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Refugee camp

A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced people. Usually, refugees seek asylum after they have escaped war in their home countries, but some camps also house environmental and economic migrants. Camps with over a hundred thousand people are common, but as of 2012, the average-sized camp housed around 11,400.[1] They are usually built and run by a government, the United Nations, international organizations (such as the International Committee of the Red Cross), or non-governmental organization. Unofficial refugee camps, such as Idomeni in Greece or the Calais jungle in France, are where refugees are largely left without the support of governments or international organizations.[2]

Refugee camps generally develop in an impromptu fashion with the aim of meeting basic human needs for only a short time. Facilities that make a camp look or feel more permanent are often prohibited by host country governments. If the return of refugees is prevented (often by civil war), a humanitarian crisis can result or continue.


According to UNHCR, most refugees worldwide do not live in refugee camps. At the end of 2015, some 67% of refugees around the world lived in individual, private accommodations.[3] This can be partly explained by the high number of Syrian refugees renting apartments in urban agglomerations across the Middle East. Worldwide, slightly over a quarter (25.4%) of refugees were reported to be living in managed camps. At the end of 2015, about 56% of the total refugee population in rural locations resided in a managed camp, compared to the 2% who resided in individual accommodation. In urban locations, the overwhelming majority (99%) of refugees lived in individual accommodations, compared with less than 1% who lived in a managed camp. A small percentage of refugees also live in collective centres, transit camps, and self-settled camps.[4]


Despite 74% of refugees being in urban areas, the service delivery model of international humanitarian aid agencies remains focused on the establishment and operation of refugee camps.[5]

An administrative headquarters to coordinate services may be inside or outside the actual camp.

are frequently tents, prefabricated huts, or dwellings constructed of locally available materials. UNHCR recommends a minimum of 3.5 m2 of covered living area per person. Shelters should be at least 2 m apart.

Sleeping accommodations

Gardens attached to the family plot: UNHCR recommends a plot size of 15 m2 per person.

facilities, such as washing areas, latrines, or toilets: UNHCR recommends one shower per 50 persons and one communal latrine per 20 persons. Distance for the latter should be no more than 50 meters from the shelter and not closer than 6 m. Hygiene facilities should be separated by gender.

Hygiene

Places for water collection: Either water tanks where water is off-loaded from trucks (then and potentially treated with disinfectant chemicals such as chlorine), or water tap stands that are connected to boreholes are needed. UNHCR recommends 20  L of water per person and one tap stand per 80 persons that should be no farther than 200 m away from households.

filtered

Clinics, hospitals and centres: UNHCR recommends one health centre per 20,000 persons and one referral hospital per 200,000 persons.

immunization

and therapeutic feeding centres: UNHCR recommends one food distribution centre per 5,000 persons and one feeding centre per 20,000 persons.

Food distribution

Communication equipment (e.g. ): Some long-standing camps have their own radio stations.

radio

Security, including protection from (e.g. barriers and security checkpoints) and peacekeeping troops to prevent armed violence: Police stations may be outside the actual camp.

banditry

Schools and training centres: UNHCR recommends one school per 5,000 persons.

The average camp size is recommended by UNHCR to be 45 square metres (480 sq ft) per person of the accessible camp area.[6] Within this area, the following facilities can usually be found:[7]


Schools and markets may be prohibited by the host country's government to discourage refugees from settling permanently in camps. Many refugee camps also have:


To understand and monitor an emergency over a period of time, the development and organisation of the camps can be tracked by satellite,[9] and analyzed by GIS.[10][11]

Arrival[edit]

