thesis on refugee camps

Approaches to the design of refugee camps: An empirical study in Kenya, Ethiopia, Greece, and Turkey

Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management

ISSN : 2042-6747

Article publication date: 9 March 2018

Issue publication date: 17 October 2018

An unprecedented scale of human migration has lead humanitarians to view camps as long-term settlements rather than temporary holding facilities. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of and identify challenges with this proposed new approach to camp design.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the camp design literature, the authors developed an interview guide and checklist for data collection. A multi-site case study and within- and cross-case analysis was then conducted.

The findings suggest that the proposed new approach is implemented only to a limited extent, and mostly in a stepwise manner. As camps mature, there is a shift toward the new approach, but most camps are established using the traditional top-down, temporary, and isolated approach.

Research limitations/implications

The findings are based on four camps in four different countries and do not provide an exhaustive global coverage.

Practical implications

The insights the authors derived and the challenges identified from the empirical evidence can be used to better plan future camps.

Social implications

The results can support improvements in camp design, thus alleviating suffering for both refugees and host communities, particularly in developing countries. In particular, the trade-off between a permanent solution and the temporary must be accounted for.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the literature by developing and proposing a conceptual framework to camp design. The cross-case analysis provides an initial understanding and categorization of challenges with implementing the new approach. It also suggests an evolutionary perspective of camp design.

• Embeddedness
• Camp design
• Humanitarian operations

Jahre, M. , Kembro, J. , Adjahossou, A. and Altay, N. (2018), "Approaches to the design of refugee camps: An empirical study in Kenya, Ethiopia, Greece, and Turkey", Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management , Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 323-345. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHLSCM-07-2017-0034

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Marianne Jahre, Joakim Kembro, Anicet Adjahossou and Nezih Altay

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction and purpose

Since 2008, there has been a staggering growth of displaced people due to rapid-onset natural disasters, conflict, and violence. By the end of 2016, the global number of persons of concern (PoCs) had increased by 58 percent to reach 67.7 million ( UNHCR, 2016 ). This rapid increase of PoCs, including both refugees and internally displaced people, has required significant expansions of existing camps and development of new camps. In parallel, many camps have become long-term accommodation ( Kennedy, 2005 ) following the persistence of armed conflicts, persecution, food insecurity, environmental degradation, poor governance, and countless other factors ( UNHCR, 2016 ). Also taking into consideration funding constraints, the humanitarian sector is urged to explore and implement more efficient and long-term approaches to camp design ( Kleinschmidt, 2015 ). Such refined design principles must support spatial planning and natural resource sustainability while minimizing tension and accounting for the needs, perspectives, and integration of refugees and host communities ( Kennedy, 2008 ; Adjahossou, 2015 ; Gibson, 2016 ).

Camps have, for several decades, been recognized as “temporary space[s] in which refugees may receive humanitarian relief and protection until a durable solution can be found to their situation” ( Ramadan, 2013 , p. 65). Locations have often been selected to isolate refugees from the local community and decisions regarding camp design have generally been made top-down. This can be referred to as the “traditional” approach to camp design. In contrast, a proposed new approach based on longer-term, participatory solutions, meaning that refugees and the local community actively participate in camp development and operation, is gaining increased attention among governments and humanitarian organizations. However, multiple challenges hinder its expansion. This paper increases our understanding of what we term the new approach by answering two questions: to what extent are camps currently being designed according to the new approach?; and what are the challenges to adopting the new approach?

As stated in the special issue’s call for papers, there is limited research on refugees in the humanitarian logistics (HL) and operations (HO) field ( Banomyong and Oloruntoba, 2016 ). We have reviewed the extant HL and HO literature on refugees, camp design, and local community participation, and find that the recent literature reviews ( Kunz and Reiner, 2012 ; Leiras et al. , 2014 ; Overstreet et al. , 2011 ) do not mention refugees’, even if they point to man-made disasters as focus for future studies. A few empirical studies within HL/HO can be identified: Kunz et al. (2015) on the use of vehicles for transport of refugees; Jahre et al. (2016) on the integration of supply chains for emergencies and ongoing operations (i.e. camps) in UNHCR; and Choi et al. (2010) on aid distribution to camps. The HL/HO literature has paid more attention to local communities (e.g. Sheppard et al. , 2013 ; Apte et al. , 2016 ; Bealt et al. , 2016 ), but not in relation to refugees or camp design. Finally, similar to beneficiaries in general ( Oloruntoba and Gray, 2009 ), the refugees’ perspective of what they want and need has often been overlooked. We aim to fill part of this gap by reviewing the practitioner and academic literature on camp design. Building on the literature review, we develop an analytical framework for an exploratory case study based on data from UNHCR refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Greece.

Our findings suggest that the proposed new approach is implemented only to a limited extent, and mostly in a stepwise manner. As camps mature, there is a shift toward the new approach, but most are established using the traditional top-down, temporary, and isolated approach. Implementation depends on a number of factors. making the universal design approach impossible. Our literature review indicates that local adaptations and long-term thinking have also been evident earlier. Our study suggests that camps engaging in local services exchange, however, is more recent and poses some specific challenges, partly explaining the limited implementation of the new approach ( Table III ). The main theoretical contribution in this study is the three key framework dimensions, namely, time, space, and resources, and the way we have operationalized them. We tested the framework in our case analysis and it proved useful for distinguishing camp designs. The necessity of differentiating between an early and mature stage led to a slightly revised framework, which we have termed an evolutionary model. After presenting the review of relevant literature and the framework in Section 2 , Section 3 describes the research design. Section 4 provides the case analysis, followed by discussion in Section 5 . Finally, Section 6 concludes and suggests further research.

2. Literature review

We did a structured keyword search using terms related to “camp design” and “refugees.” For the gray literature ( M Library, 2017 ), we used Google to identify relevant websites, articles, organizations, and content experts. For the academic literature, we used four recognized databases (Business Source Complete, Emerald, Sciencedirect, and Wiley) to capture a broad set of HL and non-HL journals. In total, we scanned more than 450 articles, 10 of which were deemed particularly relevant.

Kennedy (2008 , p. 33) defined a refugee camp as “a planned and specially-constructed settlement for a number of displaced households significant enough to also need dedicated non-residential buildings as part of the planned settlement,” while Pan (2016 , p. 118) described it as a “spatialization of exception.” While camps are not the only solution for displaced people ( Tatham and Houghton, 2011 ), they are the focus in this study. The traditional camp design approach is to set up “a temporary space in which refugees may receive humanitarian relief and protection until a durable solution can be found to their situation.” ( Ramadan, 2013 , p. 65 (italics added)). Next, we compare this approach to the new one using the three dimensions: time, space, and resource.

2.1 Time dimension

According to Kennedy (2008) , camp designers in the 1970s saw them as being rather permanent, for example, Cuny’s 1977 views on camp design as “creat[ing] settlements rather than simply an area of emergency shelter” (p. 133). However, from the early 1980s, the now traditional camp design approach is seen in the Sphere standards, as well as UNHCR documents: “UNHCR would remove from camp planning any elements which might be seen as leading towards turning a camp into a permanent settlement, (a process which amongst other things would in years to come see the removal of all vocabulary references to ‘permanent’ settlement features, such as ‘villages’, ‘streets’ and ‘housing’ (replaced by ‘shelters’).” ( Kennedy, 2005 , p. 107). There is the notion of seeing camps as temporary warehouses, that is, “refugee warehousing” ( Ilcan and Rygiel, 2015 ). Kleinschmidt (2015) described the controversy in the following words: “We were building camps: storage facilities for people. But the refugees were building a city.”

Camps increasingly provide long-term accommodation, such as in Dadaab (Somalis), Lebanon (Palestinians), and Algeria (Sahrawi), and are now considered human settlements that continuously change (e.g. Beehner, 2015 ; Dozema, 2016 ; Gibson, 2016 ; Dzeamisi, 2008 ). Kleinschmidt (2015) suggested that governments should stop thinking about refugee camps as temporary places. Kennedy (2005, 2008) claimed that because camps are much more long-term (average of seven years) than assumed, a standardized approach is not effective due to different cultures and situations. Furthermore, standards for non-residential buildings such as economic enterprises, schools, clinics, warehouses, administrative offices, and community centers are missing. Many camps lack space for outdoor facilities such as latrines, showers, cooking areas, water sources, and waste disposal. Kennedy concluded that the current state of camp design insufficiently considers the refugees themselves. In line with this thinking, Adjahossou (2015) suggested organizing a series of U-shaped compounds with enough space to care for a small garden; facilitating interactions between families by providing larger communal spaces; and providing durable housing solutions and flexible design accounting for lifestyles. One must also take into account that needs change, which means the camp must be able to adapt.

2.2 Space dimension

Camp design originally focused on technical/physical aspects such as size, layout, plots, and internal services (health, education, etc.), with physical access as the only connection to the “outside” ( Kennedy, 2008 ; Armstrong, 1990 ). Such aspects typically lead to warehouse-typical layout elements aiming to increase physical space utilization, decrease traveling distance and time, and increase throughput ( Huertas et al. , 2007 ; Bartholdi and Hackman, 2010 ), with zones, each dedicated for a specific purpose, are common ( Hassan, 2002 ; Gu et al. , 2007 ). In refugee camps, various zones could represent, for example, living quarters, schools, areas for medical care, or markets. A camp can be regarded as a node where people arrive, reside for shorter or longer time, and depart. To support refugees, camps, like warehouses, involve large material flows.

Internal physical aspects still constitute a large part of many standards and guidelines ( Adjahossou, 2015 ), for example, the UNHCR Emergency Handbook ( https://emergency.unhcr.org/ ) and Sphere ( www.spherehandbook.org ). Contrary to the view that camps are merely physical spaces, Ramadan (2013) argued that camps must be viewed as social, cultural, and political spaces to understand everyday politics and material practices of refugees, adding new dimensions to the traditional one-dimensional perspective. The most recent guidelines focus on integration with the local community ( CCCM Cluster, 2015a ; Gibson, 2016 ). Characteristics relating to the “outside” include surroundings, for example, closeness to refugees’ home and existing refugee settlements; topography for water and electricity installations and dwellings; community considerations such as separation between certain groups of refugees and surveillance to control unknown threats ( Pan, 2016 ); risk of floods, conflict, etc.; infrastructure such as proximity to ports and roads; and social criteria, for example, proximity to the local population ( Çetinkaya et al. , 2016 ). A main idea in the new approach is to break the isolation that refugees living in camps often experience ( Adjahossou, 2015 ). Segregating refugees from the host community in terms of employment, education, and social and cultural networks has negative consequences (Beehner, 2015).

Host communities are increasingly seen as important stakeholders with whom one should build relationships, particularly regarding extraction of natural resources, such as water, trees for fire, and land. New guidelines recommend establishing contacts with the host community, and ensuring that their representatives are consulted and attend camp coordination meetings ( CCCM Cluster, 2015b ). The integration of camps in the local context can be seen as embeddedness ( Granovetter, 1985 ), a concept that clarifies interfaces between an entity and its environment in terms of other entities and their relations that form a network ( Håkansson et al. , 2009 ). The basic assumption is that network embeddedness develops due to interdependencies between the activities undertaken, the resources involved in the conduct of these activities, and the actors controlling resources and undertaking activities ( Håkansson and Snehota, 1995 ). From this perspective, the new approach should consider interconnectedness between activities, actors, and resources.

2.3 Resource dimension

Previously, there was a disbelief in refugees’ and the local population’s own resources: “With a few invaluable exceptions they are usually unskilled and not used to working in an organized fashion” ( McAdam, 1987 , p. 110). Refugees were simply seen as receivers of aid with few of their own resources, and had to be cared for, necessitating a top-down camp design approach. It was difficult to make changes once decided and built. Resources were seen as flowing only one way: from local communities and their governments to the refugees.

This view has largely changed: “Refugee camps should be seen as engines of economic growth both for the host governments and the sending countries […]” ( Beehner, 2015 ). Sanyal (2011) compared camps with urban development wherein “refugees are active agents in the creation and consolidation of their community […]” (p. 885). The new approach emphasizes additional considerations, such as the camp residents’ civil rights ( Woroniecka-Krzyzanowska, 2017 ). Kleinschmidt (2015) referred to how “refugees at the vast Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan took things into their own hands, hacking the electricity supply to power businesses, erecting fountains and even building swimming pools.” Ellis and Barrakat (1996) suggested participatory projects to avoid refugees being passive recipients. Recent guidelines do indeed define refugee participation in camp design and development: a process that requires collective action taken to contribute to solutions ( CCCM Cluster, 2015a ).

The new approach sees resource sharing as essential ( Kleinschmidt, 2015 ). Adjahossou (2015) considered camps, their services, and inhabitants as resources for the local community. By building hospitals, schools, and markets at strategic points accessible by all, and no longer at the center of the camp as in the traditional approach, refugees, and local populations can share core resources such as water, electricity, education, and health services. Gibson (2016) suggested that “refugee camps should be rebadged as cities and turned into enterprise zones so inhabitants can set up businesses and build their own infrastructure.” Such an approach, he claimed, could benefit both the refugee and the host populations, as well as giving inhabitants useful skills for their eventual return to their homelands: “Surrounding communities would enjoy new investment and infrastructure, and governments would welcome refugees as a benefit rather than a burden.” This requires more of a bottom-up approach to camp design which should also be seen as a dynamic process, not a single instance of design intervention ( Kennedy, 2008 ).

2.4 A summarizing framework for data collection and analysis

Table I summarizes the findings from the literature review. The three key dimensions have been operationalized to be used for data collection and analysis.

3. Methodology for empirical study

3.1 case selection.

