First Assignment

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

As majority knows, a refugee camp is temporary, but life in Dadaab does not stop. People grow
up, get married and die in this camp. Dadaab does not remain as a refugee camp. Now could be
considered as a city of almost half a million people with nearly 99% of the population coming
from Somalia. Wars and natural disasters are often the causes of mass exodus of people. In the
case of Somalia terrorism, war and drought have conspired to cause a great exodus that began
over twenty years ago.
Dadaab is a group of three big camps: Ifo, Dagahaley, Hagadera. The Dadaab camps were
constructed in the early 1990s. Ifo camp was first settled by refugees from the civil war in
Somalia, and later efforts were made by UNHCR to improve the camp. As the population
expanded, UNHCR contacted German architect Werner Shellenberg who drew the original
design for Dagahaley Camp and Swedish architect Per Iwansson who designed and initiated the
creation of Hagadera camp.
The main problem of Dadaab, its the overpopulation, almost 1 500 people arrive every day.
Consequently, they found an overcrowded camp and they should to stay at the peripheral area of
Dadaab far from protection and security, medical assistance, water supplies, drainage system
and electricity. As result of this lack of necessities, these populations are habitual victims of
violence. Within the camps the mortality rate is ~ 0.44/10,000 per day with diseases such as
cholera and measles being among the causes of death.
In other hand, Dadaab is a place where humanitarian agencies, international aids along with the
government of Kenya and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), are responsible for providing a
vast array of services but there are not enough to attend the majority of residents. Although this
assistant is necessary to maintain life in Dadaab, Residents start to create an economy inside the
camp; markets help the refugees to find another way to survive. They exchange cattle, sell
cheese and milk, clothes, seeds and vegetables.

Unfortunately, this dependence of humanitarian aids makes Dadaab a vulnerable city, because if
these aids are removed, the camp is going to fall into a critical crisis which will derive in a new
migration of these people to other refugee camps.

Conclusions
For me, this camp represent the complexity of a place when its over crowded and when a camp
leaves to be a temporary place to become a city, as result of a constant migration very similar as
any big city in the world. Here we can see that start to appear deficiencies like medical care,
schools and other basic services (drainage system, water and electricity).
Dadaab show us, how complex could be for us understand a shelter as a housing unity and in the
case of Dadaab how this units could be improved by the families, to evolve in a temporal house.
Because, its complicated that the majority of people who lives in this place, return to their
countries of origin.
The big question is: how to keep the camps open if aids were withdrawn? Because, its
important to realize how a camp will become viable and self-sustaining to guarantee the future
of such urban settlements.

SOURCE:
http://www.dadaabstories.org/#categories
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/06/dadaab-camp-refugee-story2014620172234831264.html
http://blogs.casa.ucl.ac.uk/2012/05/
http://www.humanitarianinnovation.com/uploads/7/3/4/7/7347321/demontclos_2000.pdf
http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2011/11/28/kenia-la-vida-en-dadaab-el-mayor-campo-derefugiados-del-mundo/

Frank Maguia Ylla (MSc.)

Architect and Urban Planning
frankmaguina@gmail.com