settlement – so they have papers accepted by immigration they can show they left the settlement with permission.⁶¹

In contrast, another UNHCR officer expanded on this by noting that the passes were only issued for a maximum of one week and refugees needed to give clear justification for leaving the settlement.⁶² Irrespective of the exact motivation for the gate passes, this ‘new’, ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approach to reception and reception spaces retains the same relationship with refugee movement as the two existing settlements, whereby pathways out of the site are still heavily monitored and restricted. It also suggests a general unwillingness to conceptualise refugees entirely outside of a camp-based setting.

To conclude this section, the establishment of the Mantapala settlement points to the national government being open to relaxing certain elements of the dominant reception policy, particularly around: (1) conceding some power to lower levels of government; and (2) the integration of refugees with local communities. Furthermore, the gradual decline in the quality of democracy, and with it the slow shifting of executive power to the Office of the President, paradoxically created the political space for these positive advances in refugee reception. Nevertheless, while the former president created the impetus for these developments, the above subsections question whether implementation over the long term will measurably improve refugee reception. Indeed, this initial investigation suggests that reservations held at the national level around truly relaxing spatial restrictions for refugees in Zambia continue to dominate reception policies.

Based on these findings and Chapter 4, the overriding concern that emerges is that the new settlement may simply turn into another halfway house, sitting somewhere between an emergency humanitarian space and a truly inclusive development project. Without international support in the form of actual investment on the ground, the goodwill and long-term planning of the former president and COR are only likely to be able to take the new initiative so far.