An exploratory multi-site case study was conducted following theory-building principles ( Eisenhardt, 1989 ; McCutcheon and Meredith, 1993 ; Miles and Huberman, 1994 ). Multi-site studies enable in-depth investigation of a phenomenon ( Voss et al. , 2002 ; Yin, 2014 ), as well as the opportunity to generalize findings beyond isolated cases ( Meredith, 1998 ), thus considered suitable for increasing our understanding of and identifying challenges with the new camp design approach.

The unit of analysis was defined as the approach to camp design, taking into account both the actual camp layout, the process for building and developing camps, and the integration between the camp and the host community. We conducted the study in collaboration with UNHCR considering their leading role on camp coordination and management worldwide with the mandate to provide international protection to refugees and forcibly displaced persons (mandate not exclusive with respect to internally displaced persons) inside as well as outside camp settings.

The first step in selecting cases was to identify countries where UNHCR has set up and manages camps for displaced people. We applied stratified sampling to “capture major variations rather than to identify a common core” ( Patton, 2002 , p. 240), and, based on a scoping study, identified four countries with differing contexts where UNHCR has adopted varied approaches to camp design. These four countries include Ethiopia and Kenya, both of which host several camps that have existed for a long time (e.g. Dadaab, Kakuma, and Bokolmanyo), and Turkey and Greece, two countries that have hosted numerous new camps since the start of the Syria crisis (e.g. Karkamis and Lagkadikia). All four countries have major ongoing UNHCR operations supporting displaced people: Ethiopia is currently the second-largest refugee hosting country in Africa and the fifth-largest worldwide; Kenya hosts the world’s largest refugee camps, including Kakuma, Hagadera, Dagahaley, and Ifo, all established in 1992; Turkey is the top hosting country in the world, providing shelter to 2.9 million displaced persons, primarily refugees from Syria; and Greece has received over 1 million sea arrivals since 2015, representing one of UNHCR’s most complex refugee operations dispersed across multiple Aegean islands (e.g. Lesvos, Chios, Samos, and Leros) ( www.unhcr.org ).

In the second step, we applied critical-case sampling to identify one case within each country. Critical cases can “make a point quite dramatically or are, for some reason, particularly important in the scheme of things” ( Patton, 2002 , p. 236). Hence, for the purpose of this paper, we selected cases that are particularly important from the perspective of developing the new approach of camp design. In Ethiopia, we selected Bur-Amino, which presented many challenges spurring UNHCR to rethink their approach. In Kenya, we selected Kalobeyei, which represents a settlement approach meant to empower refugees to become more self-reliant in the long term. In Turkey, Karkamis represents the country’s approach to camp design in a situation characterized by emergency and high influx, as well as resource constraints. Finally, Lagkadikia in Greece represents camps where the government and UNHCR implemented most integration with the local community.

3.2 Data collection and analysis

Based on the literature review, we developed a framework (see Table I ), which was used as a foundation and “guideline when entering the empirical world” ( Dubois and Gadde, 2014 , p. 1279). Data collection comprised multiple primary and secondary sources, including situational reports and website links ( Appendix 3 ) and field trips, visits to camps, and structured interviews ( Appendices 1 and 2 ). Interviewees were selected based on their role in camp design and management, established contacts, and by using the snowballing technique, i.e. asking one interviewee to suggest others ( Bryman and Bell, 2015 ). A total of 19 interviews were conducted either face-to-face or via Skype, lasting from 30 minutes to 2 hours. When necessary, we conducted follow-up conversations; in cases where the internet connection was poor, interviewees were also asked to write their answers and submit by e-mail.

Although skewed toward the organizations and people who provide services rather than the affected themselves, the sources were varied enough to enable triangulating different perspectives and complementary aspects. It also enabled the collection of a wide range of data, such as: the camp context, including the name, location, age, capacity, ownership, and distance to closest neighboring community; the approach to camp design both in start-up and mature stages; services and facilities available; the existing infrastructure including hygiene, electricity, and shops, education, health, and materials used; the usage of standards/guidelines; and the extent of integration with the host community. All collected data, including the tapes, notes, and summaries from the interviews, were stored in a database shared by the group of researchers.

The four cases were written up following a similar structure, including background and overview, and the three design dimensions. The insights from each case were then compared through cross-case analysis to shed further light on the research questions. Here, we could, for example, see that the local context has impact on camp design, and that there is often a difference in the approach between early vs mature stages. Furthermore, each identified challenge was discussed among the authors and coded. From multiple data analysis iterations using color coding, five categories of challenges emerged. These are presented in Table III and include examples related to the new approach identified in a least one of the cases. Naturally, more challenges were identified in cases where the new approach has been applied.

4. Empirical findings and analysis

This section presents data collection and analysis in three steps: general guidelines as a baseline for all camp design; findings from the four cases; and challenges.

4.1 General guidelines for camp design: UNHCR and Sphere standards

UNHCR guidelines, together with Sphere standards, constitute the basis for camp design concerning, for example, the size and type of shelter space, space for activities including sleeping and washing, care of infants, storage of food, and cooking and eating facilities. The guidelines also concern non-food items such as clothing, blankets, bedding materials, light and heating, equipment for cooking and eating, and tools for maintenance. Other standards include water supply, which should be minimum 15 liters per person per day, sanitation and hygiene promotions, nutrition, and health. These goods can be provided directly (in-kind) or through other interventions (cash). Camps typically contain health centers/hospital, child-friendly centers, water supply, public storage, workshops, vocational training center, schools, markets, and roads.

4.2 Time, space, and resource dimensions in the four cases

Bur-amino (ethiopia).

Ethiopia, whose population of 105 million currently experiences severe drought, ranks 173rd of 186 countries in the Human Development Index and is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies also focusing on sustainability (Green Climate Fund, 2017). The Government of Ethiopia has an open door policy and currently hosts more than 800,000 refugees, primarily from South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan (UNHCR, 2017a). The majority resides in 25 camps located in eight different areas across the country (UNHCR Ethiopia, 2017), of which one is Bur-Amino.

Bur-Amino was opened in October 2011 in response to an influx of Somali refugees caused by drought and increased insecurity. The camp, with an original capacity for 25,000 people, was initially designed based on UNHCR and Sphere standards, with adaptations for host country requirements and context. One interviewee adds: “Unfortunately, because of the ongoing emergency situation at that time, the camp was planned as a ‘storage facility’ not as a settlement.” Although planned as a temporary shelter, the camp has become a long-term operation followed by the implementation of a transitional shelter strategy to provide more sustainable housing solutions, as well as the construction of some semi-permanent facilities like schools and health centers. In addition, the number of refugees has increased to 40,000, which has required continuous expansion and redesign of the camp.

UNHCR collaborates with multiple stakeholders including, for example, the Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA, representing the Ethiopian Government), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), local organizations, the municipality, various contractors, and the refugees themselves. Initially, during the emergency influx, the refugees and local population were not consulted concerning camp design and there was neither a local development plan nor formal discussions with local officials on how to integrate the camp in the host community. However, with the prolongation and expansion of the camp, a community-based approach has been adopted including, for example, a recently established shelter-working group.

Bur-Amino does not have a mobile or physical-transport network, and access roads had to be constructed when establishing the camp. A natural resources rehabilitation project in the vicinity of soils harvesting sites for use in construction was also set up. The need for self-reliance necessitated the widening of plots and creating family gardens. The only existing water source for the entire population – the Genale river runs through the local community – was essential when choosing land for the camp, providing water supply for refugees and for construction. Since then, the water supply system has been improved and expanded to the host community as a permanent solution. Local resources accommodated during the planning decision included land deterioration and environmental protection. Most construction materials, such as eucalyptus and bamboo were procured locally, while cement and some hardware material were sourced from Addis-Ababa, about 870 km from the camp. Local workers, with relatively poor technical capacity, were hired for the construction of shelters and infrastructure, and therefore required regular technical assistance. The “compact bamboo wattle,” developed in 2012, was a waterproof, locally suitable transitional shelter that provided more privacy, while also saving on costs of material, logistics, and transportation.

In parallel with Bur-Amino, UNHCR has developed neighboring-communities support projects. First, the host community was welcomed to use water taps, health services, and schools in the camp while UNHCR constructed primary schools, solar street lighting, and sanitations facilities in the host community. Second, local materials, trucks, and communication networks are increasingly used in the camp operation. Third, there is an exchange of food and workers between the camp and the host community. An informal market has developed in the camp, and there is inter-marriage between the communities.

Kalobeyei (Kenya)

Kenya has a population of over 48 million. With a rapidly growing and young population, the country is experiencing great economic growth. Yet, recent severe drought has resulted in poor agricultural output and soaring food prices. Kenya currently ranks 146th of 186 countries in the Human Development Index with a poverty rate of about 39 percent. For the last few decades, the country has hosted close to 600,000 refugees from Somalia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic Congo, Ethiopia, and other countries. The main camps include Dadaab and Kakuma. Having learned lessons from the poorly planned conditions with ad hoc development patterns of previous camps, which have also served as a catalyst for conflicts between host communities and refugees, UNHCR, and the Refugees Affairs Secretary agreed with the Turkana County Government in 2015 to develop a new settlement – Kalobeyei – to shift from the old approach. The new vision was to integrate refugees and members of the host community in an accessible, vibrant, and functional settlement, complete with adequate social and physical infrastructure to provide diverse economic and business opportunities. The Kalobeyei Integrated Social and Economic Development Program (KISEDP) was established in 2015 with a main objective of ensuring that the new settlement arrangement empowers refugee and host communities through self-reliance and livelihood opportunities. The idea is to have as many of the goods, services, and businesses as possible produced by, sourced from, and run by refugees and local community members in Kalobeyei, while progressively improving their quality of life, basic services, and opportunities for learning, enterprise, and employment.

In the context of promoting self-reliance of refugees and host communities, it was agreed to allocate 60 percent of the total space for development of economic activities, including agriculture. In addition to the influx of refugees, the host community is experiencing significant development in terms of devolution, resource discovery, and extraction of oil and freshwater aquifers in the county. Kalobeyei opened in June 2016 after significant preparatory activities including an environmental impact assessment, a hydrological survey for water availability, a topographical survey to determine terrain configuration and agricultural suitability of the soil, and a socio-economic baseline survey with area mapping of existing infrastructures and natural resources within and around the proposed site. Turkana county and most of the Kalobeyei area is historically an important grazing area to the pastoralists (60 percent of the local population), while others rely on rain-fed agriculture, irrigation, fishing, and mining, and other types of employment. Aligned with the county’s integrated development plan, the objective is to promote sustainable urban and agricultural/livestock development as well as socio-economic integration of approximately 60,000 refugees and 20,000 people in the host community.

Following UNHCR guidelines, an initial settlement master plan was prepared in May 2016 in a consultative manner involving all stakeholders in spite of the emergency situation caused by the influx of South Sudan refugees. Under the KISEDP framework, the Turkana County Government was to be involved in the settlement planning, development, monitoring, and evaluation, and to take over its management in the medium to long term. In this regard, a spatial-planning and infrastructure-development working group coordinated by UNHCR was established consisting of UN agencies and partners such as UN-Habitat, UNDP, UNOPS and UNICEF, Norwegian Refugee Council, Danish Refugee Council (DRC), National Council of Churches of Kenya, Peace Winds Japan, Turkana Ministry of Lands, physical planning and urban areas management, Refugee Affairs Secretariat, and local organizations operating through UNHCR partnerships. In July 2016, UNHCR signed a memorandum of understanding with UN-Habitat to jointly collaborate with the Turkana County Government for the new settlement planning and other institutional and governance activities. Other working groups involved in the planning include the sustainable integrated service delivery and skills development group, the agriculture and livestock group, and the private sector and entrepreneurship group. The host and refugee communities’ vulnerabilities and integration potential were further analyzed. The National, County, and International Policy, Kenya Vision 2030, Kenyan National Spatial Plan, County Integrated Development Plan, Sustainable Development Goal 11 and The New Urban Agenda played instrumental roles in informing the planning.

Kalobeyei site is located in a semi-desert with high temperatures, and unreliable and low rainfall; there are few water-harvesting initiatives at the site. In order to supply water, three boreholes were drilled in 2016 and equipped with submersible pumps. Due to the emergency situation and the continued lack of a sustainable water-supply infrastructure, the refugees do not have individual connections and are instead served by communal taps with a minimum of 20 liters per person per day pending the development of permanent systems. In terms of housing, UNHCR has adopted a sustainable approach with interlocking-stabilized soil blocks (ISSBs), which allow upgrading and optimizing of the initial basic housing unit according to differing needs (e.g. size and culture). Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) has introduced a restricted digital cash transfer program using mobile phones, which can be redeemed solely for food. The program is called “BAMBA CHAKULA,” which translates to “Get your food” in Kiswahili. WFP has also established a local trading market, with more than 300 local traders who make the food readily available to the refugees. Cash-based interventions have further allowed refugees and the host community to develop a community-based organization for ISSB production using skilled laborers, who are trained through vocational centers established in both communities. A permanent health post, and primary and secondary schools are constructed and will serve both communities.

Karkamis (Turkey)

Turkey, with a population over 80 million, is the 18th largest economy in the world based on GDP and ranks 71st out of 186 in the Human Development Index. The country shares a long border with Syria and hosts half of all Syrian refugees, approximately 2.8 million people. However, less than 10 percent (248,000) of these refugees live in one of the 23 designated camps, which fall under the responsibility of the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD). AFAD coordinates camp management with the local governor’s office and T1urkish Red Crescent (TRC), the latter taking care of aid distribution logistics.

