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How are refugee camps created?

13 December 2024 | Uncategorized

Refugees, displaced persons, and internally displaced persons. How are these terms defined? How are camps for refugees or internally displaced persons created? Do people who end up in such camps have any chance of returning to a normal life?

At the outset, I want to note that in this article I will focus on refugees and displaced persons who ended up in camps as a result of armed conflicts or other humanitarian crises taking place in their own or neighboring countries. I will omit issues related to migration and camps for migrants and political refugees.

will start with definitions as I often come across inaccurate interpretations of these terms. In the public discourse, concepts such as refugee and displaced person, as well as migration and migrant are often mixed up and incorrectly used as synonyms. We all have heard these terms at least once, but what do they actually mean? It is useful to discuss them, since they appear not only in humanitarian aid literature, but increasingly in the mass media as well.

The term migration is very general and describes the process of movement of people (and animals) from one place to another. It is a natural phenomenon that has occurred since the dawn of humanity. The term itself does not specify the goal or cause of such movement. Only the form of migration and its underlying reason define the specific phenomenon. For example, emigration and re-emigration describe the processes of leaving and returning to a country, respectively, while repatriation defines the return of individuals who were previously forced to leave their homeland. Immigration refers to people arriving in a country with the intention of permanent or temporary residence. Immigration can have various causes, such as religious, political, economic, or personal.

Refugee, displaced person, and internally displaced person are entirely different terms, as they refer to situations beyond the control of the affected individual. We speak of refugees when a person or group of people is forced to leave their country due to war, political circumstances, or persecution that threatens their safety. Refugees are protected by international law, specifically the Geneva Conventions. Let me make a side note here: there is a common belief that a refugee is someone who fled to safety in a neighboring country. In practice, even if such a person moves to a different country that accepts him, he still retains his refugee status. However, to receive this status, several conditions must be met. The most basic is the impossibility of returning home, as doing so would endanger his life or expose him to government persecution. This, however, is difficult to define, especially today when many armed conflicts are regional in nature, with threats confined to specific areas. The final definition pertains to displaced persons, also known as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Simply put, these are people forced to leave their homes due to armed conflict, natural disasters, or other humanitarian crises, but who have not crossed their country’s borders. The difference between refugees and displaced persons is that, legally, the latter remain under the protection of their own country. The situation becomes particularly complicated when the lack of safety for these individuals arises from the actions of their own government.

How are camps for refugees and displaced persons created?

In urgent and unpredictable situations, such as armed conflicts, revolts, or actions by terrorist organizations, tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are often forced to flee. They move in an uncontrolled manner, searching for shelter as far as possible from the affected place. Some head to large towns, while others move toward national borders. All of this happens very chaotically. We witnessed this three years ago when millions of people fleeing Ukraine crossed our border. The fact that there were no tent villages filled with people unsure of their next steps was quite unprecedented on a global scale. In many other cases, the first response is to direct people to one or several locations, depending on the scale, and hastily create a camp to house them. Such camps are usually established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is also responsible for their operation during the initial days, months, or even years. This is typically the case in countries unable to handle such a challenge. The UNHCR has the financial resources, warehouses in many regions of the world, and ready-to-use blueprints, making it often the only institution capable of quickly building a camp for tens of thousands of people.

Such camps are usually built according to a standard pattern: tightly packed tents placed side by side, arranged along pathways that form a grid intersecting perpendicularly. Everything is surrounded by a fence (often barbed wire) with one or two entry gates. These camps tend to resemble military compounds rather than safe spaces for families with children. Over time, as the crisis begins to subside, schools and healthcare facilities are established, though usually in insufficient numbers. In the Khanke camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, where 20,000 Yazidi people sought refuge after the genocide carried out by ISIS in 2014, only two small healthcare facilities and three primary schools were built. This meant that each healthcare facility had to serve 10,000 people, and each primary school accommodated around 1,000 pupils. By comparison, in Poland, there is one healthcare facility per 1,500 people and one school per 220 people. It could be argued that these are extraordinary circumstances caused by an extraordinary situation. However, in the aforementioned Khanke camp, little has changed over the last ten years of its existence. While the population has decreased by about one-third, both healthcare facilities have been shut down.

The camp has been built. What’s next?

