Who pays for refugee inclusion? Lessons from Uganda for South Sudan

The question

A promise of access to a school or clinic is only as useful as the service available when a family arrives.

For South Sudan, the practical question is how to strengthen services for refugees and the communities hosting them without transferring responsibilities faster than institutions can carry them.

Uganda offers useful experience. Its approach has sought to include refugees in national services rather than treating their needs as permanently separate from local development. But the evidence also shows why inclusion needs a reliable budget.

South Sudan should pursue shared services where they can improve access, while requiring a funded operating plan before responsibilities are transferred. Emergency assistance must remain available where the proposed replacement cannot yet deliver.

What Uganda’s experience shows

Between 2019 and 2023, Uganda worked with development and humanitarian partners on reforms to move refugee water systems towards national utility management. The work involved policy changes, technical assessments, infrastructure investment and financing for transfers.^[1]

The importance of this experience lies in the preparation behind the handover.

Changing the organisation responsible for a water system does not repair a pump, provide spare parts or pay a technician. Uganda’s reform work recognised that systems needed suitable standards, capable operators and financing arrangements.

That is a useful lesson for South Sudan: public ownership and dependable service are related objectives, but ownership alone does not establish that a service can operate.

Administrative progress can coexist with pressure

Uganda’s January–March 2026 refugee factsheet illustrates both the progress and the limitations of integration.

It reported that 92 per cent of refugee health facilities were nationally accredited and 41 per cent of settlement schools were coded for government support. However, it also reported that operational refugee health facilities had fallen from 101 in 2024 to 89 in the first quarter of 2026 because of funding reductions.^[2]

These figures describe that reporting period, rather than conditions verified today. They nevertheless reveal an important distinction: recognition within a national system can advance while service capacity remains under financial pressure.

A school’s registration may make public support possible. It does not, by itself, establish that teachers are paid, classrooms are adequate or children attend regularly.

The lesson is to measure services alongside institutional integration.

A service needs an operating agreement

Before transferring a clinic, school or water system, South Sudanese authorities and their partners should agree on five practical matters.

First, who will operate it? Responsibility should be assigned to an institution with the authority and staff to carry out the work.

Second, what will it cost to run? Construction costs are only part of the calculation. Salaries, medicines, repairs, transport and supervision continue after a project’s opening ceremony.

Third, who will pay, and when? An annual commitment is less useful if money arrives too late to keep services operating.

Fourth, what happens when funding falls short? There should be an agreed response before a service closes or deteriorates.

Finally, how will residents challenge poor performance? Refugees and host communities need an accessible complaints process with someone responsible for answering.

These arrangements should be public enough for communities to understand what they can expect.

Host communities must see the benefit

Shared services can make refugee assistance more useful to the surrounding population. A strengthened clinic can serve both groups. A water system can support neighbouring settlements. Additional school capacity can reduce pressure on local classrooms.

But those benefits must be planned.

If residents believe assistance overlooks their own unmet needs, a project can create resentment even when its intentions are sound. Local consultation should therefore establish who already uses a service, where access is weakest and how investment will be distributed.

Refugees, host residents and returning South Sudanese citizens may have different legal positions and assistance needs. A shared service should recognise those differences while avoiding unnecessary exclusion.

Fairness also extends beyond refugee-hosting areas. Government and partners should explain how concentrated investment in those locations fits within the wider effort to improve services elsewhere.

Affordability is part of sustainability

Uganda’s water reforms included steps towards user fees intended to support continuing operations.^[1]

Charges present a real trade-off. Revenue can help finance repairs. But a system that balances its accounts by excluding households unable to pay has failed an important public purpose.

Any proposed charge in South Sudan should therefore be assessed against household resources and realistic alternatives. Where subsidies or exemptions are needed, their funding should be included in the operating plan.

The test is whether people can obtain a dependable service at an affordable cost—not simply whether fees are collected.

Why a cautious approach is justified

The strongest objection to integration is that already strained institutions may be unable to absorb additional responsibilities. A hurried transfer could reduce access while allowing external partners to claim that a transition has been completed.

That risk supports careful sequencing.

South Sudan should begin with a limited number of locations where operating capacity, access and financing can be demonstrated. Existing assistance should continue during the transition. Expansion should depend on results.

Development financing may help. A World Bank brief dated 9 March 2026 listed both South Sudan and Uganda among countries eligible for refugee and host-community financing as of December 2025.^[3] Eligibility, however, does not establish that a particular project has been approved or that funds have reached a local service.

The useful indicators are straightforward: days a water system functions, time taken to repair failures, clinic opening hours, medicine availability, teacher attendance and the money actually received for operations.

South Sudan can learn from Uganda without assuming that its institutions or resources are identical. The central lesson is that refugee inclusion becomes credible when responsibilities, funding and service standards are agreed together—and when the communities affected can see whether those commitments are being met.