All camps, including Karkamis, have been designed following Sphere guidelines, accommodating 10,000 residents. Camps are not allowed to grow, and if more refugees apply to live in camps, AFAD decides when and where to open a new camp. When opening a new camp, the first task is to secure a water source. In the case of Karkamis, the camp is located next to the Karkamis Dam, 65 km from the nearest big city, and 3 km from the nearest village. Thereafter, the local municipality handles site preparation and the construction of infrastructure for water, sewage, electricity, and phone lines. TRC then takes charge of building the camp, neighborhood by neighborhood. In total, 40 workers built the entire Karkamis camp, including 2,000 tents, over a period of 40 days. One problem faced by the TRC was the lack of tents appropriate for long-term residency. This problem was resolved by funding from the Saudi Government to replace tents with containers, each with a space of 22 m 2 , two bedrooms and a living room, as well as a small garden in front of them. In mid-2017, 15 camps had been completely converted to container camps.

Karkamis camp includes a school, medical clinic, prayer room, laundry room, social space, grocery store, toilets/shower facilities, and central camp security. Schools give education in Arabic, and the refugees select the teachers from among themselves. Refugees cook their own food based on ingredients from the grocery store in the camp. Originally, TRC was providing food in every camp, but the amount of food waste was tremendous. As a result, TRC partnered with WFP to implement cash transfers and open a food market in each camp. They also distributed cooking supplies to each family. The new program was successfully tested in 2012 in Kilis and, as of today, all refugees have a smart card called KızılAy Kart that they can use to buy food. This approach allows TRC to save personnel and logistics costs while improving refugee satisfaction.

Due to security concerns, entry and exit to each camp is restricted. However, camp residents can apply for permission to leave the camp temporarily to handle personal affairs back in Syria or work in nearby towns in Turkey. AFAD asks the residents of each camp to pick a leader and spokesperson. Integration with the host country’s citizens has not been a problem around the camps, since most of the refugees have a relative in Turkey: Syrians across the Turkish border used to be part of the Ottoman Empire until borders were arbitrarily drawn after WWI. However, integration has proved to be more challenging for the refugees living outside of camps both because they are not related familywise and because there is competition for jobs and other resources. To alleviate this issue, TRC opened nine community centers in various cities around the country where they bring Syrian and Turkish people together.

Lagkadikia (Greece)

Greece, with a population of almost 11 million, is experiencing financial turbulence and declining GDP per capita. It has the highest unemployment rate – 25 percent in 2015 – in the Eurozone and currently ranks 29th of 186 countries in the Human Development Index. Since the beginning of the refugee crisis in 2015, over 1 million migrants and refugees have embarked on the dangerous journey to Greece, taking the route via Turkey and the Aegean Sea. Early on, a daily average of 2,000 new arrivals was registered on the Greek islands. Instead of staying in Greece, most transited further via Piraeus Port and Athens to other countries in Europe. In March 2016, however, the situation changed dramatically with the agreement of the EU-Turkey statement, and the closure of the Greece and Macedonia (FYRoM) border for all nationalities. Following these changes, the number of new arrivals to Greece decreased significantly. Those that do arrive remain for a longer time. As of December 19, 2016, there were 62,455 PoCs in Greece, of which 12,712 were hosted by UNHCR in approximately 50 accommodations across the islands and the mainland. One of these camps, Lagkadikia, is situated in the rural areas of Thessaloniki and falls under the responsibility of the Greek authorities. The camp was set up as part of emergency response in 2016, but later developed into a long-term site for 1,000 people. The site, which is an old military premise located approximately two kilometers from the neighboring municipality, currently hosts 239 refugees, primarily Syrian families (93 percent).

The original camp design of Lagkadikia was aligned with the existing military premises, and the camp has thereafter been developed section by section into a settlement with long-term focus. This design process has followed the SPHERE standards and Greek law, with all aspects of growth being controlled by UNHCR and approved by the government (involving e.g. Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Migration). In certain cases, non-governmental organizations such as the DRC and the International Rescue Committee have been involved in camp management and related activities. Reassessment and redesign of the camps only takes place when potential issues are encountered. One such example relates to the required winterization where all tents are replaced by containers. Another example is the ongoing project of connecting the camps (including containers, toilets, showers) to the external sewer systems and installing rainwater drainage systems. Only smaller decisions regarding camp design allow for a bottom-up approach involving the community. Examples include the renovation of certain buildings to accommodate communal activities such as an informal gym and prayer room in the center of the camp, and installing kitchen modules in each container.

UNHCR mostly applies cash-based interventions in the Greek camps. Instead of, for example, daily food distributions, PoCs prefer cooking and access markets, stores, and other facilities in the nearby towns by using public transportation. Refugees are welcomed by the neighboring municipalities, and are able to benefit from existing education and medical services. In return, UNHCR provides financial support to the host community, for example, by developing existing playgrounds, providing IT equipment to local schools, and offering medical care for both locals and refugees.

In summary, the four different camps represent a range of different approaches to camp design. Table II displays the findings from the exploratory multi-site study. Since Kalobeyei opened recently, we have not differentiated between early and mature stages. This camp was also the only one designed upfront using the new approach, whereas our analysis shows that Karkamis has been the most persistent in using the traditional approach. Bur-Amino has changed from the traditional to the new, whereas Lagkadikia, although to some extent having attempted resource sharing, seems to stick to the traditional approach.

4.3 Challenges to adopting the proposed new camp design approach

As revealed by, for example, the Bur-Amino case, the time pressure of saving lives and sometimes the beneficiaries’ lack of knowledge and skills can hinder a bottom-up settlement design process. Another critical aspect of the new approach is the long-term perspective, that is, building permanent settlements rather than temporary shelters. There are, however, political challenges at the international (UNHCR), national (host country’s attitude toward refugees), and local levels (provision of local resources and investment into infrastructure) that undermine long-term visions. The Lagkadikia case highlights this, with the Greek Government intending to evacuate refugees and instead using the camps as back-up solutions for their own future use. The long-term approach is made even more difficult due to the lack of proper infrastructure and shelter inventory. For example, in the Karkamis case, the TRC has built a camp using short-term shelter despite the knowledge that the armed conflict in Syria will not be resolved in the near future.

The new approach fosters an external-facing view of camp design where settlers are encouraged to integrate with the local host community and vice versa. However, as revealed in the Bur-Amino case, limited local resources, lack of local capacity to interact with, and lack of knowledge about, the refugee population, as well as a shortage of time to ease into such integration, all challenge implementing long-term settlement designs. Another is climate and access to raw material and basic resources. In the Kalobeyei case, the hot and dry climate exacerbates the pressure on the water supply infrastructure resulting from the increasing total population in the camp or local community. Expanding camps is also a challenge once the facilities and infrastructure have been designed in the first place. The cases indicate that managing growth is difficult due to a range of political, social, cultural, and physical constraints. While the requirements from local municipalities and global standards (e.g. Sphere) may sometimes clash, the social yarn of the refugees presents a bigger challenge. Refugees arrive often with serious psychological problems and practically without any possessions. Separately, poor local infrastructure makes operating and expanding a camp difficult. Infrastructure and resource problems directly affect integration with the host communities by hindering the two-way flow of know-how and resources. Table III summarizes the challenges into five categories developed based on the case analysis. Specific challenges are not linked with specific case design dimensions because most are root-cause challenges impacting more than one dimension.

5. Discussion and implications

First, the study shows that the proposed new approach representing a bottom-up, community-based approach to camp design is implemented only to a limited extent, particularly in the initial implementation phase. Karkamis and Lagkadikia reveal a strict top-down decision-making process. Also for Bur-Amino, the initial approach was controlled top-down. The only exception is Kalobeyei, where a large number of stakeholders, including the refugees and local community, influenced the initial camp design. Second, as camps mature, there is a shift toward the new approach, exemplified by the partnership agreements in Bur-Amino, where development increasingly accounts for the refugees’ perspectives and wishes. Also in the other cases, it is apparent that the camps are increasingly integrated with the local community as time goes by. However, the adoption of the new approach differs and seems to depend on a number of contextual factors. From the case studies, we see that, despite being set up as an emergency response, the two camps in Africa adopt a more permanent approach compared to the examples from Europe. Kalobeyei seems to be adopting something similar to the new approach, emphasizing socio-economic integration, extensive environmental impact assessments and alignment with local development plans. Meanwhile, Karkamis and Lagkadikia seem to follow a more traditional approach with fixed and controlled design and centralized decision making as in the mature stage, even if Lagkadikia has some aspects of the new approach.

The third insight is that a universal approach does not seem to be possible to adopt. In other words, one size does not fit all. Our study does not allow for in-depth analysis of which factors determine what approach, but the findings support the notion that certain factors are important in the initial phase, and another set must be considered as the camp matures. Political and cultural circumstances in the host country are important. The matter of urgency when camps are set up is also a key factor: the more rush, the more temporary and the less integrated the approach. Meanwhile, as illustrated by Kalobeyei, it appears that if the local community can benefit from the camp and its future development, there is a higher chance for enabling a long-term, community-based design approach.

Building on the second and third point, the fourth insight relates to the necessity of stepwise development, what could be termed an evolutionary model for camp design, depicted in Figure 1 .

Given the emergency setting of establishing refugee camps, the first focus is on establishing key facilities and road access, bring in food supplies, and secure access to water. Only in later phases when the operation and influx of refugees has stabilized can the focus be shifted to, for example, starting community-based groups, opening markets, implementing cash-transfer programs, and promoting camp design that facilitates movement between communities. Thus, to a certain extent, there appears to be a kind of paradox that separates the initial approach from how the camp is operated and further developed. Most countries view refugee crises as something temporary and therefore follow the traditional guidelines. As it turns out, many camps persist over time, and there seems to be a change in perspective as the camps develop. Accounting for the long-term perspective already in the initial phase would be ideal, but seems to be very difficult.

Related to the above discussion, the fifth insight is that there is a wide range of challenges that must be addressed to enable the new approach. In fact, the many challenges can partly explain its limited implementation. Some of the identified challenges appear to be particularly difficult to overcome, and relate to what we have termed contextual factors in the model. Examples include the time pressure to set up a camp in an emergency setting and the lack of willingness from the government to allow for long-term settlements and extended integration with local community. Other challenges appear to be more susceptible to influence. For example, there could be improved guidelines regarding the access to inventory (e.g. shelter) supporting a longer-term perspective. Also, the limited expertise of refugees and the local community seems responsive to increased training and local capacity building. Other challenges such as limited access to energy and water could be overcome by making use of new technology (e.g. solar power). Certain equipment, for example, used in health clinics, could also be produced locally using emerging 3D-printing technology. The lack of resources could generally be mitigated by supporting increased trade between the communities and across the regions where the camps are located. Successful examples to support this approach include establishment of large marketplaces and the use of cash-based interventions. On that note, the sixth insight from this study is that the two-way flows between camp and local community are a recent development. The two-way flows, represented, for example, by the joint investments and sharing of health, school services, water and energy infrastructure, increase once the camps become more permanent and established in the local community. Two-way flows can benefit refugees as well as the local community, and humanitarian aid can support both communities. For example, camps can supply water and markets while the local community can provide existing health education facilities and security.

6. Concluding remarks and further research

This paper aimed to increase our understanding of the proposed new approach to refugee camp design. Traditionally, camps are built as temporary holding shelters until reconstruction phase is finalized and the displaced can go back to their homes. However, long-term events with lasting impact are forcing us to rethink our approach to camp design. In this paper, we analyze the differences between the traditional and the new approach. Based on studies in four countries, we found that the new approach, although theoretically making perfect sense, faces some tough challenges. Our findings suggest that the new approach is implemented only to a limited extent, and mostly in a stepwise manner. As camps mature, there is a shift toward the new approach, but most camps are established using the traditional top-down, temporary, and isolated approach. The adoption depends on a number of factors making a universal design approach impossible. While our literature review indicates that local adaptations and long-term thinking have previously been evident, our study suggests that camps integrating with the society in which they are placed, in terms of exchange of services, is more recent. This poses some specific challenges, partly explaining the limited implementation of the new approach ( Table III ). The main theoretical contribution in this study is the analytical framework with its three key dimensions: time, space, and resources, and the way we have operationalized them ( Table I ). We tested the framework in our case analysis, and it proved useful for distinguishing camp designs. The necessity of differentiating between an early and mature stage led to a slightly revised framework, suggesting an evolutionary perspective ( Table II and Figure 1 ).

In terms of managerial implications, practitioners can use the insights we derived and the challenges we identified to better plan for future camps. The findings can help them to understand which conditions/contexts are required to enable a design based on the new approach. For example, camp design guidelines must be developed to fit with the empirical reality rather than vice versa, for example, for urban displacement and out-of-camp living ( CCCM Cluster, 2014 ), dignified reception ( NORCAP, 2016 ), and site planning to reduce gender-based violence ( Shelter Cluster, 2016 ). At time of this writing, a group of international organizations including IOM, IFRC, UNOPS, NRC, and others was developing a new manual for physical camp design and construction ( www.globalcccmcluster.org/categories/news ).

This study provides an initial understanding of the new approach to camp design, but more research is needed to provide normative advice on specific design principles. First, a natural extension of our research would be the validation of our case-driven insights with further empirical research, both in depth and breadth. More in-depth studies of the hosting countries themselves in terms of politics, culture, resources, etc., are also necessary to improve the understanding of the countries’ differences and similarities and how such contextual factors influence camp development. In particular, the trade-off between a permanent solution and the temporary must be accounted for. Furthermore, research is needed to establish a deeper understanding of what we have identified seem to be an evolutionary model for camp design. Questions to be answered include who are the actors involved at the different stages, what additional activities and resources come in focus as time goes by, what factors (contextual and others) impact on the development, and how can they be influenced for the new approach to be adopted. Second, the challenges we identified clearly highlight that camp design and management is not just a logistical problem, but rather is an interdisciplinary issue. The warehouse theory is an interesting theoretical perspective to use in further research on improving camp designs, but will capture only some aspects. Thus, research on camp design should also be interdisciplinary. For example, if refugee camps are to be long-term human settlements, it makes sense that urban planners and architects be an essential part of the process to provide an effective and sustainable design ( Jacobs, 2017 ). “In the long run, refugees are an asset, not a liability – an economic benefit that can help revitalize a region, not a drain on resources” ( Jacobs, 2017 ). This type of research can also make use of the industrial network theory for analysis of the interconnectedness between activities, actors, and resources. The social network theory provides yet another interesting avenue for future research. Furthermore, socio-political factors playing a role in camp design require knowledge from political science and the organizational theory.

