Entrenched relations and the permanence of long-term refugee camp situations (original) (raw)
Related papers
World Journal of Social Science Research, 2021
This article examines the phenomenon of Protracted Refugee Situations (PRS) and the so-called warehousing of refugees in the case of Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex. We analyze the intractability of PRS in this particular case and argue that there are four main features that make it so: (1) a host state that views the refugees primarily as a security threat and takes very little responsibility for their well-being; (2) UNHCR acting as a surrogate state with very little influence over the Kenyan government and little incentive or capacity to remedy the situation; (3) an ongoing political situation in Somalia that prevents the safe return of refugees; and (4) a general failure on the part of wealthier countries to commit to substantial resettlement initiatives.
A Refugee Camp Conundrum: Geopolitics, Liberal Democracy, and Protracted Refugee Situations
Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 2013
Liberal democratic norms are embodied in refugee camps and the states that host them in a multitude of ways: through refugee law and the ‘good offices’ of the United Nations; in relation to international aid and the prerequisites recipient governments must meet to receive it; and in refugee education to name but a few. In the Dadaab camps of Northeast Kenya, democracy and law meet intense geopolitical pressures. The camps are situated in what was once contested territory during the period of colonial rule. In the early 1990s and again in 2011, as Somalia faced armed conflict and related famine, thousands of refugees fled to the Dadaab camps. The presence of Somali refugees in Kenya is not politically neutral or merely humanitarian. The contradictions between liberal democratic norms and the prevailing geopolitical sentiments that favour keeping refugees in camps them are explored in the context of Dadaab.
The Role of Aid in Protracted Refugee Situations - Case of Kenya 1991-2013
The international regime’s focus on durable solutions for refugees – Repatriation, Integration and resettlement as the only viable options for refugees only serve to perpetuate the protracted situations as time has proven that they are ineffective. This lack of foreseeable alternatives has dire consequences on the entire refugee population. In Kenya for example, aid organizations and the government seem to be stuck at the emergency phase characterised by saving lives, protection and provision of basic needs and have not yet moved on to finding durable solutions. The genuine intention of aid agencies has also been put to question. This study sought to establish whether aid has contributed in one way or another to this protracted situation and investigate to what extent it has contributed to creating a situation of perpetual dependency within the refugee population. This study used secondary data in analysing the variables. Secondary data include data gathered from documents search such as media reports, analysis and review of published books, journals, papers, periodicals, and unpublished works as well as government's official documents. The study used secondary data in the form of documented information from libraries and other relevant institutions. The findings from these secondary data were analysed through content analysis. The key emerging issues in this study were that resettlement was effectively the only durable solutions for refugees in protracted situations in Kenya, however, moving forward and in recognition that only a small percentage of refugees can be resettled to third countries, wherever possible, policy actors should seek to work in harmony with, rather than against, refugees’ efforts to become more productive and empowered members of society. Two areas have emerged for further studies in respect to refugees in protracted situations namely; (i) the contribution of resettled refugees in curtailing dependence on aid and (ii) the significance of self-reliance strategies in combating protracted refugee situations.
