Safer Havens: Better Protection for Refugees in Kenya

I-GMAP and AIPG are proud to announce the launch of the newest report in its Safer Havens program. This report, based on findings from a 2024 workshop in Naivasha, Kenya, explores best practices and lessons learned on protecting refugees from identity-based violence in the Kenyan context.

Kenya has hosted a large population of refugees, predominantly from Somalia, Sudan (prior to the secession of South Sudan), Congo, and Uganda, since the early 1990s. Of the over 800,000 refugees, the great majority reside in two massive refugee camps, Dadaab in Garissa County and Kakuma in Turkana County–located in arid, remote, and impoverished areas of northern and northeastern Kenya, respectively. Conditions at both camps are poor, and residents face an array of risks of identity-based violence, including inter-ethnic conflicts and crime within the camps, conflict between camp residents and hosting communities, risks of attacks from armed paramilitaries, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

Successive national governments have long proposed closing the two super-camps and integrating the refugee population into host communities, without success. More recently, two significant developments signal an opportunity to finally make good on this ambition: a 2021 Refugee Act laid the legal foundations for refugees to have access to labor markets (among other rights) and the 2025 Shirika Plan provides a general roadmap for turning the two camps into municipalities, aiming at the socio-economic integration of refugees into the “designated areas” of their host communities, and fostering economic independence.

While promising, the Plan is notably short on details, and faces a number of challenges both in terms of its vision for the future of Kenya’s refugees and its implementation. Among these challenges, this Report focuses specifically on the current absence of a detailed plan for security from identity-based violence that includes both refugees and members of host communities. The process of socio-economic integration, while desirable in most respects, leaves unaddressed existing risk factors for violent conflict. It will also foreseeably exacerbate existing risks and threats, particularly in terms of competition for scarce resources. Integration may well generate new forms of risk and fragility, as well. For all these reasons, the Shirika Plan must address multiple facets of the complicated security shortfall afflicting the two super-camps. Doing so will require comprehensive security sector reform, innovative approaches to identifying new sources of funding, and robust inclusion of refugees as partners in a collaborative process.

ACCESS THE REPORT HERE

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