A proposed evolutionary model of camp design

Framework with operationalizations for data collection and analysis

Overview of empirical findings from the multi-site study

Challenges to adopting the proposed new camp design approach

List of anonymized interviewees

Appendix 1. Interview guide

Appendix 3. Secondary data on cases

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Johan Christofferson and Erik Müller for helping out with part of the data collection, and also anonymous reviewers and the editors for constructive comments in improving the paper.

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Designing refugees’ camps: temporary emergency solutions, or contemporary paradigms of incomplete urban citizenship? Insights from Al Za’atari

• Rania Aburamadan 1 ,
• Claudia Trillo 2 &
• Busisiwe Chikomborero Ncube Makore   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8943-2093 2  

City, Territory and Architecture volume  7 , Article number:  12 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Millions of people have been forcibly displaced around the world at an alarming rate. In 2018, approximately 70.8 million people (UNHCR 2018) were living in refugee camps. These camps are the most immediate response to the emergency. However, they have become more than a simple temporary solution, with refugees spending significantly longer than they should. Motivated largely by an economic rationale, the camps are often produced rapidly, cheaply and effectively to accommodate the largest possible number of shelters in the shortest time. The aim of this paper is to explore whether the concept of permanence should be embedded in the spatial configuration of a refugees’ camp, or whether the concept of transient and temporary community would better reflect the aspirations of the users. The Al Za’atari camp has been selected as a case study to explore the nexus between spatial configuration and social aspirations of the refugees’ community. Indeed, the findings revealed that the spatial configuration of the Al Za’atari camp reflects social fabric, habits and organization of the refugees’ community. This has occurred to the point that the camp has taken on the appearance of a sort of informal city. This study therefore suggests recommendations to support the design of spatial and architectural solutions that better meet the actual needs of the final users largely disregarded in the current emergency approach.

Introduction: The refugee’s crisis: a tragic challenge to urbanism

The refugee’s crisis is growing at unprecedented pace, due to humanitarian emergencies, such as the unstable political situation that many countries are experiencing, or due to climate change and related natural disasters, nowadays, global pandemics. As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] reported (UNHCR 2018 ), the global population of forcibly displaced people has increased rapidly from 43.3 million to 70.8 million between 2009 to 2018. Furthermore, every minute in 2018, 25 people are forced to flee from their homes. The majority of this increase happened between 2012 and 2015 due to the Syrian conflict in 2011. Conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan have contributed to this displacement, as well as the massive flow of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2017. These areas are suffering from numerous challenges including security situations and political unrest leading to larger outflows of refugees. Jordan is presently experiencing an increase in the flow of refugees. Made even harsher by the climate change and related desertification, the demand from this increasing population is a critical concern and additional needs of dwellings and services must be provided to meet this demand. The main stakeholders of the refugee camps in Jordan are refugees, governments and non-government organizations (NGOs) (UNHCR 2019 ).

International discourse has given increasing attention to the unique form of human habitation lived by internally displaced persons in refugee camps (Agier 2008 , 2002 ; Alnsour and Meaton 2014 ; Ashmore et al. 2003 ; Brun 2001 ; Hart et al. 2018 ; Herz 2012 ). There is no universal agreement of the actual conceptualisation of the refugee camp space. It has been described as temporary, transient, city-camps, semi-permanent, spaces created “between war and city” (Agier 2002 ), that play a formative role in residents’ migration story (Stevenson and Sutton 2011 ). The lived spaces in refugee camps is positioned on a spectrum between two main arguments. On one side, an argument is made that the refugee camp is a temporary space intended for transition. This argument is often made by international organisations and NGOs. This position emerges with clarity when looking at guidelines and handbooks for camps construction published by the main international organisations such as the UNHCR (UNHCR Innovation 2015 ). On the other side is the concept of a type of permanence . The solutions for establishing dwellings by UNHCR have considered the basic design and function of refugee shelters without modifications (Corsellis and Vitale 2005 , 2008 ; Manfield et al. 2004 ). Albeit this is not an explicit strategy, and this comes perhaps as an unintended consequence of a decision made on purely functional and financial grounds. The concept of temporarily implicitly remits to the avoidance of legitimization of the refugee camps in order to maintain its governance. In fact, prominent depictions have tended to conceptualise refugee camps as spaces of transition and impermanence. This is hardly surprising given the international political nature of emergency support and the fact that such accounts are frequently motivated by an underlying concern with social justice. However, these ideological constructions often ignore the understanding of more micro-level and prosaic processes involved in the making of these places. A variety of intermediate conditions may occur between the two concepts of refugee camp as a “permanent” VS “temporary” solution. This includes the same camp going through multiple socio-spatial stages and phases, thus requiring a flexible strategic approach. Architecture and urban planning are the most suitable disciplines in terms of appraising the right stage and way forward in this regard. This overcomes the one-size-fits-all approach currently underpinned in international guidelines and documents. Some refugee camps may be setup as a genuine temporary solution requiring a provisional accommodation for a limited time, and in fact some of them do no longer exist, especially those related to natural disasters, as earthquakes in Japan or Chile (technically IDP). Other camps become permanent e.g. Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria. Indeed, some refugee camps change their function upon completion of the emergency or merge into a previous city, such as in the case of Al-Baqa’a in Amman, Jordan. Innovative strategies for green transition or agricultural purposes can be implemented using the infrastructure provided by the refugee camp. In the case of Al Za’atari, it was evident that the situation generating the emergency went beyond a quick and simple resolution. Therefore, a design approach more considerate of long-term socio-economic implications of the spatial organisation might have helped to prevent most of the current issues.

This paper challenges the traditional concept of camps as temporary solutions, by investigating through the words of refugees their own interpretation of the space, but also accepting that permanence applied to refugee camps is a slippery concept from a political perspective. The aim of this paper is to explore whether the concept of permanence should be embedded in the spatial configuration of a refugees’ camp, or whether the concept of transient and temporary community would better reflect the aspirations of the users. This paper proves with a robust set and rich qualitative dataset, how refugee camps hold more than a hybrid status in the meaning of ephemeral cities (Montanari et al., 2007 ). Therefore, this paper presents the theoretical framework by exploring the socio-spatial elements of refugee camps in “ Refugees camps: no longer a temporary solution, not yet a city ” section. This is followed by “ Methodology ” section, the outline of the chosen methodology and context of the case study, the Al Za’atari camp in Jordan. “ Data presentation ” section presents the data findings which are further discussed in “ Data analysis and discussion ” section. The paper is concluded in “ Conclusions ” section.

Refugees camps: no longer a temporary solution, not yet a city

There is increasing discourse that is positioning refugee camps as places that are gradually becoming enduring organizations of everyday life, social life and processes and systems of power (Agier 2008 , 2002 ; Stevenson and Sutton 2011 ; Hart et al. 2018 ; Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019 ). This section explores if refugees living in camps are just temporarily transient communities as so often depicted by NGOs and international organisations or if these refugee communities are living in a hybrid ephemeral place that embeds the temporary qualities of an environment and eventually evolves into a permanent urban and social fabric, an informal city.

Refugee camps as cities with ordinary places?

Place is broadly understood as spaces that people are attached to or spaces that have particular meaning to people (Lombard 2014 ; Sampson and Gifford 2010 ; Brown et al. 2012 ). In urban planning, place is often depicted as a socio-spatial construct combining two main elements: firstly, the spatial location and locale and secondly, the sense of place. The location and locale refer to the “where and shape of a place”. This could be physical environments or even less static locations such as public transport and markets. The sense of place is a subjective element that is challenging to convey simply. It is the social element of place also described as the emotional attachment people have to a certain place. This construction of the physical and social elements of space results in diverse understandings and experiences of places. This can be linked to issues surrounding power, contestation and conflict. Different groups with different needs and aspirations will have different values, meanings and uses of a place. Therefore, a “place” is a space with value and meaning in the context of power. According to Foucault ( 1982 : 789), “power is ‘a way of acting upon one or more acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action”. It exists only in a relational sense, as exercised by some on others (Lombard 2014 ). Drawing on this conceptualisation of place, allows a holistic understanding of refugee camps and how they are constructed spatially, socially and politically.

Focusing the discourse on the making of a place, moves away from a developmentalist perspective that views refugee camps in a continuous emergency state of temporary-ness, and instead focuses on the “ordinary” and “everyday” nature of refugee camps. This offers a potential alternative way of understanding the processes of which refugee camps are constructed. Following the suggestion of (Lombard 2014 ; Certeau et al. 1998 ), that everyday practices in urban places can provide an analytical focus for understanding the city, giving attention to the everyday sociality of refugee camps promotes a focus on the importance of people as autonomous actors who creatively engage with, and shape, their surroundings. Indeed, people construct places and places construct people (Brown et al. 2012 ; Livingston et al. 2008 ). The attachment of people to a place has a deep association that is often linked to an individual’s sense of belonging, identity and security (Scannell and Gifford 2010 ). Hart et al. ( 2018 ) describe this as “homemaking”, the actions and aspirations of camp residents to imbue their dwellings with a sense of home. Everyday practices and customs such as attending to the creation of dedicated space for receiving guests shape the residents’ ideals of home in combination with the constraints imposed by institutions responsible for funding, hosting, and managing the camps. Furthermore, the role of spaces in refugee camps reflect small cities with the same spaces of education, worship, security and healthcare. Thus, revealing the agency of residents in refugee camps to improve their surroundings and conduct normative social relations, such as in informal cities (Hart et al. 2018 ; Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019 ). It therefore leads to the realisation and re-imagining of refugee spaces as places for sociality and living, going beyond just the basic needs.

Refugee camps as arenas of powers?

Using the concept of place articulated in the section above, illuminates elements of power within refugee camps (Fábos and Kibreab 2009 ; Mah and Rivers 2016 ; Lombard 2014 ). This is often related to the determination of international and local political and bureaucratic agendas. In this regards, international and local humanitarian organizations are primarily concerned with the offer of assistance for refugees. In focusing on the protection and survival of inhabitants, the international agencies that run these camps rarely empower residents to act as citizens of them (Stevenson and Sutton 2011 ). The informal practices and processes that occur in refugee camps often refer implicitly to issues of power through a focus on particular form of power relations. In this case, this is particularly between international and national states and organisations and the community of refugees. The discourse tends to take a frequent binary view which perceives refugees as the “losers” (Lombard 2014 ; Mah and Rivers 2016 ) in power relations. For divergent reasons, host governments, international donors and humanitarian organizations often reinforce this dichotomy (Hadafi and Fallahi 2010 ). This persistent narrative assumes that, permitting refugees to improve their environment and add meaning to a space will influence their decision to stay in the camp for longer. Therefore, such changes are unwelcome from the perspective of host states and donors, and sometimes as Paszkiewicz and Fosas ( 2019 ) explain, refugees themselves, as this may be seen as undermining their claims for long term solutions to displacement.

Under this discourse, the rigid dichotomy between temporariness and permanency persists, facilitating an easier management of possible returns, the preferred UNHCR durable solution to refugee crisis. Kennedy et al. ( 2008 ) explained that part of the challenge is that the handbook of the UNHCR does not relate camps to the surroundings in the local community and stands as a temporary and isolated site. An example of this is through the use of language and labels such as person of concern or displaced population from the UNHCR handbook. An alternative conceptualisation is offered by Sharp et al. ( 2000 ) which suggests an entangled layering of power that is an amalgamation of forces, processes, practices and relations. In this case, the entanglements of power express a reciprocal rather than oppositional or binary relation. In the context of refugee camps, power can refer to the consolidation of social structures and hierarchies in spatial terms which reflects the existing power structures (Hart et al. 2018 ; Schmeidl 2002 ; Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019 ). The question of citizenship in the camps arises from this conceptualisation. Refugees often do not hold the status of citizens, as such, the space they are entitled to use mirrors the lack of consideration for the social construct allowed by a consolidated urban fabric. However, the spatial dynamics enacted by refugees in camps do prove their willingness to create a space that resembles a permanent built environment. In the refugee camp, the residents are dependent on the bureaucratic structures and decisions which affect the services they can use and the status they have (Agier 2002 ).

Refugee camps as cities of process?

An additional strand to the evolution of refugee camps as cities is the conceptualisation of places as process (Lombard 2014 ). The previous sections have explored the discourse surrounding the influence of places on the political and personal lived realities of camp residents. However, the materiality and structure of these places are also influenced by people’s activities and agency (Cresswell 2004 ). The focus on activities as a significant influence on the socio-spatial structure of place disrupts the conception of place as fixed and static. In this context, the everyday activities within a refugee camp are perceived as critical to the construction of the idea of place. It implies a re-thinking and re-framing of the camp resident in which they are seen as actors/agents in the construction of the refugee camp (Paszkiewicz and Fosas 2019 ). Seeing place as process allows for a recognition of the social practices and efforts that go into the construction of the place. This recognition is often unrecognised despite the value in place-making.

