75 Years of Refugee Convention: A Call for Urban Inclusion and Localized Support

This year marks a significant milestone: the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the foundational treaty for global refugee protection. However, as Dr. Wilson Kirkfixer Sanya, outgoing mayor of Koboko Municipality, Uganda, points out, the world must question whether the Convention’s implementation adequately reflects today’s complex displacement realities.

The Convention, drafted in a different era, was predicated on temporary exile and eventual return. This model is increasingly outdated in a world where over 117.8 million people are forcibly displaced. Today’s refugees are not confined to camps; they are moving into towns and cities, seeking work, dignity, and opportunities to rebuild their lives – much like any other resident.

Uganda has often been lauded for its progressive refugee policies, but Sanya observes a growing disconnect between the Convention’s ideals and the diminishing capacity of humanitarian budgets. As international support wanes, living conditions in settlements deteriorate, leading to increased disease and trauma. Crucially, the growing trend of refugees integrating into urban areas has not been matched by corresponding policy or funding shifts.

Sanya highlights the situation in Koboko, a town on the border of Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over a quarter of its 100,000 residents are refugees. “The refugees I govern are not, for the most part, in settlements,” he writes. “They are shopkeepers, students, tradespeople, mothers running small businesses.”

Koboko has pioneered what Sanya calls the “Koboko Model”: direct funding to local governments with the autonomy to create localized solutions. This approach challenges the traditional model of channeling aid exclusively through camp administrations or national ministries. The results suggest that refugees are not a burden but an opportunity, contributing labor, entrepreneurship, and demand that can strengthen local economies.

For the 75th anniversary, Sanya urges the international community to move beyond reaffirmations and genuinely re-evaluate where power and funding lie. He calls for resources and discretionary authority to be placed directly with municipal governments, recognizing refugees’ right to meaningful participation in shaping policies that affect them. The focus must shift from settlement-based responses to urban-inclusive ones, institutionalizing refugee programming within local government structures to ensure its resilience beyond donor cycles and political changes.

The Convention’s authors could not have foreseen the scale of today’s displacement, but they understood that “protection is not charity, it is obligation.” Sanya concludes that this obligation is most effectively met not in distant halls, but in ordinary towns like Koboko, where refugees and their neighbors are already building a shared future.