Listen to This Article Enhance your reading experience by listening to this article.

As the number of refugees who are being displaced from their home countries due to conflicts continues to increase, a humanitarian agency has warned that hosting them in camps is no longer tenable.

 The agency called on respective governments to find lasting solutions to jurisdictional instabilities which have displaced people from their home countries and end up looking for shelter in refugee camps in other stable countries.

 US Committee on Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) Chief Executive Officer Negash Eskinder.

 “We don’t believe in camps. We are here to work with the Kenyan government and other NGOs to find a permanent solution for refugees. No human being should be confined to a camp for life, even for a day,” Eskinder said.

 He went on: “Whenever you put a lot of people in a refugee camp, they lose hope. You don’t want people to lose hope in life. Camps are meant to be a temporary transition, but not a permanent solution”.

Undocumented population

 The United States-based refugee agency opened its Nairobi regional office in February, which is the first in Africa and the fifth in an existing network of field offices across the US, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico.

It has so far distributed 500,000 pads to refugee girls in Kakuma and Dadaab camps under its Keep Girls Dreaming flagship programme. 

 Eskinder noted that Kenya has been a warehouse of refugee camps for over three decades while another undocumented population of foreigners troop into the urban centres.

 “We want to work to create that ideal solution for people to be repatriated. But, we have to remind ourselves that refugees are a product of war and displacement. Nobody wants to be a refugee. They are forced refugees. So, most refugees love to go back home. But, the situation that drove them in the first place has to change,” he added.

 USCRI boss thanked the Kenyan government under the leadership of President William Ruto over the several security-led initiatives to restore regional peace adding that they will mitigate the crisis in refugee camps.

 He said that the agency will focus on providing humanitarian assistance to the children who are the most vulnerable group among refugees and immigrants irrespective of their nationalities.

 Eskinder explained that USCRI continues to prioritise menstrual health among refugee girls to keep them in school and minimise their vulnerabilities.

 “It is a dangerous moment when girls are not in school. They are more vulnerable to a lot of abuse and kidnappings at the camps. But if we dignify girls and women, society works better,” Eskinder stated.

 He revealed that the agency has started airlifting students from refugee camps to study in universities around the world, where the first four students from Kakuma have commenced their studies in Mexican universities.

 “We have now four South Sudanese refugees from Kakuma going to study in Mexico universities. We are also planning to send some of these young minds to other universities around the continent,” he said.

 Eskinder ruled out the possibility of sending them back to refugee camps after their study adding that they may land lucrative jobs abroad.

 “Once they finish, they will probably be hired by big corporations in Mexico. So, we don’t want to send them back to the country, but we want them to start their life working in different corporations once they have that education,” he said.

Humanitarian interventions

 On his part, USCRI’s international programmes manager Taylor McNaboe said that the entry of the agency into the country is timely as humanitarian interventions are needed due to the refugee population build-up.

“As a client-centred agency, we’ve been doing advocacy work for East Africa for decades now, and we’ve really been looking forward to establishing a permanent operation base in East Africa,” McNaboe said.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data, as of January this year there were 714,137 registered refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya. Refugees account for 76 per cent, while asylum seekers are 24 per cent of the total number

Children below the age of 17 account for half of the total refugee population at 51 per cent, followed by the age group of between 18 to 59 years at 46 per cent while those above 60 years of age are only 3 per cent.

The majority of the refugees are from Somalia with a total of 389,402 representing 55 per cent, South Sudan comes in second with 174,652 accounting for 24 per cent while the Democratic Republic of Congo follows with a total of 58,844 representing 8.2 per cent of the total population.