The home space can be transformed into a place in which traditions and values can exist through social practices such as e.g. women gathering, cooking and washing as shown in Fig.  1 (Certeau et al. 1998 ; Simadi and Nahar 2009 ). This is based on refugee’s experiences and aspiration to modify their lived space and even provide environmental improvements such as such as tree planting (Hart et al. 2018 ). Modifications to the shelter to facilitate social activities has been a large part of the socio-spatial transformation of the camp to suit their needs and express their values (Knox and Mayer 2013 ). Residents have added extra units to shelters although financial constraints play a role in determining the number of huts, tents, constructed brick or clay houses and the upgrading of residential units. This is not limited to the external environment and includes decorating and furnishing, enclosing their compound for privacy, limiting direct access and protecting their community from undesirable climate conditions. Camps therefore transform to a more informal and fluid layout than a grid layout where the limitations of the camp become less obvious. The urban fabric of shelters is more organic and meets peoples’ desire to connect and stay near relatives and friends. They start adding spaces and rooms to the shelter structure and take into consideration the organization of the shelter for extending their family. Despite spatial limitations, fundamental social activities are taking place including births, deaths and marriages (JABR 1989 ). Picker and Pasquetti ( 2015 ) give some conclusion in explaining that camps are becoming a city in the sense of a social and political space, yet there are shortages of services and this temporary situation of accommodating people does not account for the long-term socio-economic situation. Thus, the urban requirements frame a camp as a city or as an incomplete urban formation.

(Top) Areas created by refugees for social gathering and washing in the Al Za’atari camp-North of Jordan, (bottom) Modified and planted garden besides a shelter (Source: Authors’ photo)

Methodology

The research philosophy of this study is based on interpretivism as an epistemological paradigm, justified by the aim of uncovering the meaning given to a refugees’ camp by its users. The authors believe that in order to unveil the meaning beyond camps as spaces or places , gauging the view of the refugees was essential. A semi-ethnographic approach was considered the most suitable to allow a thorough examination of a comprehensive dataset of evidence and spending considerable time in the field of the Al Za’atari camp allowed exploring culture and social practices. To achieve this, the research methodology rests on a single case study strategy, in order to allow for an in depth understanding of the intertwined and complex socio-economic dynamics happening inside the camp and across different stakeholders. However, this is also a limitation of this study. In fact, Al Za’atari cannot be considered an average case study (Flyvbjerg 2006 )not even a critical or exceptional one. The motivation beyond the construction of Al Za’atari influences the transferability of findings and conclusions. This cannot be considered equally relevant to cases in which refugees camps are built to cope with an emergency with a high degree of predictability in terms of its resolution (i.e. a flooding). . This is based on direct observation pursued through 15 visits to the chosen case and a robust qualitative dataset of interviews, gauging the view of refugees on the camp. The selection of the Al- Za’atari camp in Jordan has been based on the rationale that this is the largest camp in Jordan and the second largest in the world. Over 150 interviews with refugees hosted in the Al-Za’atari camp have been conducted on the 15 visits (24 in depth semi-structured interviews and 147 questionnaires). The interviews were conducted with the intention of understanding the refugees’ perspective on the current way of managing the spatial response to their needs as understood by international organizations. A further 40 in-depth interviews with experts and professionals in the field (manufacturers, NGOs professionals, academics, researchers) were also administered. This was with the purpose to verify the correct interpretation of the literature regarding the approach followed by NGOs and international organizations in designing and implementing camps. Interviews with refugees considered the age, social status, gender and educational level and other attributes. They were conducted in Arabic by a female researcher, to allow for the wider participation of all genders, and where administered under the surveillance of the local police. Texts were recorded and transcribed from Arabic, then translated into English for coding and identification of key-nodes. The analysis of the texts has been conducted by using the NVivo software.

Understanding the context: Al-Za’atari camp

The Al Za’atari camp is located in the desert zone, 10 km east of the Mafreq Governorate as shown in Fig.  2 . It connects to a secondary road to the highway near to the military border and is at the crossroads to Syria to the north. The camp is surrounded by rural areas and the topography is slightly flat and sandy. The camp climate has extreme conditions of hot summers and cold winters with no rainfall from May to September and, occasionally, in October and November. Sandstorms begin in March and last until May. Al Za’atari has grown out of a desert area and become the second largest camp in the world after the Dadaab camp in Kenya which houses 329,811 refugees (Ledwith 2014 ). Around 400.000 Syrian individuals were dispersed around non-camp settings and urban areas, predominantly in the north of Jordan but those who decided to settle in urban and rural areas were not supported by the UNHCR (WHO 2013 ).

(Top left) Syria border with Jordan and Al Za’atari refugee camp location (Source: Jussi and Vorobeva ( 2017 ), (top right) The Al Za’atari camp between 2012 and 2015 (Source: (Jussi and Vorobeva, 2017 ), (bottom) Al Za’atari refugee camp districts in 2019 (Source: (UNHCR 2019 )

The Jordanian government allowed Syrian refugees access to governmental services and settled in the Al Za’atari camp from 2012. They initially had a planned capacity of 20,000 refugees but reached 45,000 by the end of that year (Fig.  2 , top right). By 2015 the estimated number of refugees was 83,000, distributed amongst 12 districts as visually illustrated in Fig.  2 , each sector containing blocks, communities and shelters. The ratio of men to women was 50% for each part. Young people comprised 57% while 19.9% under 5 years old (UNHCR, 2018 , 2019 ). The Al Za’atari camp includes 31 schools, 58 community centres, 2 hospitals, 9 health care centres, 1 delivery unit and 120 community health volunteers (UNHCR 2018 ).

The Al Za’atari camp has grown rapidly out of an empty stretch of desert area resulting in the increase of shops, restaurant, schools, medical care centers and nurseries. This concentrated bustling of life and community is evidenced by the coining of the most busy and active street, the Champs - Elysees street (Skretteberg 2019 ). The camp dwellings increased from 2400 in September 2012 to 26,000 dwellings in April 2020 (Ledwith 2014 ; REACH 2014 ). The Al Za’atari camp, therefore, has been in high demand to provide protection and services for unexpected numbers of refugees (UNHCR 2013 ). Most refugees have settled in the Al Za’atari camp from Dara and have worked in agriculture although some are skilled workers such as builders and carpenters.

The layout of the Al Za’atari camp began as a grid organization and evolved through social organization into a more informal layout (Fig.  3 ). The camp is located on a ring road and measures 3.5 km from east to west. The west side was located first and is called the old side. Initially in this area, the refugees were settled haphazardly, close to relatives and water sources. Eventually caravans replaced tents but it was a challenge to accommodate caravans into a small area and retain access for emergency vehicles and other services (Ledwith 2014 ).

(Top) informal layout in the Al Za’atari camp (Source: Authors’ photo), (bottom left) Prefabricated shelters in the Al Za’atari camp (Source: http://www.google.jo ), (bottom right) Al Azreq camp in Jordan (Source: http://www.apnews , 2018)

The caravans had the same informal layout and organized in U shapes to be close to relatives and friends in courtyards and gathering spaces. This way of spontaneous urban organization had an influence on the quality of services provided to refugees. Although, the grid layout established new sectors and caravans were placed in rows that took into consideration the provision of adequate access to services. By the end of 2013, most tents had been upgraded to prefabricated shelters (Fig.  3 , bottom left). In 2013 a second camp (Al Azreq) was built 20 km from Zarqa city and opened to transfer Syrian refugees to it (Fig.  3 , bottom right). The United Arab Emirates was the donor who established the camp, although different types of units were built to a higher standard than the Al Za’atari camp. Refugees did not prefer Al Azreq due to its location and distance from public transportation. Refugees would prefer to stay in poorer conditions with services and shelters rather than leave their families and relatives in the Al Za’atari camp.

The population in the Al Za’atari camp and livelihoods have expanded to different extents as shown in Table  1 . Indeed, as one of the largest camps in the world, the population numbers in Al Za’atari over the years are not linear and do fluctuate due to several factors such as war and political stability (Lintelo et al. 2018 ). For example, while there were over 200, 000 Syrians in April 2013, the estimates as shown in Table  1 have been consistently around the 80, 000 mark since August 2015 (UNHCR 2020b ). Ledwith ( 2014 ) indicates that the Al Za’atari camp costs 500,000 USD per day. The Al Za’atari has a high poverty rate with two thirds of refugees below the national poverty line as determined by the UNHCR ( 2019 ). The high cost of livelihood means that refugees have to rent and buy items for at costly (resale) prices.

In the Al Za’atari, around 3000 informal shops are operated by refugees and 3000 laborers have opportunities to work for community-based NGO. As far as services, three boreholes provide 3.3 million liters of water per day distributed by 82 trucks delivering water to public and private water tanks. But an unfair distribution of water happens in the camp and refugees are complaining regarding shortage and polluted water. In reality, refugees experience electricity cuts several times a month due to the illegal use of energy and lack of official supervision.

Data presentation

The dataset of this study relies on the following primary sources:

147 structured interviews (questionnaires) with refugees.

21 semi-structured in-depth interviews with refugees.

10 semi-structured in-depth interviews with experts and architects and NGOs.

15 direct observations of the Al Za’atari camp (in person fieldwork, including photo survey).

The research was conducted throughout 4 years (2014–2017) and distributed through 15 visits to the Al Za’atari camp, each semi-structured interview lasted between 30 and 75 min. Women represented 40% of participants and most of them are housemothers except a few who were working with NGOs as volunteers. Most male participants were working on farming or handcraft jobs such as builders except 1–2% of them who were working in office jobs.

Furthermore, semi-structured interviews with experts have been used to confirm the understanding of the approach beyond the design of the camps from the international organization. The researchers confirmed that international organizations tend to consider camps as an emergency solution, with a temporary lifespan. This has been gauged through the literature first, as explained in the literature review, then confirmed and corroborated through the in-depth interviews with experts, architects and NGOs.

Data analysis and discussion

As anticipated in the previous sections, the empirical dataset of interviews with refugees have been analyzed with the aim to detect their perception about the camp. This is with respect to four antithetical themes, as identified in the conceptual framework discussed in the initial sections: space VS place and temporary VS permanent. At this goal, concepts related to these four themes have been identified through concepts coding, then counted (frequency analysis of concepts) and their mutual relationship analyzed (themes analysis). Related to the theme of permanence the researchers have identified concepts related to key-events in life, such as marriages and births, happening in the camp. Related to the theme of place the researchers have identified concepts related to place-making, giving social meaning and purpose to the space. For example, having friends associated with spaces, or running memory-making experiences, such as going to school, regularly conducting social activities such as social gathering, singing, going to the market, etc. All these concepts have been systematically re-arranged around the four key themes.

Is this camp my home town? The Al Za’atari citizens’ perspective

The paper codes the interview questions through three groups which are; (1) community ( space vs place ), (2) events and (3) time ( permanent vs temporary ). Such groups are related to interview questions and each group branches out to comprehensive classifications as shown in Table  2 and Fig.  4 .

Responses of refugees, experts, and NGOs regarding meaning of temporary and permanent situations

Refugees responses and answers were coded under related nodes which connected to the aim of the interview questions. Each node includes a number of child nodes that the researcher coded whilst recording interviewees and this allows maximum flexibility of interview input. The researchers administered in-depth semi-structured interviews with 21 refugees. NVivo software was used to analyse data of semi-structured while structured interview results were analysed manually and fed the themes by using coding in NVivo analysis.

Overall, the analysis showed that all refugees mentioned experiences related to the perception of the camp as a place for living (i.e., associating the camp places to memorable events, lifechanging experiences, etc.), whilst only 7% refugees mentioned experiences related to the perception of the camp as a space for living (i.e., not associated with memorable or lifechanging events). Figure  4 illustrates the relationship between nodes in terms of depending and independent variables. The refugees’ responses present the connectivity between variables and if it influences living condition of refugees in The Al Za’atari camp as their hometown. The highest connection (17 responses) between the camp is space for living and temporary situation, a concept on which refugees agree in different occasions. Whilst the low connection (5 responses) exists between the concepts of the camp as place for living and temporary situation . Table 4 reveals the refugees’ responses which have an unclear connection between the camp as a place for living and other variables.

In contrast, Table  2 shows the relationship between the camp as a place or a space opposed to permanent situation and temporary situation. There is agreement with 94.26% refugees on the idea that humanitarian organizations provided them with space for a temporary solution, whilst 5.74% agreed on the idea that the camp is a permanent situation. On the other hand, 84.42% is recorded by refugees, they transferred to the camp as a temporary solution, and 15.58% noted the camp as a place in good condition and permanent condition.

Furthermore, Fig.  4 illustrates a number of refugees who are struggling between a temporary situation and a permanent situation in the camp. Many are in the middle column that distributes their responses in two directions. As a result, refugees face inappropriate situation that lead them to code some of their living experiences in the camp under temporary situation and other practices under permanent condition.

The following examples, extracted from the interviews, show how the texts were used to gauge the different perception of space VS place and temporary VS permanence in the camp.

The following sentences were considered linked personal memories associated to places in the camp:

I like my block of caravans because I like to spend the night with relatives talking in darkness (a lady, adding that insect and rodents create an issue).

I cannot live without (bahra), it feels I am in my home again. I added a second door in the backyard of the shelter to get more privacy (a man).

The following sentences were associated to functional aspect of the camp, i.e. to spaces in the camp;

I use to sleep outdoors of my shelter in bad climate conditions in summer and winter to allow privacy for my wife and teenager daughter because I have just one shelter (a man, saying that his ethics and beliefs prevented him from sleeping in the same room with his daughter).

A disabled man stated that if a boy wants water he will ring many caravans to get a glass of water, he said ethics and traditions and values of cultural and social aspects do not exist anymore due to the mixing of cultures inside the camp. He also complained about medical care where he mentioned that doctors used to give patients painkillers for all kinds of illnesses. He also complained that they were eating, drinking, sleeping, and using bathrooms in the same area. He argued flies eat with them their food due to the bad hygiene condition.

