Promoting income-generating activities among refugees: a case study.

Since the early 1980s the ILO has been involved in the design and implementation of refugee assistance projects - for example in Sudan Somalia several of the Southern African front-line states Cambodia Central America and Palustan - to introduce employment and income-oriented activities to some refugees. Whether in farming livestock rearing artisanal trades or other small-scale enterprises the activities were designed to engage the beneficiary population in a purposeful and gainful occupation enabling the members to earn some monetary income as a supplement to food and other aid supplies distributed to them by humanitarian agencies This chapter is an analysis of one such project implemented in Somalia in the early 1980s since the lessons gathered from it are still relevant today. The chapter analyses some of the challenges and difficulties of introducing employment schemes in a refugee situation based on free distribution of food rations and other basic goods two somewhat different logics. Despite numerous hurdles the project was able to establish relations of confidence with the refugee groups and to mount several income-generating activities most of which became sustainable. The emergence of a local voluntary organization with experience in design and implementation of employment-oriented initiatives provided the ILO effort with a rare element of local continuity. The lessons borne by this particular experience can provide invaluable guidance to other similar efforts in the current period. The projects activities are analysed through all its phases and also in relation to implementation successes and failures. They are examined within the specific conditions peculiar to refugee camps abodes which are often isolated have poor national infrastructure and are crowded hosting thousands of people who are all totally dependent on external aid for several years. Furthermore the camps often have little potential for development into permanent settlements. (excerpt)