The Lives of Children in Kakuma Refugee Camp

by Taylor McNaboe, Director of International Programs, USCRI

My Visit to Kakuma Refugee Camp

In mid-January, I visited Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya, one of the many places from which refugees are resettled. Hosting nearly 300,000 refugees, Kakuma is, in a word, derelict. It has been in dire need of assistance for decades.

Since 1992, Kakuma has hosted refugees fleeing war in neighboring countries with no resolution in sight. While the humanitarian crisis in Kakuma has all but disappeared from media reports, the urgency for a robust refugee response has not dwindled.

What I Saw

Upon arrival in Kakuma, I saw infrastructure that sighed from years of wear and use—from the reception center to the shelters of refugees. As I observed lines of sheet-metal homes and the car wheels roll over rocks on narrow roads, everything appeared to be, quite literally, falling apart. With temperatures hovering around 90-100 degrees for most of the year, there is little chance for respite from the heat. Insecurity in the camp, the risk of robbery and being caught in interethnic conflict, has corroded any sense of stability and routine. This is the life of refugees who live in Kakuma, including over 160,000 children. For many, it is all they know.

The Conditions for Children

A group of us visited Kakuma to assess the conditions in which these children live. Their basic needs, whether it be food, water, shelter, or safety, remain largely unattended. For a variety of reasons, most children do not attend school. Their childhood is therefore spent in limbo—deferred to a more prosperous time that may never come.

On the second day, we visited a reception center at the camp. With limited resources, humanitarian actors assist new arrivals escaping conflict in the surrounding countries. There, refugees receive a meager ration of rice and pulses, not enough nutrients to survive, let alone thrive. For children who arrive without their parents, they are responsible for finding a family to take them in while camp officials identify potential foster families.

We dropped by a recreational room for children at the reception center, called a “child-friendly space” by camp officials. A sea of wagging hands greeted us, as rows of small children sat on a hard floor, their eyes otherwise glued to the TV on the wall. The child-friendly space, one room with four walls and a few openings for windows, was too small to hold all the children at one time, so two other groups played outside, anticipating their turn for shelter. Dust coated the floors, and murals of cartoon characters faded on the walls. Just outside, a jungle gym stood empty. The heat of the midday sun made the equipment unsuitable for play.

Children Forced to Be Adults

As has been the case since 1992, children in the camp face tremendous challenges, and for girls, these challenges only multiply. Many do not attend school. Few have access to water or sanitary pads. Those without a parent or guardian are presented with the same challenges as the adults in the camp, with no guidance or care and few additional protections. While we were there, we heard stories of girls selling sex in order to buy sanitary pads, falling pregnant, and dropping out of school. Others told us of child marriages, kidnappings, and gender-based violence. The risk of exploitation looms over these girls at all times.

We learned of children taking care of children. In some instances, a child is put in charge of their siblings in a child-headed household with little supervision from an adult. In others, a parent struggling with substance abuse defers to the eldest daughter to manage the house, forcing her out of school. At a boarding school, some of the girls began an initiative to collect sanitary pads for students in other schools who have none.

My Thoughts and Feelings

As a service provider, the fundamental emotion I feel is rage. Not sadness, rage. I feel sadness when something is out of our control: a landslide, a tsunami, an endemic disease. The conditions in this camp, however, do not need to be this way; the facilities constitute an open-air prison in plain sight. Such conditions are the result of policies and decisions to respond to a displacement crisis that has lasted for over 30 years. The fruit of these decisions is a shriveled one: a warehousing of people, mostly children, at the expense of their own safety and well-being.

To witness this and return to a suspended U.S. resettlement program is devastating. For these people, who cannot work, move, or become citizens of Kenya, resettlement is one of the few sources of hope for a solution. It was the dream of a better life that children could imagine. Many had been waiting years for a chance for freedom, and now, that possibility seems gone.

I reflect now on the children whose entire lives have been spent in Kakuma and recall the words of “Harlem” by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the run?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?