The following sentences were associated to temporary solution or to the desire to achieve a more permanent solution:

I was scared when a dog entered into my tent and attacked my son at night…. I would rather go back to Syria under bombs which is better than humiliating living condition in the camp.

A female volunteer mentioned how scared she was on the first night at the camp when she lost her family. She can adapt to the temporary situation of the camp but she wanted to finish her educational journey as she has a scholarship to finish her bachelor degree.

A man was a trader of goods and foods, he described the current situation in the camp as bad. At the early stage he tried to sell products from his tent, however, refugee poverty was a limitation of his continuous trade. He argued refugees always want to sleep through the day because they know they will get assistance (30 USA dollar) per month from humanitarian organizations which is maybe more than what they could earn from working any kind of work for a week inside the camp. Also, he mentioned most men do not work compared with women who work outside and inside the camp in order to provide for the family and to run away from conflict and violence with men who are unemployed. He was frustrated as a refugee because he felt that he was imprisoned and had limited human rights. He did not want his children to grow up in a camp and everyday see just desert and white shelters everywhere, he believes the camp leads to bad ethics and he insisted that he will go to back to Syria, even if they will die.

A man stated that each street has a master who is chosen by humanitarian organisations, however, the masters are sometimes not fair when distributing water, solving problems etc., as they give their relatives and friends priority while other refugees are suffering.

An owner of a mini shop argued that refugees fight because of poverty, he mentioned the last fight was at a mall and was due to overcrowding and people suffered from the situation where he indicated sometimes refugees spend many hours inside the mall to get their provisions, and they have to go to the mall more than three times per a day to collect the main items of food that the UNHCR provide. They bought their provisions but keep part of it to buy for other refugees to get cash for milk, clothes, medicine. etc., which the UNHCR does not provide.

Refugees stories and responses indicated a general desire and aspiration to better places, not just better functional spaces. This aspiration is confirmed by their efforts to adapt their spaces in the camp based on their demands, desire and aspirations. This confirm the initial position, i.e. the vision of a camp as informal city rather than as a temporary solution. Through random and inevitable practices and organization, refugees restructure their built environments in momentous ways. This contrasts with the concept of a functional grid portraited by the current handbooks for the design of refugees’ camps, as questioned by the authors in previous studies (Aburamadan and Trillo 2018 ; Aburamadan 2017 ; Aburamadan and Trillo 2020 ).

Conclusions

Currents camps are planned and designed to achieve two main goals: (1) meeting the basic human needs, (2) addressing a quantitative issue. However, because of the protraction over the time of the emergency, refugees’ camps should be considered more as urban settlements than as rows of shelters. The urban feature of the refugees’ camps recalls the concept of building communities and making sense of the space between buildings and related social ties. Findings from the empirical data allow demonstrating that refugees’ prioritization of what is important in the camp is highly connected to the spatial configuration of the camp and shelters and the social interaction that such spatial configuration enables. In the case of the Al Za’atari camp, the evidence suggests that the needs of users are often disregarded in the support the design of spatial and architectural solutions. Thus, the real challenge is to design for people as they were before they experienced an emergency. The paper challenges the current approaches to the spatial management of refugees’ camps through a robust methodology and a huge body of new data. It is demonstrated that concepts such as “temporary” or “human needs” can be misleading while applied to spatial configuration which should allow for rebuilding the social glue of “temporarily permanent” communities. This paper supports the argument that even in these places, urban design must challenge marginality and resignation through quality, culture, protection of rights, and support for the incentive of collective services. Architecture, as socially engaged discipline, can contribute to the consolidation of common values such as identity, awareness and appropriation. Accordingly, the paper recommends major changes in the current approach to providing solutions for refugees’ shelters and camps. Current design, led by a functionalist approach, should be replaced by a new approach based on placemaking principles. Findings from this research could help adjusting the current approach to the refugees’ camps and shelters provisions. Potential users are local governments facing the challenge of accommodating refugees, professionals from NGOs and international organization supporting refugees.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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The authors would like to acknowledge the refugee participants, the UNHCR organization and the local Jordanian institutions at the Al Za'atari camp.

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Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Camps in crisis: challenging the architecture for refugees.

Duc Huy Ho Follow

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Spring 5-11-2020

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Bachelor of Architecture

Architecture

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Arash Soleimani

Every minute, 24 people are forcibly removed from their homes. This is due to violence, natural disasters, or human rights violations during premigration. Globally, there are 70.8 million people who are displaced, the largest number in history. To put this into perspective, imagine taking everyone from California and Texas and forcing them elsewhere. This is the scale of the refugee crisis. With this many people, we have to ask: what are the options? One: refugee camps or two: resettling in a foreign community. Unfortunately, some refugees are staying in camps designed for temporary use for up to 25 years. I mean imagine being in-transition or raising your kids in a sea of canvas tents for 25 years. Due to the lack of planning and infrastructure these camps not only damage the environment, but they also expose refugees to a host of health and safety concerns. During resettlement, refugees who live in a foreign community will likely experience racism and discrimination. 18 years ago, my family immigrated here from Vietnam. Without education or pre-exposure to English, we became victims of this discrimination. This means refugees are escaping one harsh reality into another of societal abuse and neglect.

This is why my research will challenge these two options. Whether in transition or resettlement, refugees are most concerned with their health, shelter, and education while trying to protect themselves from ethnic and sexual violence. With these external threats and more, refugees develop a sense of dependency on governmental aid and become fearful of their surroundings. As a result, the slowly lose their sense of agency. Therefore, my thesis is not to design another refugee camp but to ensure an infrastructure that bridges the “alien” to the citizen. An adaptable and expandable design that mixes microelements like transitional and incremental housing to provide shelter and security but also the macro-infrastructure to provide meaningful social spaces to invoke community and empowerment. With the adaptable micro and macro elements working in tandem in this pseudo-urban environment, agency will be reintroduced in the most intimate and social part of their lives.

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Rethinking Migration

Redesigning refugee camps - the case of moria.

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In September 2020, camp Moria was completely destroyed by a fire. Due to European migration policy, the living conditions were abysmal, causing harm to refugees as well as the host community. The aim of the project is to create a non-site specific architectural model, framework and strategy for a design of a refugee camp on how quality can be created with very little means, addressing the existing problems within the current refugee camp design (approach). It is an exploration on the possibilities within the realm of architecture to alleviate to alleviate the suffering of the refugees as well as the disconnect between the refugees and the host community. With this, it can become a part in the larger discourse of refugees/camps, and hopefully giving policy makers and all involved a different look on the whole matter. First is the need to see refugee camps as something permanent, instead of a temporary solution to a ‘problem’ that will end. The initial framework/design of the camp needs to account for future expansion and development. The focus is on a bottom-up design approach which involves the refugees as well as the host community in the planning and construction process. Co-creation, the ability for the refugee to make changes to their homes according to their own needs, control over their own lives, interdependence (social and economic) between the host community and refugee camp, and fostering (economic) activity of these two parties involved are of essence. To kickstart this, straw is being used as a low-tech self-buildable construction material to create quality dwellings, improving on the living conditions in European refugee camps. Being a low-tech material, refugees can be involved in the building process. What’s more, Straw is a by-product of cereal crops. Cereal crops in turn can be used to produce food. This two-fold application of food/building construction can help refugees to be (economically) active by cultivating cereal by processing these crops into food, and the straw into buildings. On the flip-side, the building process and cultivation of cereal could benefit the local economy as well. Third, using this cultivation and processing of this crop to food or construction of buildings, can also be points of exchange, collaboration and interaction between host community and refugee. Shown is a base model, idea and strategy, which can be used anywhere in the world. In this specific project, it is adapted to the terrain and climate of Lesvos. By actively engaging refugees in the building of the city and giving (economic) opportunities, we challenge the view (rethinking part) from seeing them as a liability or threat and something ‘temporary’ to people who should be treated with respect and in a humane way. All the while fostering integration and cohesion with surroundings.

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Impacts of refugee camps on the rural livelihoods of the host community in Ethiopia : a case study of Tirkidi South Sudanese refugee camp, Itang district

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In Ethiopia, specifically in Addis Ababa, there are many Eritrean and Somali Urban refugees. They put Addis Ababa in the top first priority area to live because Addis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia and is the centre for national as well as international organizations. Urban refugees have different kinds of livelihood challenges and opportunities and this research examines it. In order to achieve the objectives of the research, descriptive type of research which is led by qualitative approach was employed. In-depth interview, key informant interview, focus group discussion and document review were the central data collection techniques. In this study, Gofa Mebrat Hail for Eritrean refugees and Bole Michael for Somali refugees in Addis Ababa were selected based on their numerical upper hand as well as the prolonged settlement of the refugees in the respective areas. In-depth interview was made with Eritrean and Somali urban refugees, key informant interview with officials from ARRA, NRC, DICAC and Woreda officials from the hosting community. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select the research participants. The finding of the study shows that there are several socio-cultural and economic challenges urban refuges have been facing: High cost of living, problem of cultural adaptability like language barriers, refugees low self-esteem, psychological instability and mobility, economic crises, conflict, security challenges, violence, theft and robbery are the main challenges associated with livelihood strategies. This research also indicates that there are opportunities available on the ground to be used for sustainable development and self-reliance: availability of supportive policy frameworks and cultural Similarity between the hosting community and urban refugees. Moreover, this research revealed that urban refugees have both negative and positive impacts for the hosting community. The positive impacts include strengthen socio-economic and political relationship with neighbouring country, strengthened people-to-people relationship, transfer knowledge and skills, increase work habits, contribute for labour market, and inject foreign currency to the market. The negative impacts burdened on the hosting community are aggravated the price of rental house, increase unemployment rate, injects deviant behaviour such as addiction, conflict and violence. This research has come to conclude that urban refugee’s livelihood strategy is vulnerable for risk and shock as the result of less sustainable nature of their means of income. Key words: refugees, urban refugees, livelihood, Somali Refugees, Eritrean Refugee

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Refugee Camps: From Temporary Settlements to Permanent Dwellings

• Written by Christele Harrouk
• Published on July 26, 2021

With more than 70 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, according to the UNHCR , and nearly 25.9 million refugees, the time has come to reconsider the traditional emergency camp approach. Although the concept is temporary by definition, in real life the lifespan of these refugee camps exceeds the planned and the expected.

Ranging from seven to seventeen years, most of these settlements surpass their expiry dates. Actually, on average, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kenya , " many displaced persons spend more than 16 years living as refugees in temporary shelter ."

In an ArchDaily article , dating back 7 years, on World Refugee Day, Ana Asensio states that “ a refugee camp is also a city. A temporary city, in theory. An ephemeral city whose inhabitants have been placed there like pieces in a puzzle. A stand-by city that architecture has not embraced ”.

Rapidly established under strict UNHCR norms , these settlements have the sole purpose of accommodating, briefly, displaced people due to conflicts. Adequate and functional for a temporary period of time, these grid layouts welcome people who have left all of their lives behind. Actually, for a significant number of refugees, the only home they have ever known is the camp. Basing the whole approach on the assumption that the situation is temporary, and focusing primarily on providing basic humanitarian requirements, camps have failed to address a sustainable form of aid, tailored to the needs of refugees and host communities.

Unlivable, to a certain extent, these spaces shift from temporary to semi-permanent. Facing a lot of challenges like a lack of sufficient water supply, harsh climate, poverty, amongst others, they quickly become alienated slums. Dense, in order to reduce the sprawl and the appropriated space, these camps fail miserably security-wise as they grow older and bigger. A breeding ground for diseases and violent crimes, they become closed, impenetrable, and dangerous territories.

With a huge infrastructural strain on the host countries, camps are not only a handicap for their inhabitants. Due to their political nature, these settlements face strict rules, not allowing their occupants to create a life for themselves. In order to reduce potential friction with host communities, most governments have forbidden refugees from settling outside. Creating more problems than solving issues, camps are not sustainable structures, damaging the environment and denying refugees their basic rights and freedom. 

Read on to discover examples of the biggest and oldest refugee camps that became more like cities. Dynamic, flexible, constantly evolving, and shaped to fulfill the basic needs of their inhabitants, these settlements are setting new standards. 

The Case of Dadaab Refugee Complex and the Role of Community Leaders

Initially established as a temporary settlement for refugees fleeing the 1991 civil war in Somalia , Dadaab rapidly became a sprawling complex of five camps (Dagahaley, Hagadera, Ifo, and more recent additions Ifo II and Kambioos). Considered the third-largest city in Kenya , after Nairobi and Mombasa, growing especially due to Kenya’s encampment policy that prevents refugees from settling outside, the camp has a population of 217, 511 registered refugees and asylum seekers as of the end of March 2020. Having spent more than 20 years on these premises, some inhabitants know no other home.

Dadaab’s community played a positive role in the management of their own affairs, represented by democratically-elected community volunteers, coordinating all the activities of the camps ranging from sanitation to security. Born out of necessity, the role of community leaders became significant after the UN temporarily pulled out in 2011 following the kidnapping of aid workers, and volunteers took over instead. The world’s largest refugee complex, became a commercial hub, with refugees running local businesses, and providing services. Moreover, Dadaab generated a huge tax return to the Kenyan government, while refugees gained a more active role.

The Case of Kalobeyei Settlement and the Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan 

Kalobeyei Settlement , established in 2015 and located in Northern Kenya , houses mainly South Sudanese refugees. Created after conflicts broke out in South Sudan in 2013, the settlement is part of the expansion of the Kakuma Refugee Camp. In 2015, it was hosting a population of nearly 183,000 individuals, although it was initially designed to hold a capacity of 70,000. Moreover, Shigeru Ban , designed up to 12,000 refugee shelters for the Kalobeyei Settlement, in partnership with the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat). Focusing on designing a sustainable shelter that would require brief technical supervision, use local materials, and be easy to maintain, the Japanese architect, conducted both participatory workshops with the representatives from refugee and host communities.