Kenya's decision to close the Dadaab refugee camp complex highlights structural flaws in the international refugee regime. While much attention has been paid to Kenya's reasoning, less has been given to the reactions of organisations and states. Given the state's primacy in the international system and uncertainty about refugees, Kenya's decision is perhaps unsurprising. It is contended that the stakeholders were unprepared because of path dependence and disbelief that Kenya would repatriate the refugees. While stakeholder reactions arguably demonstrate concern for refugees, the international refugee regime remains unquestioned, sustaining revenue streams that may fuel corruption, encourage lengthy encampment and prolong conflict,
Refugee Coloniality: An Afrocentric Analysis of Prolonged Encampment in Kenya
PhD, 2021
This thesis is a critical examination of ‘prolonged’ refugee encampment in Kenya. By foregrounding encampment in Kenya, the thesis demonstrates how the camp – a temporary solution to the refugee phenomenon – has become a permanent institution for the concentration of so many refugees. With 33 of 54 African nations establishing some of the largest refugee camps in the world, millions of refugees have effectively become in situ, trapped in prolonged encampment. Current approaches such as the institutionalisation of the camp and the securitisation of borders, are critically analysed by placing the problem of refugee encampment against the context of colonial relations in Africa. Refugee encampment prevents free movement across borders and those borders must be understood, this thesis argues, as part of the legacy and persistence of colonial power. Methodologically, this thesis is an interdisciplinary undertaking; a critical legal analysis of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Convention), the 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (the 1969 Convention), and Kenyan domestic legislation relevant to refugees. It uses the socio-political and cultural frameworks of the camp, and key themes such as securitisation, sovereignty, borders, campzenship and Ujamaa to reveal the colonial/imperial continuity embedded within encampment paradigm. The interdisciplinary methodology applies diverse theoretical and conceptual frameworks to the legal texts/laws that regulate the existence and persistence of the camp as a permanent security architecture. Addressing encampment as emanating from colonially bordered Africa reveals the continuation of the colonial logics structuring prolonged encampment while also highlighting that current theoretical and practical approaches to resolve the problem have failed. As such, this thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge by enriching scholarly understanding of the camp. This thesis offers a detailed and nuanced reading of the role played by international refugee law in producing the problem of prolonged encampment in Africa. Inspired by my own embodied history of encampment in Kenya, this thesis models and advances an Afrocentric approach to understanding prolonged encampment in Africa.
Camps and counterterrorism: Security and the remaking of refuge in Kenya
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
This article examines the enduring entanglements of counterterror governance and refugee encampment in Kenya. The spectre of "terrorism" and its supposed remedy-"counterterrorism"-have loomed large in Kenyan politics since the 1990s and gained further traction since the country's military invasion and occupation of southern Somalia in 2011. Few other spaces have been associated as persistently with threats to Kenya's national security and sovereignty as the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in the country's Northern belt, which are popularly depicted as "wombs" of terror. In this article, we analyze the transformation of refugee governance in Kenya under the auspices of the War on Terror and consider how counterterrorism has become a way of governing both refugees and precarious ethnoracialized citizens. We provide a multi-scalar analysis that moves between the scales of global militarization, Kenyan state governance, as well as securitized spaces of camps, checkpoints, and policing. The article concludes that refugee camps are not only gateways for imported global counterterror initiatives, but key sites of locally defined state-making processes in which Kenya's counterterror state is (re) assembled as part of a planetary architecture of humanitarian containment and militarized apartheid.
Managing and Contatoing Displacement after the Cold War: UNHCR and Somali Refugees in Kenya
Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 1997
This paper argues that distinct patterns of managing human displacement have emerged since the end of the Cold War. Using the case of Somali refugees in Kenya, the author illustrates what some of these strategies are: the deployment of "preventive zones" on the Somalian side of the border; the designation of prima facie refugee status which restricts Somali refugees to camps, and the reduction of opportunities for resettlement abroad. All of these serve to regionalize displacement in camps, for the most part, without providing a sustainable solution to the social and political crisis at hand.
Encamped States: The State of the Camp in Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, 2022
This thesis is an ethnographic account of the state within Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, Kenya. Drawing from twelve months of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork between 2018 and 2019, the thesis explores the multiplicity and mobility of states within the camp. In 2016, the Kenyan state agency RAS assumed key camp managerial and refugee protection positions from the UNHCR. Previous research focusing on refugee camps has largely ignored the presence of the state, tending to overemphasise the governing role of the UNHCR and camps as Agambenian ‘state of exception’. This thesis addresses this imbalance and shifts our attention to how camps are highly political spaces, hosting an array of mobile national and foreign state actors, organisations, and institutions. The thesis utilises the concept of ‘encamped states’ to argue that, within the temporary encamped setting of Kakuma and Kalobeyei, states are both multiple and mobile.