Commitments of Rwanda at the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees

On 20 September 2016, the United Nations Secretary-General and seven Member States cohosted the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees to increase global responsibility sharing for refugees worldwide and thereby strengthen the international community’s capacity to address mass displacement. At the Summit, a geographically diverse group of 52 leaders and senior officials, including 32 heads of state or government, pledged to increase multilateral humanitarian assistance by approximately $4.5 billion over 2015 levels. 17 Member States with significant refugee populations pledged to enact policy changes that will allow one million more refugee children to attend school and one million additional refugees to pursue lawful employment and livelihood activities.

Rwanda was one of 9 African nations invited to the Leaders’ Summit. During the summit, Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Ms Louise Mushikiwabo pledged the following on behalf of the Rwandan Government:

• Promote the inclusion of refugees through the joint Rwanda-UNHCR livelihoods strategy focused on graduating camp-based refugees out of assistance programs and increasing formal access to work. This strategy will ensure that 18,000 camp-based refugees are graduated out of food and/or cash-for-food assistance programs by mid-2018, 60,000 refugees have formal employment opportunities by mid-2018 and 58,000 refugees use banking services by mid-2018.
• Promote refugee integration by: a) issuing 100% of Rwanda’s 160,000 refugees identity cards and 1951 Convention travel documents by the end of 2017, which will improve freedom of movement, including in the East African Community, and improve refugees’ employability; and, b) providing 100% of the 30,000 urban refugees in Rwanda the opportunity to buy into the national health insurance system by the end of 2017. Currently only 3,000 refugees have access to the system.
• Integrate into the national education system 35,000 refugee students in secondary schools and 18,000 in primary schools by 2018. Currently only half of refugee students are integrated into the national school system. This will eliminate the need for most parallel camp-based education structures and boost secondary school enrollment.

Additional information on the commitments made by Member States can be found here: http://refugeesmigrants.un.org/sites/default/files/public_summary_document_refugee_summit_final_11-11-2016.pdf