Most new arrivals travel distances up to 500 km on foot. The journey can be dangerous, e.g. wild animals, armed bandits or militias, or landmines. Some refugees are supported by the International Organization for Migration, and some use smugglers. Many new arrivals suffer from acute malnutrition and dehydration. Long queues can develop outside the reception centres, and waiting times of up to two months are possible. People outside the camp are not entitled to official support (but refugees from inside may support them). Some locals sell water or food for excessive prices and make large profits. Not uncommonly, some refugees die while waiting outside the reception centre. They stay in the reception centre until their refugee status is approved and the degree of vulnerability assessed. This usually takes two weeks. They are then taken, usually by bus, to the camp. New arrivals are registered, fingerprinted, and interviewed by the host country's government and the UNHCR. Health and nutrition screenings follow. Those who are extremely malnourished are taken to therapeutic feeding centres and the sick to a hospital. Men and women receive counselling separately from each other to determine their needs. After registration, they are given food rations (until then only high energy biscuits), receive ration cards (the primary marker of refugee status), soap, jerrycans, kitchen sets, sleeping mats, plastic tarpaulins to build shelters (some receive tents or fabricated shelters). Leaders from the refugee community may provide further support to the new arrivals.

9 oz (260 g) whole grain (maize or sorghum)

7 oz (200 g) milled grain (wheat flour)

1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons pulses (beans or lentils)

The World Food Programme (WFP) provides food rations twice a month: 2,100 calories/person/day. Ideally, it should be:


Diet is insensitive to cultural differences and household needs. WFP is frequently unable to provide all of these staples, thus calories are distributed through whatever commodity is available, e.g. only maize flour. Up to 90% of the refugees sell part or most of their food ration to get cash. Loss of the ration card means no entitlement to food. In 2015, the WFP introduced electronic vouchers.

Camp structure[edit]

So, to UNHCR vocabulary a refugee camp consists of settlements, sectors, blocks, communities, and families. Sixteen families make up a community, sixteen communities make up a block, four blocks make up a sector, and four sectors are called a settlement. A large camp may consist of several settlements.[6] Each block elects a community leader to represent the block. Settlements and markets in bigger camps are often arranged according to the nationalities, ethnicities, tribes, and clans of their inhabitants, such as at Dadaab and Kakuma.

Democracy and justice[edit]

In those camps where elections are held, elected refugee community leaders are the contact point within the community for both community members and aid agencies. They mediate and negotiate to resolve problems and liaise with refugees, UNHCR, and other aid agencies. Refugees are expected to convey their concerns, messages, or reports of crimes, etc. through their community leaders. Therefore, community leaders are considered to be part of the disciplinary machinery and many refugees mistrust them. There are allegations of aid agencies bribing them. Community leaders can decide what a crime is and thus, whether it is reported to the police or other agencies. They can use their position to marginalize some refugees from minority groups. In Kakuma and Dadaab Refugee Camps in Kenya, Somali refugees have been allowed to establish their own 'court' system which is funded by charities. Elected community leaders and the elders of the communities provide an informal kind of jurisdiction in refugee camps. They preside over these courts and are allowed to pocket the fines they impose. Refugees are left without legal remedies against abuses and cannot appeal against their own 'courts'.[21]

Security[edit]

Security in a refugee camp is usually the responsibility of the host country and is provided by the military or local police. The UNHCR only provides refugees with legal protection, not physical protection. However, local police or the legal system of the host countries may not take responsibility for crimes that occur within camps. In many camps, refugees create their own patrolling systems as police protection is insufficient. Most camps are enclosed with barbed wire fences. This is not only for the protection of the refugees, but also to prevent refugees from moving freely or interacting with local people.


Refugee camps may sometimes serve as headquarters for the recruitment, support and training of guerrilla organizations engaged in fighting in the refugees' area of origin; such organizations often use humanitarian aid to supply their troops.[22] Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand and Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire supported armed groups until their destruction by military forces.[23][24]


Refugee camps are also places where terror attacks, bombings, militia attacks, stabbings and shootings take place and abductions of aid workers are not unheard of. The police can also play a role in attacks on refugees.