Created with a different approach to refugee camps, promoting self-reliance of refugees and host communities and providing them with better livelihood opportunities and enhanced service delivery, the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan, or KISEDP , a 14-year project (2016-2030) emerged in 2018.

With objectives like reducing over-dependence on humanitarian aid and supporting the refugees to achieve durable solutions, the plan aims to develop the site as an urban center, using the same techniques as for cities. A local economic development approach will facilitate collaboration between public, business, and non-governmental sector partners to create better conditions for economic growth and employment. In fact, “ both refugees and host communities will benefit from investments in basic infrastructure and access to social services; and increased opportunities for supporting income-generating activities ”.

The Case of Zaatari Refugee Camp and the Organic Urbanization

Considered one of the world’s largest refugee camps, Zaatari located in Jordan translates how people can leave their mark and appropriate the space they occupy. In a New York Times article , Michael Kimmelman states that “ at a pace stunning to see, Zaatari is becoming an informal city: a sudden, do-it-yourself metropolis of roughly 85,000 with the emergence of neighborhoods, gentrification, a growing economy and, under the circumstances, something approaching normalcy, though every refugee longs to return home ”.

Hosting Syrian and Iraqi families, Zaatari is a mere example of unstoppable organic development. In fact, refugees transform and adapt their surroundings out of necessity, to serve their basic needs. While much of the settlements remain tent-like structures, spontaneous and populist growth, is happening in any way possible. “The oldest parts of Zaatari, now have streets, one or two paved, some lined with electric poles, the most elaborate houses cobbled together from shelters, tents , cinder blocks, and shipping containers, with interior courtyards, private toilets, and jerry-built sewers ” explains Kimmelman. Evolving into a complex ecosystem, more like a city than a camp, Zaatari is a dynamic place with households, sewage pots and private toilets, washing machines, private gardens, new businesses, and shops.

More organized camps have opened to welcome Syrians like Azraq in Jordan or camps in Turkey, with state-of-the-art facilities. Designed with strict policies and rigid configurations, to avoid similar approaches to those that altered the Zaatari camp, Azraq located in the middle of nowhere - to prevent refugees from getting into public utilities - hosts around 11,000 Syrians, although it was planned for more than 100,000.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on May 27, 2020.

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Architecture of refugee camps

“ It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. “― Nadia Hashimi.

An overwhelming number of people are forced out of their homelands yearly, with the crisis only worsening at an unprecedented pace. An immediate response to the emergency, refugee camps are designed as temporary means to house those exiled without any faults on their own. Unfortunately, the conflicts and threats that banished them didn’t get solved immediately, and these camps evolved into permanent places of residence for countless people. With this, it has become necessary to accommodate longer stays in the refugee camps such that the architecture of these camps address the complexity and diversity of these long-term settlements, transcending their transient nature and evolving into a sanctuary that better addresses the nature and aspirations of its inhabitants and enables a dignified life in these shelters through spatial empowerment and architectural interventions.

Refugee: A Figure

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that the number of globally forced displaced people crossed 103 million in mid-2022, among which 53.2 million are internally displaced, and 32.5 million are refugees. 

As of mid-2022, there are 4.9 Million Asylum seekers and 5.3 Million people in need of international protection. Out of 89.3 million people forcibly displaced at the end of 2021, 36.5 (41%) were children under 18. An average of between 350,000 and 400,000 children were born into a refugee life yearly between 2018 and 2021.

Amidst these grand numbers, 162,300 refugees returned to their home countries by mid-2022, while 42,300 people were resettled. 74% of the resettled refugees and others in need of international protection are hosted in low- and middle-income nations. The true figures of the refugees and other people in need of international asylum are estimated to be significantly larger. These figures are expected to grow larger in number and threaten the dignified and safe living of a large population of individuals with the conflicts that displaced them in the first place not showing any signs of improvement, which is why it has become imperative for those of us in safe comforts of our home to open doors and help integrate them into our socio-cultural as well as economic fabric.

An individual’s association with a place derives from their sense of belonging, identity, and security, in a process called “homemaking”. The spaces in refugee camps must allow for safe spaces where an individual can form a sense of identity relative to the space through habits, shared functions, community life, and a sense of normalcy, which are often lacking in the camps of the present. Rather than being in a constant state of impermanence and flux, these camps must be a sanctuary of everyday practices and customs with dedicated spaces housing these behavioural patterns. Thus rather than focusing on the emergency state and temporary nature of the refugee camps, the architecture of the refugee camps asks to be addressed in the context of ordinary everyday life. The normalcy absent in the lives of those forced out of their nests ought to be the element that one seeks to achieve as a designer.

Newer models of refugee camps are giving back the power to realise the shelters they would be living in. Some of these allow the occupants themselves to build the shelters they would be living in with the available local building materials, while some allow lightweight modular designs of shelters that provide flexibility and mobility in design. Involving the occupants in the maintenance and expansion of the camps in a holistic approach allows them to associate deeper with the camps and find a sense of home within. Furthermore, allowing the members of the camp to achieve basic facilities like education, health care, security, and a space to practice their religion or other ways to heighten spiritual health within the camp area or in close vicinity with unobstructed access needs to be ensured at all times. Social structures, gender concerns, inclusivity, information, privacy, and universality in design are also concepts that are yet to be embodied in the architecture of refugee camps.  

Assimilation with Society 

Although refugees do not always hold the same status as regular citizens, it would prove counterintuitive to build them shelters far from sight in an isolated system detached from the rest of the urban fabric. The feeling of alienation would always follow the refugees and as such, they live to end up living as visitors in a state of ephemerality at all times, in a state of homelessness, abjection, and limbo. The spatial dynamics of the camps need to be such that it facilitates a dynamic exchange between the refugees and the rest of society. Be it through the selection of the site, the blurring of the boundaries, or the amalgamation of shared facilities and activities; deliberate attempts demand to properly assimilate these microcosms of refugee camps into the pre-existing urban fabric.

Refugees are people no different than us in soul or ambitions, only with an unfortunate turn of fates that led them to a life of crisis, refuge, impermanence, and insecurity. As harsh as it may sound, most shelters designed to address the current refugee crisis are fundamentally misguided. Since these crises are occurring out of sight and far away, refugee camps of the present are mostly acting as visible as well as invisible barriers that hinder the occupants’ ability to assimilate properly with the rest of society.

A Tale of Endurance  

Today the “refugee camp” model has failed in terms of becoming a means of transitional assistance as commonly understood in the humanitarian assistance paradigm, with the camps being perceived as a non-place, a barrier to keep without rather than bring within those displaced due to conflicts and violence in national and international level. And since countless of the present refugee camps have existed long before establishing humanitarian camp planning guidelines, they still need to be improved on several fronts. Despite this, Refugee Camps are now becoming a part of everyday society, with over 94 countries housing refugees in some form of settlement or other. A microcosm within our society, these camps are gradually metamorphosing from temporary habitation to a hub of everyday life with its processes and systems, an informal city of its own

Refugee Camps are not just objects; they are a prolonged and significant event in human civilisation that demands materialization through architecture. Only through proper architectural language and storytelling can the ephemeral nature of this “transitional” shelter become something more than just an emergency shelter transcending the ever-present state of inconsistency and limbo.

UNHCR. (2022). Refugee Statistics [online] Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%202021,below%2018%20years%20of%20age.&text=Between%202018%20and%202021%2C%20an,a%20refugee%20life%20per%20year. [Accessed 15 Dec. 2022]

Sciepub. (2022). Redefining Refugee Camps as Livable Cities (Case Study: Saveh Refugee Camp) [online] Available at: pubs.sciepub.com/ajcea/6/1/1/index.html [Accessed 15 Dec. 2022]

Architectural Review. (2022). Building refuge: from emergency shelter to home [online] Available at: https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/housing/building-refuge-from-emergency-shelter-to-home [Accessed 15 Dec. 2022]

Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. (2022). Architecture and History in a Refugee Camp [online] Available at: https://wiser.wits.ac.za/content/architecture-and-history-refugee-camp-13903 [Accessed 15 Dec. 2022]

Sagepub. (2022). Constructing “purgatory”: How refugee camp architecture inscribes refugees into the a-political, a-historical, and moveable – Áine Josephine Tyrrell, 2021 [online] Available at: https://wiser.wits.ac.za/content/architecture-and-history-refugee-camp-13903 [Accessed 15 Dec. 2022]

Architect Magazine. (2022). Rethinking the Refugee Camp [online] Available at: https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/rethinking-the-refugee-camp [Accessed 15 Dec. 2022]

An architecture and art enthusiast, Rashmi Gautam, is an Architecture Student from Nepal in search of her own expression in forms of words and design. Finding solace in the company of literature, art and architecture, she can be found brooding in the nearest library or museum.

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Between bondage and freedom: Life in Civil War refugee camps

Research by historian abigail cooper shows how newly emancipated people forged a new path.

Group of "contrabands," people who had escaped slavery during the Civil War at Cumberland Landing, Virginia, 1862. Photographer James F. Gibson.

Research by assistant professor of history Abigail Cooper into the refugee camps set up for African Americans during the Civil War has revealed stories of courage and bravery and a new understanding of how blacks built a new future for themselves born from the ashes of slavery.

Cooper, who has a joint appointment in  African and African American Studies , estimates that more than 200 refugee camps sprang up during the war with more than 800,000 African Americans passing through them at some point. Most residents were slaves or ex-slaves fleeing the clutches of their enslavers and the Confederate army.

Others came to find family members who had been sold to different slave owners. 

Mary Armstrong in 1937.

Mary Armstrong

In 1863, newly freed from bondage and living in St. Louis, 17-year-old Mary Armstrong did the unthinkable — she journeyed to the slave-holding South.

Armstrong, one of more than 2,000 former slaves who told their stories to the New Deal’s Federal Writers' Project in the late 1930s, had been separated from her parents as a child when they were sold to other owners.

Armstrong learned through the grapevine that her kin might be in Texas so, as she said in her interview, “away I goin’ to find my mamma.”

With the Civil War raging, she set out with two baskets full of food and clothing and a small amount of money, traveling more than 1,000 miles by boat and then stagecoach to Texas.

Armstrong eventually found her mother in the city of Wharton, some 150 miles south of Austin, at a refugee camp for African Americans. 

Armstrong later went on to become a nurse in the Houston area, saving numerous lives in the yellow fever epidemic of 1875.

The red dots represents locations of the contraband camps of the American Civil War. “Contraband camps” were the refugee camps where freed slaves gathered during the war.

A camp could hold anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand people, most of them living in barracks or fabric tents.

Another group of camps located mainly in the South behind Confederate lines was created ad hoc by blacks themselves. (Cooper has posted an interactive map of the locations of the camps).

At a camp in Hampton, Virginia called Slabtown and later the Grand Contraband Camp, African Americans built houses so sturdy the Union later appropriated them to house troops.

There were also four black schools in the camp, one of which became the future site of Hampton University , one of the premier historically black educational institutions in the country. (Brandeis is collaborating with Hampton on scientific research and to bring more underrepresented students into STEM fields).

Slabtown, a refugee camp in Hampton, Virginia, now the site of Hampton University.

Life in the camps

Conditions in many of the camps were squalid and disease was common. Black refugees lived in constant fear and terror of raids from southern whites. At one point, the Confederate army plundered and burned Slabtown to the ground.

Whites also lived in the camps, most of them seeking shelter from the war. They were treated differently from blacks. A rations list Cooper discovered for a camp in New Bern, North Carolina, shows that 1,800 whites received 76 ½ barrels of flour over the course of three months in 1862-63. During the same period, the 7,500 blacks there received 19 barrels.

But despite the hardships and oppression, Cooper says that the camps offered the formerly enslaved people their first opportunity to savor freedom, reunite as families and lay the groundwork for a new society and religion.

Camp inhabitants compared their plight to the Israelites in the desert in the book of Exodus, freed from slavery but not yet delivered to their new country.

A group of refugees with their covered wagon.

A good pair of shoes

Refugees carried money and protective charms in their shoes. They also fashioned footwear from plantain leaves. Their pungent smell was useful in throwing off the scent of the hounds used by patrollers and former owners to track them down. 

Spirituality

Cooper says folk religion informed black visions for their new society. Emancipation as a divine reckoning was the lens through which they defined liberty. Freedom meant the right to practice their religion.

It was through refugee camps, Cooper wrote in her thesis, that black refugees “sought to transform the Egypt of the Slave South into a New Canaan.”

Critical to this was the ability to read the Bible for themselves for the first time in their lives. Southern slaveholders had used selected passages to justify slavery.

Blacks in the camps now formed Bible study groups and found scripture to support their liberation.The Jubilee in the Old Testament marks the day when Hebrew slaves would be freed from bondage in Egypt. African Americans created their own Emancipation Jubilee on January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Another jubilee was celebrated in 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. And a grand jubilee celebrated annually well into the 20th century as “Juneteenth” commemorated June 19th, 1865, when word of southern surrender reached black camps in Texas.

Grieving was an all too common experience in the camps, but black refugees in the camps turned mourning rituals into opportunities for empowerment. "There was all this death going on around them," Cooper said, "but they were dying in freedom, and that meant something. Many saw going back to slavery as even worse.” 

In what were called “watch meetings” or “watch-night meetings” or “setting up,” adults at all-night funerals danced, clapped, prayed and experienced ecstatic visions. “The slaves would sing, pray and relate experiences all night long,” former slave Mary Gladdy said. “Their great soul-hungering desire was freedom.”

