First Assignment

Case of Study: Dadaab, Kenya - the world's largest refugee settlement.

As majority knows, a refugee camp is temporary, but life in Dadaab does not stop. People grow

up, get married and die in this camp. Dadaab does not remain as a refugee camp. Now could be

considered as a city of almost half a million people with nearly 99% of the population coming

from Somalia. Wars and natural disasters are often the causes of mass exodus of people. In the

case of Somalia terrorism, war and drought have conspired to cause a great exodus that began

over twenty years ago.

Dadaab is a group of three big camps: Ifo, Dagahaley, Hagadera. The Dadaab camps were

constructed in the early 1990s. Ifo camp was first settled by refugees from the civil war in

Somalia, and later efforts were made by UNHCR to improve the camp. As the population

expanded, UNHCR contacted German architect Werner Shellenberg who drew the original

design for Dagahaley Camp and Swedish architect Per Iwansson who designed and initiated the

creation of Hagadera camp.

The main problem of Dadaab, it’s the overpopulation, almost 1 500 people arrive every day.

Consequently, they found an overcrowded camp and they should to stay at the peripheral area of

Dadaab far from protection and security, medical assistance, water supplies, drainage system

and electricity. As result of this lack of necessities, these populations are habitual victims of

violence. Within the camps the mortality rate is ~ 0.44/10,000 per day with diseases such as

cholera and measles being among the causes of death.

In other hand, Dadaab is a place where humanitarian agencies, international aids along with the

government of Kenya and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), are responsible for providing a

vast array of services but there are not enough to attend the majority of residents. Although this

assistant is necessary to maintain life in Dadaab, Residents start to create an economy inside the

camp; markets help the refugees to find another way to survive. They exchange cattle, sell

cheese and milk, clothes, seeds and vegetables.

Unfortunately, this dependence of humanitarian aids makes Dadaab a vulnerable city, because if

these aids are removed, the camp is going to fall into a critical crisis which will derive in a new

migration of these people to other refugee camps.

Conclusions

For me, this camp represent the complexity of a place when it’s over crowded and when a camp

leaves to be a temporary place to become a city, as result of a constant migration very similar as

any big city in the world. Here we can see that start to appear deficiencies like medical care,

schools and other basic services (drainage system, water and electricity).

Dadaab show us, how complex could be for us understand a shelter as a housing unity and in the

case of Dadaab how this units could be improved by the families, to evolve in a temporal house.

Because, it’s complicated that the majority of people who lives in this place, return to their

countries of origin.

The big question is: how to keep the camps open if aids were withdrawn? Because, it’s

important to realize how a camp will become viable and self-sustaining to guarantee the future

of such urban settlements.

SOURCE:

http://www.dadaabstories.org/#categories

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/06/dadaab-camp-refugee-story-

2014620172234831264.html

http://blogs.casa.ucl.ac.uk/2012/05/

http://www.humanitarianinnovation.com/uploads/7/3/4/7/7347321/demontclos_2000.pdf

http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2011/11/28/kenia-la-vida-en-dadaab-el-mayor-campo-de-

refugiados-del-mundo/

Frank Maguiña Ylla (MSc.)

Architect and Urban Planning

frankmaguina@gmail.com