“Self-reliance” as the best strategy of refugee integration is a key component aimed at addressing protracted refugee situations and refugees finding durable solutions, relating to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Within the neo-colonial era, Cameroon has been reckoned in the annals of humanitarian records as a “melting sanctuary for humanitarian migrants”. By 2013, over 95,000 Nigerian refugees fleeing Boko Haram violent extremisms sought refuge in the Far North Region of Cameroon. This article thus unravels the different integrationist pragmatic humanitarian self-reliant activities by the implementing partners of UNHCR, which were geared at autotomizing the Nigerian refugees within the Far North Region of Cameroon. This was ensured through the provision of identification card, cash based transfers, and the promotion of agricultural activities which were geared at rolling back refugee dependency syndrome on mare humanitarian assistance. The provision of these self-reliant-integrationist activities were not without challenges. The challenges were financial, xenophobic attitudes emanating from the side of the host, the myth of return, inferiority qualm in socialization, conflict over land tenure and limited basic knowledge on refugees’ rights. All these slowed down the initiatives geared at rendering the Nigerian refugees self-reliant within the local economy of the Far North region of Cameroon.

Keywords: Local Integration, Refugee and Self-Reliant,

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