Katalyeba, Uganda — This is about an ethos that any humanitarian agency can adopt: build relationships first, and let those relationships guide what you do.
The air was soft with the scent of eucalyptus as dusk settled over the Lexus bar compound in Katalyeba, a remote town on the edge of the expansive Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in southwestern Uganda – home to over 90,000 refugees.
I was meeting with a group of refugee leaders for what we have normalised as an evening wind-down: a catch-up, no name tags, no flip charts, no hidden agenda, the informality being the point.
Over bottled sodas, the occasional beer, or a splash of Uganda Waragi – the much-loved local gin – we carve out space from the performative rituals that often plague humanitarian interactions.
Seated around a small table under a huge mango tree was gathered a mix of voices: myself from Cohere, alongside refugee leaders heading community organisations from across the Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement.
We began by discussing ongoing projects these leaders were running, and the conversation soon spiralled into something deeper: a reckoning with the global aid system’s fixation on managing displacement instead of ending the exclusion that sustains it.
One leader leaned across the small square table: “We’ve been here 30 years, but we still need a written pass to leave the settlement.”
Another added, voice steady but weary: “My daughter was born here. She speaks only Runyankore [spoken in southwestern Uganda] and English, but Uganda still insists she is ‘from Congo’. A visitor who can never stay.”
There was no recorder on the table, no workshop rapporteur in the corner. Yet in that unguarded space, the most piercing critique of Uganda’s lauded refugee policy – and of the wider humanitarian system – took shape.
Why “progressive” Uganda still feels like a cage
Uganda hosts 1.8 million refugees – more than any other African country. Its widely praised settlement model allows refugees to farm, start businesses, and move within its national borders. But the praise hides sharp limitations.
Encampment still rules: Refugees must live in remote settlements, formally request permission to leave, and cannot legally settle in most host communities. The promise of permanency is still out of reach. Families who arrived in the 1990s – and children born on Ugandan soil – remain classified as refugees.
By 2024, cracks in the system were impossible to ignore. Uganda’s refugee response ranked sixth on the Norwegian Refugee Council’s list of the world’s most neglected crises. Food aid had dwindled to just $3 per person per month, while some reception centres were operating at 500% capacity.
In May 2025, UNICEF reported that only 9% of the Uganda Country Refugee Response Plan for the first quarter had been funded – a 26% drop compared to the same period last year.
Critical sectors such as protection and health and nutrition suffered dramatic funding reductions of 68% and 61% respectively, leaving the World Food Programme, the refugee agency (UNHCR), and UNICEF unable to meet even basic needs.
But beyond this immediate funding shortfall lie deeper issues in the architecture of the global refugee encampment policy that Uganda – by extension – implements with only a few modifications.
A model that depends on indefinite humanitarian support, without offering a clear legal and social path toward inclusion, is bound to fray under stress.
The current cracks – food insecurity, overcrowded reception centres, and mounting frustration among refugees – are not just symptoms of donor fatigue. They reflect the long-anticipated consequences of a containment strategy that offers neither permanence nor meaningful autonomy to the people it claims to protect.
Against that backdrop, I asked the group a simple question: If you had to choose, between continued humanitarian aid as it exists today, or full legal and economic rights through integration into Ugandan society, which would you pick?
There was no hesitation.
“Rights. Give us rights,” one refugee leader quickly said.
“We don’t need free land – we need the right to buy it,” another added.
“This system plans for us to wait – to wait for food, wait for resettlement. This system makes people drunkards and lost,” said another.
“People come here when they are enterprising but end up losing their dreams waiting for handouts,” he added. “I am personally not worried about the stopping of aid by [US President Donald] Trump. Maybe people can wake up.”
The “Trust Circle”
That kind of honesty didn’t emerge by chance. It’s the result of how my organisation, Cohere, operates today. We call it a Trust Circle. Unlike traditional humanitarian programmes that often exclude refugees from shaping decisions that affect their lives, Trust Circles prioritise deep, ongoing relationships with those most impacted.
