WUSC Regina sponsored student Patience Umereweneza on the lives lead by refugees who do not live in camps:
Last semester WUSC Regina came up with an awesome refugee awareness strategy on campus by creating a mock refugee camp. This camp highlighted the way of life in a refugee camp including issues faced by refugees in the camps. These issues included women’s issues, lack of food, lack of sanitation, and of course lack of security.
However not all refugees live in camps. In fact according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), only a third of the world’s refugees live in camps today.
This growing trend of urban refugees stems from the fact that cities, unlike camps, create opportunities to stay anonymous, make money, and build a better future. These urban refugees claim that they have a slightly higher chance of regaining control over their wellbeing than if they lived in camps. There are, for example, hundreds of thousands of Somalians living in Nairobi and vast numbers living in other countries such as Djibouti and Yemen. Another example is the new policy that the Ethiopian government presented to UNHCR in which Eritrean refugees who can support themselves are allowed to live outside the camps. This new policy allows Eritrean refugees to live outside camps in any part of the country, provided they are able to sustain themselves financially or have a close or distant relative or a friend in Ethiopia who commits to support them. This change in policy is focused on enabling these refugees to live outside the camp settings.
However, living outside of camps however can be very dangerous for refugees. Most countries do not recognize refugees as legal persons and therefore UN papers are not always respected or even recognized. This makes refugees vulnerable to exploitation, arrest and detention, and they can be in competition with the poorest local workers for the worst jobs. Female, elderly, and children refugees are also vulnerable to rape, molestation, and sex trafficking. With the way international aid for refugees is structured, refugees living in large cities often struggle to find their way to UNHCR and receive aid or services that are readily available in camps. It is also not easy for all refugees who live outside camps to earn a living. This can be due to racism, lack of local skills, jobs available, and language barriers. For example over 3.5 million people in Burma have been displaced by the ruling military junta and 147,000 have fled to Thailand. However, these refugees are not recognized and cannot earn income outside refugee camps. Women especially lack access to training and livelihoods and what employment they find outside the camps brings high vulnerabilities and risks.
I have never lived in a camp so I can’t say from experience how camps are compared to living outside a camp. However, I feel that not living in a camp gave me a chance to feel like a normal kid for at least a few hours of the day. My siblings and I learned the local language and so were able to go to school and make friends. We blended in…in our own way and were able to lead a normal life to an extent. Yes there was the constant fear of being caught but sometimes the best way to hide something is put it right in front someone’s face. Living inside or outside a camp is not always a choice we make but is a circumstance that just happens and when it does, we just try to make the best out of it.