PRC visits Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya

In January and February 2006, Khadra Mohammed of Pittsburgh Refugee Center and Dr. Suzanne Peterson of Magee Women's Hospital took a trip to visit refugees in the Kakuma camp in Kenya.

Kakuma camp was established 16 years ago as a result of the civil war in Sudan as a way to cope with the influx of Sudanese refugees entering Kenya.  The camp has grown in size from a few tents and stretched to over 10 miles of shacks, mud huts, and cardboard houses.  The camp is located in some of the harshest terrain in Kenya where temperatures exceed 100 degrees over the summer.  It is in a remote area with no infrastructure.

The camp houses close to 100,000 refugees from many African countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, and more.

Most of the African refugees that come to the United States came from this camp. The living conditions of these refugees is miserable as there is extreme shortage of food, water, and shelter.

Health facilities and educational opportunities are lacking.  Life in the camp is not safe and people expressed concerns about the level of violence they experience every day.

We met many refugees who had been living under these conditions for over a decade with no solution in sight for finding them a permanent home.