RELON Uganda Report: Beyond Refugee Camps: Advancing Freedom of Movement as a Foundation for Refugee Self-Reliance - GRF Side Event

The side event on Freedom of Movement was convened to examine a central proposition that  merged repeatedly throughout the discussion: refugees cannot achieve meaningful self-reliance unless they are able to move, work, and study in conditions comparable to those of host community members.

While global, regional, and national policy frameworks increasingly emphasize refugee self-reliance, participants stressed that these objectives remain unattainable where refugees’ mobility is restricted, documentation is inaccessible, or rights exist only on paper. The event deliberately centered refugee-led perspectives to ground policy debates in lived experience and to move beyond abstract commitments toward practical, implementable solutions.

RELON Uganda opened the session by framing freedom of movement not as a peripheral protection issue, but as a structural enabler of dignity, opportunity, and autonomy. The discussion underscored that self-reliance strategies that ignore mobility, access to work, and access to education risk becoming rhetorical rather than transformative.