Kenyan Refugee Crisis

It’s good news that the Kenyan government has finally decided to open up another camp in Dadaab for the influx of refugees from Somalia. This camp is Ifo 2. But why did the situation have to reach such a crisis point before the Kenyan government addressed it and opened a new camp?

Dadaab is the largest refugee camp in the world with 375,000 inhabitants. It is a city in its own right and bigger than Wellington. The camp was built to host 90,000 refugees. There are now more refugees arriving every month than are resettled every year. The camps are so short of resources that refugees are donating shoes to the new arrivals. The problem of over-congestion in Dadaaab was not created with the current crisis (since June there has been a dramatic upsurge in arrivals). In April this year there were 330,000 refugees over three times the camp’s capacity.

Dadaab is a ‘protracted’ refugee crisis. It was established in the 1990s after the fall of Somali’s Siad Barre regime. There are people who were born, have gone to school, married and died in this refugee camp. Over the past two decades the Kenyan government has become increasing reluctant to host new arrivals. After all, refugee camps are only supposed to be temporary solutions. No government wants thousands of refugees arriving on their soil - as was strongly displayed by the French and Italian reaction to the influx of African displaces from Tunisia and Libya.

The Kenyan government did agree to open an extension in Dadaab in December 2009 to deal with over-congestion. This camp, Ifo 2, was to be completed and refugees moved in on November 2 2010. But just days before UNHCR began resettling 40,000 refugees into the camp the government pulled their approval, claiming it had never been granted. So in April this year when I visited Ifo 2 the camp was ready: wells were dug; schools and hospitals built and one NGO had even installed internet in their office. But there were no refugees living there. Meanwhile, there were tens of thousands of refugees living on the perimeter of the camp, with no access to adequate sanitation.

The Kenyan government’s decision to pull the plug on Ifo 2 last year is attributed to the Deputy Speaker and local MP. He demanded that UNHCR contract the local community to create a special type of soil block for the houses (Interlocking Stabilized Soil Blocks) rather than using traditional mud blocks. His stance was understandable – he was seeking employment for his constituency who are predominantly nomadic pastoralists who have also been badly affected by the drought.

This political reality does complicate solving and the reporting of humanitarian emergencies. While it is crucial that we do offer relief to the Horn of Africa, it is also critical that in the long-term we develop policies to ensure that those living in the camps are resettled or repatriated as appropriate. We should put pressure on the Kenyan government to keep the borders open and continue to provide adequate space for humanitarian agencies to operate. But Kenya should not be shouldered with the burden of hundreds of thousands of refugees. We in the West need to do our part in this problem which means not just sending aid but accepting more refugees as well as seeking to assist with that elusive goal - a political settlement in Somalia.

Nina Hall is a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar studying for a doctorate in International Relations at the University of Oxford.

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