A new lens on refugee self-reliance

PICTURED: Rotary Peace Fellow Miriam Mylvaganam during the 2024 International Crisis and Diplomacy simulation game at the University of Bradford, UK, in partnership with Rotary.

Rotary Peace Fellow Miriam Mylvaganam’s journey across continents and crisis zones has become a powerful exploration of refugee self-reliance, resilience and the human connections shaping global peacebuilding.

Words: Anne Matthews. D9560 Passport Rotary Club. Qld.

Miriam Mylvaganam is from the Hutt region in New Zealand and was endorsed as a Peace Fellow by District 9940. She attended the University of Bradford from September 2023 to December 2024, where she studied a Master’s in Peace, Conflict, and Development.

Miriam said her research is an evolving story, shaped by fieldwork in Uganda, discussions with colleagues and friends with lived experience, and insights from conferences like Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) and the Refugee Law Initiative.

Her research explores the concept of self-reliance as a migration management framework in Uganda, examining both its implementation and the critical debates surrounding it. More recently, she has been exploring linkages to the capabilities approach, with a focus on refugee contexts.

Over the one and a half years of her degree, she worked inside refugee camps in Uganda and Greece, conducted field research in Tunisia, and authored a dissertation grounded in first-hand experiences across the African continent, a dissertation for which she received a distinction.

Along the way, she spoke on stages she never imagined, sat alongside humanitarians from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), interviewed the BBC and EU, and met an Oxford professor she had long referenced in her work. She also fulfilled a long-held dream of being in the field, won Best Delegate in a diplomacy simulation, and built relationships that turned colleagues into lifelong friends.

She said these milestones were not just academic, they were deeply personal. The people she journeyed with, especially her Rotary Peace Fellow cohort, have become more than peers.
They have become family.

“We are living in a time of unfolding crises, where displacement, conflict and inequality are deeply interconnected,” Miriam said. “Against this backdrop, spaces like HDCA are vital, bringing together people committed to rethinking policies, frameworks and approaches to some of the world’s most complex challenges. In these challenging times, there is real value, and beauty, in collaboration and shared learning.”

Now based in the United Kingdom, Miriam has taken her research further through some incredible opportunities at the Senate House in London and at Bradford and Oxford Universities. Recently, Miriam was invited by a Non-Government Organisation to a side meeting at the United Nations for the International Day of Girl.

“To those who believed in me, especially when this path felt out of reach, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your belief helped carry me here,” Miriam said. “If there’s a dream you’ve held quietly for years, I hope this reminds you: Stay with it. It’s worth it.”