John Baird: Canada's freedom agenda - Diplomat Magazine

Di spatches|refugeesDabaab’s dilemmaKenya’s refugee camps, the largest in the world, are overcrowded. What to do?By Chantaie AllickUNHCR / B. BannonParalyzed by polio, Muktar, a 31-year-old father of five, is relocated by donkey cart from a temporary settlement into a new tent.More than 100,000 Somalis havefled to Kenya in the past sixmonths to escape a droughtand famine that has decimated the EastAfrican country. They trek across barren,drought-ravaged, sand-covered land inblowing wind to do so.Then, they arrive at Dadaab, an overcrowdedsettlement made up of dirtpathways, administrative buildings, large,self-sustaining markets and tin-roofedshacks and tents in neat rows surroundedby thick wood fences made of branches.Children run around, and goats wanderthe open spaces dotted with thin-limbedtrees where some of the town’s brownskinnedinhabitants have spent theirlifetimes.For the past 20 years, in the desert-likeborder region of the eastern part of Kenya,a strange settlement of stateless Somalishas established an uncertain existence inthe Dadaab refugee camps: lives spentin exile. The camps are the largest andmost overcrowded in the world. At thebeginning of 2011, the settlement, built for90,000, had more than 300,000 refugeescompeting for space and resources.The complex was built in 1991 to houserefugees from the Somali civil war. Afterthe initial mass arrival in 1991 and 1992, asteady inflow of Somalis has continued toarrive at the settlement, which is made upof three camps set up with mud houses,open markets, schools, administrativebuildings and borehole wells on an openswath of land provided by the Kenyangovernment. Desperate women and childrenhave walked for days to reach theshelter and food provided by the UnitedNations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR).In 2011, the camps received 140,000refugees, almost half of them in June andJuly alone. The UNHCR expected that,by year’s end, more than 500,000 peoplewould be crammed into a space meant tohouse less than one-fifth of that number.Improvements made at the camps overthe years are now being overwhelmed bythis mass influx. Better shelter, sanitation,food distribution, policing and protectionhave all been sacrificed, while riots, rapeand insecurity have once again becomethe norm.Some had to wait days in the earlyhours of the emergency for food or assistance.Many fell through the cracks. Somedied.An expansion of the camps, planned toaddress the original overcrowding, is nowbeing filled with rows of white UNHCRtents to accommodate the new arrivals.58WINTER 2012 | JAN-FEB-MAR