The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on The Livelihood of Urban Refugees in Arua City, Uganda

This study focused on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihood of urban refugees in Arua City, Uganda. The research design adopted in this study was qualitative interview study, underpinned on the interpretivism philosophy. Data were sourced through 10 to 15 minutes face to face in-depth interviews consisting of 12 Urban refugee homesteads registered with the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), Arua branch. The Qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is an accessible and flexible approach to qualitative data analysis, which is based on coding (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Results have shown that urban refugees have been hit hard by the COVID-19 Pandemic and will continue to face tough and difficult times in the future.

Our findings should be interpreted in the context of the potential limitations of our study: Firstly, the qualitative approach provides depth to our understanding of this problem but may not be generalizable to all urban refugees in other cities. We only interviewed urban refugees in Arua city, a single metropolitan area. Further work should explore how these experiences vary across the urban refugee hosting countries. Secondly, in all qualitative studies, findings may be influenced by the perspectives of the investigators. Finally, participants provided retrospective accounts of their experiences about COVID-Pandemic, recall and social desirability bias cannot be excluded. UNHCR, Donors and the government of Uganda can use the findings of this study to develop appropriate strategies to support urban refugees in a bid to salvage their lives.