Too often, formal aid systems are top-down, rooted in paternalism and shaped by the interests of donors, not communities. This leads to policies and programmes that misunderstand, misrepresent, or even harm the very people they claim to serve. Trust Circles disrupt that by centering refugee leadership – ensuring that solutions reflect lived realities, not distant assumptions.
Each of our five regional Trust Circles across Africa includes all our staff – from the CEO to the office accountant. Crucially, each circle is coordinated by people deeply connected to the communities: refugee leaders, Cohere staff with lived experience or proximity, members of Cohere’s refugee advisory panel, host-community allies, and opinion leaders that are prioritising the needs of the most marginalised.
Strategy doesn’t flow top-down. It moves sideways and upward. It begins not with logframes, but with relationships. This isn’t a funding mechanism. It’s not a token gesture of consultation or a shortcut to check the localisation box. It’s a structure that makes trust and relationship-building operational. It prioritises proximity and shared values, removing the need for refugees to “perform neediness” for outsiders.
That evening in Rwamwanja, the refugee leaders didn’t need surveys to be heard – they were already inside the web of trust. As one leader explained: “In a workshop, you come with questionnaires. Here, you come with time and ears. That changes the answers we give and the ideas we share.”
And that shift matters. When trust leads, communities speak with candour, reveal overlooked priorities, and co-create solutions that are more grounded and durable. It leads to better programme design, stronger uptake, fewer blind spots, and, most importantly, to a sense of ownership that no amount of funding alone can generate.
From listening to shifting power
Inside a Trust Circle, voices don’t vanish into donor templates, they actively shape what happens next. Take, for example, a collective decision to support a women-led refugee organisation working with teenage mothers. That decision isn’t driven by reports or logframes, but by shared values and lived relationships.
Members trust the organisation, not because of paperwork, but because someone in the circle has walked alongside them, seen their work, and vouched for it. That trust ripples outward – shared, not centralised.
This is about an ethos that any agency can adopt, regardless of size: Build relationships first, and let those relationships guide what you do.
Uganda continues to be praised as a global model. But if that model still leaves people boxed in after three decades, then perhaps the model is broken. The refugee leaders I met are no longer asking for food rations. They’re ready to contribute – buy land, pay taxes, and call Uganda home. Their demand is modest: recognition and rights.
Ironically, Uganda’s own history shows this is possible. Many of the fighters who helped bring the current government to power – including the former deputy minister of defence, the late Fred Rwigyema – were once refugees educated and integrated in Uganda.
Yet current policies remain tethered to external aid incentives that prioritise containment over integration. Redirecting donor pressure and resources toward rights-based integration could help revive Uganda’s past openness – and offer a more sustainable path forward.
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Dignity must outweigh dependency
Back to that evening at the Lexus bar compound – no grand “programme” was born. But something more important surfaced: a shared agreement that dignity must outweigh dependency, and that humanitarian scaffolding must eventually give way to legal inclusion.
However, what allowed that demand to surface wasn’t a consultant’s toolkit. It was a quiet atmosphere of humble human connection – the Trust Circle at work.
It begins with three simple principles:
· Show up as a neighbour, not an expert.
· Listen longer than you speak.
· If you’re far from the problem, let those closest to it lead, and trust and back their agency.
If we in the humanitarian world can do that – consistently and at scale – we may finally move from rations to rights, from encampment to real belonging.
But this requires governments to act.
Donors must go beyond funding services and support policy shifts towards integration. Uganda showed during the 1985 Bush War, when political interests drove the acceptance of inclusion, that it is entirely possible.
Today, the case must be made again, not for political gain, but because it’s the right thing to do.
In Rwamwanja, refugee leaders engaged through the Trust Circle are already modelling this shift. They are not the majority – yet. But what we are learning from them offers a blueprint. The question is whether the rest of us will act upon it.
Micheal Gumisiriza – Programme lead at Cohere, cultivating trust-based partnerships with communities and leaders to prioritise the needs of the most marginalised