Freedom of movement[edit]

Once admitted to a camp, refugees usually do not have the freedom to move about the country but are required to obtain Movement Passes from the UNHCR and the host country's government. Yet informally many refugees are mobile and travel between cities and the camps, or otherwise make use of networks or technology in maintaining these links. Due to widespread corruption in public service, there is a grey area that creates space for refugees to manoeuvre. Many refugees in the camps, given the opportunity, try to make their way to cities. Some refugee elites even rotate between the camp and the city or rotate periods in the camp with periods elsewhere in the country in family networks, sometimes with another relative in a Western country that contributes financially. Refugee camps may serve as a safety net for people who go to cities or who attempt to return to their countries of origin. Some refugees marry nationals so that they can bypass the police rules regarding movements out of the camps. It is a lucrative side-business for many police officers working the area around the camps to have a lot of unofficial roadblocks and to target refugees travelling outside the camps who must pay bribes to avoid deportation.

Once it is safe for them to return to their home countries the refugees can use programmes.[38]

voluntary return

In some cases, refugees may be integrated and naturalised by the country they fled to.

[39]

In some cases, often after several years, refugees may get the offer to be in "third countries". Globally, about 17 countries (Australia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) regularly accept "quota refugees" from refugee camps.[40] The UNHCR works in partnership with these countries and resettlement programmes, such as the Gateway Protection Programme,[41] that support refugees after arrival in the new countries. In recent years, most quota refugees have come from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and the former Yugoslavia which have been disrupted by wars and revolutions.

resettled

Although camps are intended to be a temporary solution, some of them exist for decades. Some Palestinian refugee camps have existed since 1948, camps for Eritreans in Sudan (such as the Shagarab camp) have existed since 1968,[35] the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria has existed since 1975, camps for Burmese in Thailand (such as the Mae La refugee camp) have existed since 1986, Buduburam in Ghana since 1990, or Dadaab and Kakuma in Kenya since 1991 and 1992, respectively. In fact, over half of the refugees as of the end of 2017 are in "protracted refugee situations", defined as situations where at least 25,000 people from a particular country are refugees in another particular country for five or more years (though this might not be representative of refugees who are specifically in camps).[36] The longer a camp exist the lower tends to be the annual international funding and the bigger the implications for human rights.[37] Some camps grow into permanent settlements and even merge with nearby older communities, such as Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon and Deir al-Balah, Palestine.


People may stay in these camps, receiving emergency food and medical aid, for many years and possibly even for their whole life. To prevent this the UNHCR promotes three alternatives to that:

A number of camps in the south of – such as Dosseye, Kobitey, Mbitoye, Danamadja, Sido, Doyaba and Djako – host approximately 113,000 refugees from Central African Republic.[44]

Chad

Ali Addeh (or ) and Holhol camps in Djibouti host 23,000 refugees, who are mainly from Somalia, but also Ethiopians and Eritreans.[45]

Ali Adde

Benaco and Ngara in Tanzania.

refugee camp in Ghana, home to more than 12,000 Liberians[46] (opened 1990)

Buduburam

Bwagiriza and refugee camps in Burundi host refugees from the DRC.

Gatumba

By 2013 there were four camps in , South Sudan, hosting refugees and internally displaced people. Yusuf Batil camp was home to 37,000 refugees, Doro camp to 44,000, Jamam camp to 20,000 and Gendrassa camp to 10,000.[47] These population numbers are subject to fluctuation during the ongoing violence in the country.

Maban County

hosted more than 240,000 UNHCR registered refugees in 2014, mainly from the Central African Republic: Minawao refugee camp in the north and Gado Badzere, Borgop, Ngam, Timangolo, Mbilé and Lolo refugee camps in the east of Cameroon.[48]

Cameroon

Choucha camp in hosted nearly 20,000 refugees from 13 countries who fled from Libya in 2011. Half of them are sub-Saharan African and Arab refugees and the other half are Bangladeshis who had been working in Libya. 3,000 refugees remained in the camp in 2012, and 1,300 in 2013 and its closure is planned.[49]

Tunisia

in Benin hosted Togolese refugees until it was closed in 2006.

