BIEA Annual Lecture, UK

Authoritarian Sanctuaries: Refugee Politics in East Africa

Professor Alexander Betts, University of Oxford

Event Registration: biea.ac.uk/welcome/annual Lecture-UK

The lecture examines the political history of refugee policy in four neighbouring East African countries: Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Uganda. Based on archival research conducted within and beyond the focus countries (undertaken with Dr Julia Schweers), it aims to understand the conditions under which authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states have sometimes developed progressive refugee policies and at other times have not. It focuses in particular on the ambivalent role of four key Cold War dictators in shaping refugee policies and their legacies, sometimes in surprisingly progressive ways: Mengistu Haile Mariam, Juvenal Habyarimana, Gaafar Nimiery, and Idi Amin. Through this historical analysis, the lecture explores what we can learn about the mechanisms through which authoritarian regimes within the region develop refugee policy, and what this means for effective contemporary advocacy to promote refugee rights in non-democratic contexts.

Speaker

Alexander Betts is Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs, and Senior Fellow at Brasenose College, at the University of Oxford. He currently serves as the University’s Local and Global Engagement Officer in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office, and was previously the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre and Associate Head of Oxford’s Social Sciences Division. His research focuses on the political economy of refugee protection, with a focus on East Africa. He is the author of nearly 100 scholarly publications and 12 books, including most recently The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies (Oxford University Press, 2021). He is co-founder of the Refugee-Led Research Hub, which has a base at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), and has previously worked for UNHCR, and currently leads the IKEA Foundation-funded Refugee Economies Programme. He has been named as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, one of Foreign Policy magazine’s top 100 global thinkers, and has received academic awards including from ISA and APSA. He has just written Social Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2024), which will be available soon.

Welcome: Dr Rachel Ibreck, BIEA Director, Goldsmiths, University of London

Chair: Professor Justin Willis, BIEA President, Durham University