As camps shut down, refugees are setting up their own

They may still want to hold on to the camps that have been their homes since last December’s elections, but the so-called internal refugees, the people uprooted from their homes and villages by the sad events that followed the polls, may well know that the authorities have other ideas.

The Government wants the camps closed this week because it is becoming expensive to maintain them. It costs over Sh5 million every month to provide maize to the 20,000 refugees (about 6,000 families) in the remaining camps in the Rift Valley and parts of Western Kenya. This figure hardly includes the cost of cooking oil, soya beans, healthcare and other provisions.

According to sources in the Ministry of Special Programmes, the same amount will adequately resettle 500 refugees. (As part of the resettlement package, each internally displaced family is given Sh10,000 and a month’s supply of food).

Food has also become scarce. Because there is hardly any conflict in Kenya, donors are looking elsewhere — perhaps in Darfur — while focus is gradually turning to shelter.

“We are hungry, we have gone without food for long,” says Mwangi Gikonyo, the chairperson of displaced people at the Eldoret ASK showground, hosting about 4,000 families reluctant to return home.

Narok district officer Khalif Abdi, who is hosting 273 families a few metres from his office, says they plan to send the uprooted people home by Friday.

However, displaced people at the camp intend to move to another area.

“We have identified an area we will move to,” says the camp’s chairperson, Mr Stephen Mbugua Muthama.

In Eldoret, displaced people have similar intentions. “Even if the people here are given Sh10,000, they will still live in tents,” says Mr Gikonyo. “We will use the compensation to hire land on which we will set up a camp.”

This is the irony of the resettlement process. Most of those who are purported to have returned home are instead living in ‘transitional camps’ close to their farms.

In the Rift Valley, dozens of such camps have mushroomed to replace those being closed down. In Eldoret, a camp has been erected at Huruma grounds, less than five kilometres from the main camp.

The problem, say relief workers, is that the resettlement process lacks clear structures on the ground. “The resettlement should have been preceded by peace-building programmes and counselling,” says a Kenya Red Cross Society official.

Hardly disappear

“The Government says it wants to build 40,000 houses by March next year. This is belated and should have been done before the resettlement,” he adds.

The biggest remaining internally displaced people’s camp, Eldoret ASK showground, may be pulled down by Friday, but the issue of the camp’s occupants will hardly disappear as they will create new camps, putting pressure on donors for relief intervention.