In April the Dutch public broadcasting agency NOS published a story on Uganda "the refugee paradise". The article was titiled: "Welcome refugee! Uganda welcomes you with open arms!" A South Sudanese colleague frowned after reading the translated article. "How can they see this as paradise?" he asked. "Don't they know that people who are here are the ones who are not able to go somewhere else? Live in the city, or perhaps another country? There is no such thing as a paradise here."
Uganda's refugee policy has received much media coverage in recent months. The country is currently hosting around 1.2 million refugees from neighbouring South Sudan, which is involved in a brutal, and endless, civil war. While a number of critical articles were also published on the difficulties that South Sudanese refugees have been facing, most of the coverage has focused on Uganda's hospitality. The range of superlatives used to describe the openness of both the government and the population of Uganda was especially eye-catching. Articles were, for example, titled "Uganda's example to the world", "Uganda may be best place in the world to be a refugee", "Uganda's lesson in how to treat refugees" and so on.
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