RefugePoint works to fill the critical and unmet needs of people affected by war and conflict who have fallen through the net of humanitarian assistance. This commitment is expressed through targeting individuals, families and groups of people overlooked by existing aid programs. RefugePoint strives to alleviate human suffering, to protect life and health, and to raise awareness for these vulnerable people.
Statement of Need
There are nearly 3 million refugees across Africa who have fled their homes due to violent conflict and persecution. UNHCR (the UN refugee agency mandated to protect refugees) works with governments and non-profits to assist refugees. However, less than half – mainly those living in refugee camps – are served.[1]
Although refugees are often required to live in camps, sometimes they are attacked and killed in these ostensible safe havens. In recent years there have been refugee massacres in Burundi,[2] in northern Uganda,[3] in Rwanda,[4], among other examples. A leading authority on refugees writes, “It is very well-known that congregating refugees in camps can actually create insecurity.”[5]
Especially for some groups of refugees, such as certain ethnic minorities, mixed ethnic marriages, orphans and single women, the camps are fraught with unmanageable perils. Some refugees live in danger in the camps, while many others flee and are forced to risk living in urban slums where they are at further risk.
Developing countries with debilitated, dysfunctional, or non-existent government structures and social systems are often unable to shoulder the burden of poverty of their own nationals, let alone the needs of these urban refugees. Refugees are often pushed to the most extreme and desperate margins.
According to Human Rights Watch, Nairobi’s refugees live “unseen and forgotten”[6] by governments and the UN and are “frequently subjected to the abuse of their most basic rights.”[7] Among Nairobi’s estimated 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers,[8] many live in slum settings or on the impoverished periphery of Nairobi. The UN’s self-initiated investigation in 2001 in Kenya found a systematic failure to protect refugees in these locations.
In the past several years RefugePoint has joined UNHCR and other agencies to jointly conduct an assessment of the needs of urban refugees. The findings include lack of access to healthcare and consequent deaths, sexual and gender-based violence against girls and women, child abduction and early, forced marriage, significant levels of isolation among refugees, difficulty in meeting basic needs, and high risk of HIV infection among refugee girls and women who resort to commercial sex work in an effort to survive.[9]
Why do so many urban refugees live in peril and squalor, with minimal assistance? When countries require that refugees live in camps, the vast majority of humanitarian assistance flows there, even if the needs are great in the urban slums. Moreover, urban refugees live among locals and are not obviously visible to the international community.[10] Over the past decades, there has never been a systematic effort to identify and assist urban refugees. Their plight has gone unnoticed and unaddressed in Kenya and in other African countries.
RefugePoint’s independent funding makes the agency flexible and able to quickly address unmet, immediate and emerging needs. With over twenty years of combined experience working with refugees, RefugePoint’s co-founders have witnessed the trauma that unassisted refugees face, as well as their struggle to eke out a living in urban centers where they have no means of dignified survival.
[1] UNHCR 2005 Global Refugee Trends: Statistical Overview of Populations of Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, Internally Displaced Persons, Stateless Persons, and Other Persons of Concern to UNHCR, p. 3 at http://www.unhcr.org/statistics.html
[2] the Gatumba camp massacre of Congolese refugees in 2004.
[3] the Barlonyo camp massacre of Sudanese refugees and Ugandan nationals by the Lord’s Resistance Army in 2004.
[4] the Mudende camp massacre of Congolese refugees 1997.
[5] Journal of Humanitarian Studies, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 29, Are Refugee Camps Good for Children? Barbara Harrell-Bond.
[6] Human Rights Watch, Hidden in Plain view: Refugees Living Without Protection in Nairobi and Kampala, p. 17.
[7] Ibid, p. 17.
[8] A UNHCR meeting in 2006 estimated 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers in and around Nairobi. The Kenyan government’s 2006 survey of urban refugees estimated 175,000.
[9] Report of the Participatory Assessment: Special Focus: Urban Refugees with Specific Needs, UNHCR Branch Office, Nairobi, September 2006, p. 7-10.
[10] Human Rights Watch devoted an entire book to the plight of urban refugees: Hidden in Plain View: Refugees Living Without Protection in Nairobi and Kampala, 2002.