Comè

refugee camps (Ifo, Ifo II, Dagahaley, Hagadera, and Kambioos) in North Eastern Kenya, established in 1991 and now hosting more than 330,000 refugees from Somalia.[50]

Dadaab

Dzaleka camp in the of Malawi is home to 34,000 refugees from Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda.[51]

Dowa District

in Ethiopia hosted more than 250,000 mostly refugees from Somalia between 1988 and 2004.

Hart Sheik

camp in Ethiopia hosted 182,000 refugees from South Sudan and was the world's largest refugee camp for some time during the 1990s.[52]

Itang

Hatimy and Swaleh Nguru camps near Mombasa, Kenya, were closed in 1997. Refugees, mainly displaced people from Somalia, were either forced to relocate to Kakuma, repatriated or remunerated to voluntarily relocate into unsafe areas in Somalia.[53] Other closed camps in the area include Liboi, Oda, Walda, Thika, Utange and Marafa.

Jomvu

refugee camp in Kenya was opened in 1991. In 2014, it was the third largest refugee camp worldwide.[54][55] As of June 2015, Kakuma hosts 185,000 people, mostly migrants from the civil war in South Sudan.[56]

Kakuma

Kala, Meheba and Mwange camps in the northwest of host refugees from Angola and DRC.[57]

Zambia

Lainé and (I & II) camps in Guinea hosted nearly 29,300 refugees mostly from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d'Ivoire. The number reduced to 15,000 in 2009.[58]

Kouankan

in Niger was the largest camp in the Sahel during the extreme drought of 1973–1975 and mainly hosted Tuareg people.

Lazaret

in the Democratic Republic of the Congo houses Burundian refugees from across the border.[59]

Lusenda refugee camp

M'Bera camp in southeastern hosts 50,000 Malian refugees.[60]

Mauritania

Mentao camp in hosts 13,000 Malian refugees.[61]

Burkina Faso

refugee camp in Tanzania opened in 1997 and initially hosted 60.000 refugees from the DRC. Due to the recent conflicts in Burundi, it also hosts 90.000 refugees from Burundi. In 2014 it was the 9th largest refugee camp.[55] However, since the conflict in Burundi it is considered one of the world's biggest and most overcrowded camps.[62]

Nyarugusu

camp in central Namibia was established in 1992 to accommodate refugees from Angola, Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda and Somalia. It had 20,000 inhabitants in 1998 and only 3,000 in 2014.

Osire

PTP camp near Zwedru, Bahn camp and Little Wlebo camp in eastern is home to 12,000 refugees from Ivory Coast.[63]

Liberia

camp, close to the Tunisian border in Libya, was opened in 2011 and is housing between 20,000 and 30,000 Libyan refugees.[64]

Ras Ajdir

near Tindouf, South Western Algeria, were opened circa 1976 and are called Laayoune, Smara, Awserd, February 27, Rabouni, Daira of Bojador and Dakhla.

Sahrawi refugee camps

There are 12 camps in the east of hosting approximately 250,000 Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region in Sudan. These camps are in Breidjing, Oure Cassoni, Mile, Treguine, Iridimi, Touloum, Kounoungou, Goz Amer, Farchana, Am Nabak, Gaga and Djabal.[65] Some of these camps appear in the documentary Google Darfur.