Fugitive African Americans fording the Rappahannock River in Virginia, August 1862. D.B. Woodbury, photographer

Jennie Boyd

Jennie Boyd’s contractions had already started when her owners decided to move her from Springfield, Illinois, to Arkansas.

The Civil War had begun a few months earlier and the Union Army was advancing on Springfield. The owners worried their "property" would be taken from them and wanted to move south.

They also took along Jennie's 4-year-old daughter, Emma Ray, whom they had purchased when she was 1 month old.

Along the journey, Jennie told Emma to stay close and not go near anything that was smoking in case it was an explosive.

Jennie was in full labor by the time the family arrived in Bethphage, Missouri, some 80 miles to the southwest. It was little more than a camping ground in the wilderness, but it was here that Jennie gave birth.

The baby was born “sick and delicate,” Emma later recalled in her autobiography, but she survived. Jennie honored the camp by naming her newborn after it — Priscilla Bethpage.

When the war ended in 1865, the family moved to a refugee camp in central Arkansas known as “Dink-town.”

Emma wrote in her memoir that the freed people there “dug holes in the ground, made dug-outs, brush houses, with a piece of board here and there, whenever they could find one, until finally they had a little village.”

Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, Meade, Virginia, August-November 1863. Timothy H. O'Sullivan, photographer

A new paradigm  

Freedom had a spiritual dimension that fueled a radical transformation of what it meant to be a black American. 

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M.Arch Thesis

Architecture for long term refugee relief: a policy and design manual [middle east edition].

In protracted refugee settlements, namely those inhabited by displaced populace for over five years, architecture falls short, acutely short, of its premise to provide shelter, comfort, and delight. Plagued with warfare, insurgences, and perpetual political turmoil, the Middle East region today is home to some of the largest protracted and soon-to-be protracted refugee groups in the world. A multitude of host government restrictions and resource scarcity renders conventional design and construction strategies inefficient and inapt in meeting the high demand for new long-term refugee settlements in the region.

Building upon the challenges, failures, dynamics, and opportunities discerned from existing Palestinian refugee camps in the region, my thesis partner and I deliver in this work a written framework as well as a pilot design to equip the UN and other relief organization with better planning approaches, construction options, and design strategies for when they embark on establishing new settlements in the region. Adopting the mantras “camp is a double-edged sword” and “disaster is a chance for development”, emphasis is placed on nurturing the life virus (of humans, animals, plants, etc…) to infuse hope in what is normally deemed a limbo situation. To elaborate, when a disaster happens, displaced populace, rapid global relief contributions, and increased online communication and advocacy often result. Shifting from a pessimistic to optimistic stance, we view the momentum of these dynamics, when synthesized with development agendas and uninhabited land in host communities, as a strategic development opportunity for all parties involved. As such, we propose a mutually beneficial system where the camp becomes an incremental orchestrator of physical, digital, and economic systems to provide in the short term thriving living hubs for displaced populace, and in the long term, seeds of economic and social development for the host communities. This is attained by incorporating low-tech construction, self-help housing, permaculture, desert hydrology, remote health care provision, e-education, and others. Some of these programs already exist within the UN repertoire, but are disparate or underutilized. You can read excerpts from the 220-page document here :

• Part 1 (Documentation): In this part, we present a spatio-temporal documentation and analysis of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, uncovering the common as well as unique dynamics of protracted refugee settings and the attributes of their urban fabric and built environment. Moreover, we tell the story of a Palestinian family living in the camp through the incremental expansion of their house over six decades. We also develop a set of 115 indicators to evaluate the quality of the built environment as a stepping stone for determining critical intervention areas in the final (recommendation) part.
• Part 2 (Interventions): In part 2, we unravel the reconstruction of Nahr al Bared, the first pre-planned Palestinian long-term camp in Lebanon. By assessing the process and quality of the outcome, we discern practical lessons from this unprecedented framework in refugee settlements in the region. Based on that, the indicators presented in part 1 are refined by introducing a set of primary, secondary, and tertiary design and policy criteria that must be hierarchically addressed in order to plan better camps that incubate the potential to grow and thrive.
• Part 3 (Recommendations): from global relief pledges to the canopy shielding a family’s courtyard from the scorching sun, we devise an ecosystem as a step by step guide for developing seeds of immediate refugee relief that also enables prolonged positive change in the host community. An additional part, Part 4/Pilot Design, is incorporated at the end where we present how the recommendations and criteria from Part 3 could have been applied three years ago to accommodate the Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan in the wake of civil war.

The scope of interventions we propose is primarily focused on planning, infrastructure, housing, architecture, education, mico-economic activities, agriculture, and some relevant policy inaugurations. We recognize that issues of security, safety, order, governance, and politics are extremely critical in order to realize tangible improvements in refugee camps. At this point in time though, are beyond the scope of this work. If the reader is interested in learning more about these issues, a set of relevant and well-respected discussions can be found in Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space and Place in the Levant by Are Knudsen and Sari Hanafi.

It remains to note that except for photos and images obtained from contacts and online sources, all diagrams, illustrations, and maps are our own original work. These diagrams encapsulate the essence of the accompanied text as well as our contribution to knowledge. To elaborate, we generated original maps and data by tracing Google satellite imagery, and measuring and analyzing the metadata in AutoCAD. Through images, interviews, camp websites, and active online forums, we devised our own criteria for evaluating the camp built environment. The criteria, presented at the end of Part 1, could also act as a check list for architects and designers interested in good design. By examining the reconstruction of Nahr al Bared, we introduced hierarchy to the proposed criteria in order to emphasize the issues that must be urgently addressed in the camp as well as how to address them through design guides and policies. Using sand bag construction as an example, we designed a set of sand bag homes and quoted their cost, to provide a housing options menu for immediate use by refugees.

Social-Emotional Outcomes in Refugee Children: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention Implemented in a Refugee Camp

• Original Paper
• Published: 22 October 2024

Cite this article

• Nilüfer Kuru   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4237-9349 1 , 2 ,
• Michael Ungar 2 &
• Berrin Akman 3  

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Evidence-based early intervention programs for children at risk of developing psychological problems after exposure to armed conflict have been recommended as a major component in the treatment of psychosocial problems. This study examines the efficacy of a pilot school-based mindfulness intervention (SMI) and its impact on the social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes of war-affected refugee preschool children living in a refugee camp in Türkiye. A single-blind randomized controlled trial with pre-test and post-test design was employed. A total of 76 participants (born in 2013) were randomized by the school into the 6-week intervention ( n  = 38) or the control group ( n  = 38). Measures included the State Self-Esteem Scale, Early Childhood Social Skill Measure, and the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-Revised. GLM repeated-measures ANOVA ( p  < 0,05) analysis showed positive effects of SMI on social skills (F = 126.06, p  < 0.05, η2 = 0.63), self-esteem (F = 72.08, p  < 0.05, η2 = 0.49) and resilience (F = 4.33, p  < 0.05, η2 = 0.05) over time for the intervention group as compared to controls. Significant reductions in social and emotional problems were found for children who reported high levels of introversion in the pre-test. Pilot study results support SMI as a promising intervention for psychosocial problems that can reduce stress and anxiety symptoms among children exposed to armed conflict and forced migration.

A school-based mindfulness intervention (SMI) was developed for refugee children born in 2013 living in a refugee camp in Türkiye.

A single-blind, randomized controlled trial was conducted to determine the effect of 6 weeks of SMI on children in the intervention group ( n  = 38) compared to children in the control group ( n  = 38) living in the refugee camp.

SMI improved self-esteem, social skills, and resilience for refugee children living in a camp setting.

The SMI, with its content and implementation structure, can be integrated into the regular school system to support refugee children’s psychological development.

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Promoting Psychological Well-being in Preschoolers Through Mindfulness-based Socio-emotional Learning: A Randomized-controlled Trial

Promoting psychological well-being in preschool children: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a mindfulness- and yoga-based socio-emotional learning intervention.

A Systematic Review of Mindfulness-Based School Interventions on Social Emotional Outcomes with Adolescents

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the children and their parents for their contributions to our research. They would also like to thank the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Türkiye, Directorate of Migration Management, for its support in conducting the research in the refugee camp and for its helpful guidance throughout the process. Last, but not least, we are grateful to the school manager at the Cevdetiye refugee camp for her approval to conduct the study at the center and to the researcher, who is the external part of the research and responsible for collecting data, for all their hard work and diligence in running the program. This study was conducted as part of the first author’s doctoral thesis at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.

Author contributions

Conceptualization, N.K., and B.A.; formal analysis, N.K.; methodology, N.K.; writing—original draft, N.K., and M.U.; writing—review and editing, N.K., and M.U.

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Kuru, N., Ungar, M. & Akman, B. Social-Emotional Outcomes in Refugee Children: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention Implemented in a Refugee Camp. J Child Fam Stud (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-024-02924-w

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A former Bosnian prison camp guard is convicted of lying to get refugee status and US citizenship

A Bosnian man living in Massachusetts has been convicted of lying to get refugee status and U.S. citizenship

BOSTON -- A Bosnian man living in Massachusetts has been convicted of lying to get refugee status and U.S. citizenship by covering up his role as a supervisor of guards at a notoriously harsh and violent wartime prison camp where Serbians were killed, sexually assaulted, tortured and starved three decades ago.

Kemal Mrndzic, 52, had been living in the seaside town of Swampscott, north of Boston, before survivors of the Celebici prison camp identified him as being involved in the beatings and other abuses committed there in 1992, federal authorities said.

He was convicted in federal court on Friday of scheming to conceal his involvement in the persecution of those prisoners; making a false statement to Homeland Security agents about his role at the camp; possessing a fraudulently obtained naturalization certificate and Social Security card; and using a fraudulently obtained passport and certificate of naturalization.

He faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 fines on the most serious counts. His sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 22, 2025.

The jury acquitted Mrndzic, who was indicted in 2023, of two counts of making false statements to Homeland Security investigators.

Mrndzic pleaded not guilty and his lawyers asked for an acquittal, saying the evidence was insufficient to sustain a conviction on any of the charges.

An email seeking comment from his lead attorney, Brendan Kelley, was sent on Tuesday.

The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found that guards at the camp killed, sexually assaulted and tortured Serbian prisoners. Three other former guards were convicted of participating in the persecution. While Mrndzic was interviewed by investigators in connection with that case in 1996, he was not charged by international authorities, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Prosecutors said numerous survivors later identified Mrndzic as being involved in the beatings and other abuses committed there during the 1992-1995 war that killed more than 100,000 people following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Five camp survivors testified at trial, recounting the horrific conditions at the Celebici camp in 1992 when prosecutors said Mrndzic was a supervisor there. They spoke of near suffocation, beatings, murders, torture, sexual abuse, and starvation.

Prosecutors said Mrndzic crossed the Bosnian border into Croatia and applied as a refugee to the United States. In his refugee application and interview, he falsely claimed that he fled after he was captured, interrogated and abused by Serb forces, and could not return home for fear of future persecution. He was admitted to the U.S. as a refugee in 1999, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009, prosecutors said.

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At least 14 children among dead victims in Israeli army’s attack in Khan Younis

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that the Israeli military has killed 33 people, including 14 children, from one family in eastern Khan Younis after its ground force pushed deeper into the al-Manara area.

Casualties were evacuated to Nasser Medical Complex.

Doctors at the hospital confirmed that the 14 children arrived after they had suffocated to death, due to deadly bombs and shells fired at the building that led to the collapse of several other residential buildings while people were still inside.

More on Kamal Adwan Hospital attack by Israeli forces

• The hospital has officially run out of medical supplies and its warehouse is empty.
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Israeli military dragging patients out of Kamal Adwan Hospital

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• Medical staff inside Kamal Adwan Hospital confirmed that the Israeli military stormed the hospital and ordered staff, patients and the wounded to leave the building.
• Wounded patients and those with other health complications were dragged outside the buildings into the courtyard of the hospital. Many of them need to be attached to IVs and are on medical beds inside the hospital.
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Children killed inside Kamal Adwan Hospital after oxygen supplies hit by Israeli attack

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza

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“The Israeli regime has this time targeted two Iranian nationals in Lebanon, committing a clear violation of international law, especially international humanitarian law,” Saeed Iravani, Iran’s UN mission lead, wrote, according to state media.

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• The strikes come after the Israeli military destroyed more than 10 residential buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp, resulting in as many as 150 casualties, an attack that Gaza’s civil defence has described as a “major massacre”.
• Three journalists covering Israel’s war on Lebanon have been killed after Israeli forces shelled their accommodation in the southern Lebanese town of Hasbaiyya.
• Israeli fighter jets have carried out at least 12 air raids on Beirut overnight, striking the Haret Hreik, Burj al-Barajneh, Choueifat and Hadath areas south of the Lebanese capital.
• The Israeli military claimed it bombed and killed Abbas Adnan Maslam, a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.

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That includes at least 18 people killed in an attack on a school-turned-shelter in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge.

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Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza:

Warning – distressing images

Israel targets journalists to ‘blind the world’ to Lebanon war

Reporting from Hasbaiyya, southern Lebanon

Israel is, allegedly, a democracy. That’s what they always say: ‘We are the only democracy in the Middle East.’

They are now shutting down free speech violently.

What’s happening now is a deliberate message to all journalists. We have to now leave. Not just us. But every other organisation that was here – local news organisations. All now have to leave because of what has happened.

This is Israel’s democracy.

Clearly, they are trying to blind the world to what’s going on in southern Lebanon by targeting journalists.

Like I said, it doesn’t matter whether you like that news organisation or you dislike that news organisation. If you are a democracy, freedom of speech is a core value.

And that value has been literally turned into twisted metal and concrete here.