The Effectiveness of Uganda's Refugee Work Rights Framework: A Systematic Review with Reference to Refugees in Kampala

Uganda's Refugees Act 2006 and Refugees Regulations 2010 give refugees the right to work and move freely and while this framework is often described as progressive, it is still not clear whether that promise turns into real jobs and livelihoods for refugees in Kampala; to examine this, the review identified, appraised and synthesised scholarly evidence on the effectiveness of Uganda's refugee work rights framework with a focus on refugees in Kampala, following PRISMA 2020 and searching Consensus, CORE and PubMed, which produced 445 records, of which 259 duplicates were removed, 186 were screened by title, 43 reports were assessed for eligibility and 42 studies published between 2004 and 2026 were included and thematically synthesised around four research questions; the included studies covered legal and policy analyses, qualitative case studies, surveys, mixed methods studies and student dissertations and the review found five main themes: the law guarantees the right to work but implementation lags, informality dominates urban refugee work, human, financial and social capital shape livelihoods, discrimination and documentation and status-related barriers persist, and urban and settlement settings differ, although Kampala specific evidence remains limited and mostly small scale; no included study linked exclusion from work to refugee health outcomes; overall, the evidence suggests that the right to work has not been fully realized for refugees in Kampala, who still depend largely on informal self-employment, and the evidence base remains small, mixed and weakly reported, highlighting the need for stronger enforcement, better labour market data, closer doctrinal analysis of the 2006 Act in practice and more research on how work rights relate to health.