It may seem that the role of large international organizations, including the UNHCR, is to create a camp that is later taken over by the authorities of the country where it was built. In practice, this rarely happens. This is due to many reasons, particularly financial ones. Providing for tens or even hundreds of thousands of people comes at a massive cost. The people who end up in camps have usually lost everything they had—their homes destroyed, their workplaces reduced to ashes. In photos and reports from refugee camps, we see images of poverty and despair, but we rarely think about who these people were before the war. We do not know their financial status. Of course, wealthier individuals generally avoid camps, but owners of small businesses, shops, and workshops often do end up there. So do chefs, drivers, mechanics, bakers, and accountants—people with experience, skills, and a willingness to work. The situation they find themselves in is not their fault. Instead of receiving the kind of assistance that would help them return to normal life and self-reliance, they become dependent on external aid. The reason why camps are built near large cities is that it simplifies the delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid, such as flour or rice bags. At the same time, camps are placed on the outskirts, as settling thousands of people in a small area inevitably impacts the surrounding region. In some camps, such as those in Kenya, Bangladesh, and Tanzania, people have been forced to cut down nearby trees for firewood. A major issue is that, after spending several years in a camp, many develop a sense of learned helplessness. In the early years, it is often forbidden to engage in economic activities or keep animals within the camp. Over time, however, it begins to take on a life of its own and gradually transforms into a small town.

It seems that the people and institutions responsible for managing camps for refugees and displaced persons have no clear plan to solve this problem. Instead, they sweep it under the carpet. At first, everything appears to be going well. Foreign organizations bring aid, doctors from around the world arrive, and the media covers the situation. There seems to be sufficient public interest, and people live with the hope that their plight will draw attention. However, reality soon hits hard. Aid programs come to an end, war erupts elsewhere in the world, and everyone packs up and moves on to “save the world” in another location. Efforts are seemingly made to find a solution, but they are ineffective. After all, how do you address the uncomfortable reality that these camps often exist for many years? Some camps are not even officially registered, like the one in Sardashty, Iraq. In such cases, it’s as though the camp doesn’t exist, and therefore, there’s nothing to discuss. In other cases, like the Mtendeli camp in Tanzania, which sheltered refugees from Burundi, the issue was addressed in an even simpler manner: the magic of relocation. At its peak in 2017, the Mtendeli camp housed 50,000 people. Over time, that number decreased to 23,000, and today it stands at zero. The residents were gradually relocated to another camp. Similar plans are underway for the camps in Dadaab and Kakuma in Kenya, which currently host several hundred thousand people, mainly women and children. In many cases, two or three smaller camps are closed, and people are moved to a larger one. This does not solve the problem but rather makes it more entangled.

Is there any ideal solution?

I mentioned the role of the UNHCR as an organization with the ability and resources to build camps and provide shelter for people fleeing war, for example. Later, its role becomes limited to coordinating subsequent humanitarian aid efforts. The costs of maintaining the camp fall on the authorities of the country in which it was created. However, governments often lack the resources or the willingness to allocate funds to ensure the proper functioning of such camps. No one wants to shoulder this burden. The UNHCR acknowledges that “refugees may spend years and even decades living in camps, and it is common to have entire generations growing up in the camps” (https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/camps/). At the same time, there are no plans to change the current blueprint of how they are designed. There is no idea to make temporary camps truly temporary. One of the largest camps in the world, Kutupalong in Bangladesh, hosts 700,000 people on an area of 13 km². The population density is therefore approximately 54,000 people per square kilometer. To put this in perspective, that would be equivalent to 27 million people living in Warsaw.

When families are squeezed into a small area, their opportunities are inevitably limited. While such conditions may simplify the delivery of humanitarian aid, the question remains: for how long? In theory, camps are meant to provide temporary shelter, but in practice, as the UNHCR acknowledges, many people spend their entire lives there. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to design camps in a way that allows them to evolve over time. After years, when people are left to fend for themselves, camps often transform into towns. If individuals cannot return to the places they fled from, perhaps they should be given the space and resources to settle permanently. If the root causes of their displacement are eventually addressed and they manage to return home, the vacated space could be repurposed—perhaps integrated with a nearby town or transformed into green areas by planting trees. The solution would depend on the specific location and circumstances. The key is to stop viewing people as mere statistics and charts, and instead treat them with the dignity and respect that every person deserves. I do not know if this is the best solution, but perhaps it is worth trying something different.

For many years, we have been helping people in camps for internally displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraq. For some, we purchased animals, even though this was not officially allowed. However, it wasn’t a big issue, as the camp authorities knew people would do it anyway. We also opened small businesses and shops. Although these were not permitted either, a row of grocery stores and workshops soon appeared along the main roads. We also supported families living in the so-called wild camps, which were created by people who couldn’t find space in the official camps. These camps had a different structure from those built by the authorities and the UNHCR. There was more space between the buildings, and many people owned goats, sheep, and hens. Some even maintained small gardens. Over time, brick buildings were constructed as well. Today, this area has become part of the Khanke town, and it is difficult to determine where the boundaries of the unofficial camp once were.

If this article was not too tiring to read, I recommend having a look at the study carried out by ARICA, in cooperation with the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Warsaw University, and with our modest participation: geoplatform-arica.gridw.pl

Author: Dawid Czyż

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