Chad

There are 12 camps, such as Shagarab and Wad Sharifey, in eastern . They host around 66,000 mostly Eritrean refugees, the first of whom arrived in 1968.[35]

Sudan

There are a number of camps close to in southern Ethiopia, hosting refugees from Somalia.[66] In 2014 the Dolo Odo camps (Melkadida, Bokolmanyo, Buramino, Kobe Camp, Fugnido, Hilaweyn and Adiharush) were considered to be the second largest.[54][55]

Dolo Odo

There are a number of camps in that host 85,000 refugees from the DRC: Gihembe, Kigeme, Kiziba, Mugombwa and Nyabiheke camps.[67]

Rwanda

There are a rapidly growing number of camps in Uganda, such as , Kayaka II, Kyangwali and Rwamwanja. They host 170,000 refugees from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic Of Congo.[68]

Nakivale

in Zimbabwe was established for Mozambican refugees in 1984 and housed 58,000 of them in 1994.[69]

Tongogara Refugee Camp

Criticism[edit]

As head of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband has advocated for abolishing refugee camps and the accompanying material aid altogether. He argues that given the long duration of many ongoing conflicts, refugees and local economies would be better off if refugees were settled in conventional housing and given work permits, with international financial support both for refugees and local government infrastructure and educational services.[105]

Unofficial refugee settlements[edit]

Within countries experiencing large refugee in-migrations, citizen volunteers, non-governmental organizations, and refugees themselves have developed short- and long-term alternatives to official refugee camps established by governments or the UNHCR. Informal camps provide physical shelter and direct service provision but also function as a form of political activism.[106] Alternative forms of migrant settlement include squats, occupations and unofficial camps.


Asylum seekers who have been rejected and refugees without access to state services in Amsterdam worked with other migrants to create the "We are here" movement in 2012. The group set up tents on empty land and occupied empty buildings including a church, office spaces, a garage, and a former hospital. The purpose of these occupations was both for physical housing and to create space for political, cultural, and social communities and events.[107]


In Brussels, Belgium, the speed of refugee processing and the lack of shelters in 2015 resulted in a large number of refugees sleeping in the streets. In response, a group of Belgian citizens and a collective of undocumented migrants built an informal camp in the Maximiliaan park in front of the Foreign Office and provided food, shelter, medical care, schooling, and activities such as a mobile cinema. This camp also functioned as a form of protest through its claims to space and visible location in front of government agencies.[106]


The "Jungle" in Calais, France was an unofficial refugee camp, not legally approved by local or national French authorities. Because the camp did not receive support from the state government or international aid agencies, grassroots organizations were developed to manage food, donations, temporary shelters and toilets, and recreational activities within the camp. Most of the volunteers had not previously been involved in refugee aid work and were not professionals in humanitarian aid. Although filling a need for service provision, the volunteer nature of aid in informal camps resulted in a lack of accountability, reports of volunteers taking advantage of refugees, risks of violence towards volunteers, and a lack of capacity to handle complex situations within the camps such as trafficking, exploitation, and violence.[108] However, volunteer work in the Calais Jungle also functioned as a form of civil disobedience, because working within the camp fell within the definition of Article L622-1 of the French Penal Code, known as the "délit de solidarité" ("crime of solidarity"), which made it illegal to assist the "arrival, movement or residence of persons irregularly present on the French territory".[109]

Displaced persons camps in post-World War II Europe

Forced displacement in popular culture

Homeless shelter

Human Flow

Immigration detention

Lampedusa immigrant reception center

Refugee children

Refugee Nation

Refugee women and children

Tent city

Transitional shelter

which administered camps in Thailand from 1982 to 1993.

United Nations Border Relief Operation

(UNHCR)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

An Assessment of Sphere Humanitarian Standards for Shelter and Settlement Planning in Kenya's Dadaab Refugee Camps

published by Norwegian Refugee Council

Camp Management Toolkit

Resource for organisations responding to the transitional settlement and shelter needs of displaced populations

Humanitarian Library

Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City. An awareness-raising touring event organized by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Thai-Cambodian Border Camps

The open source and open hardware OLPC One School Per Child Initiative link Refugee Camps

in refugee camps around the world, people are confined to their settlement and denied their basic rights.

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants' Campaign to End Refugee Warehousing

UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency – Data Sharing Tool – Interactive map and passport of every refugee camp, data sharing tool updated by every organisation in the camp