By Matt Wade
Fairfax Media photographer Edwina Pickles reveals daily life in the world’s largest refugee camp
Crowded house: Children gather behind thorny bushes used as fencing inside the Dadaab camp. Photo: Edwina Pickles
It’s a place of sanctuary for hundreds of thousands. But life is harsh at Dadaab refugee camp. The sprawling settlement is in an inhospitable part of eastern Kenya, not far from the border with Somalia. Temperatures can be extreme, dust storms are common and the remote borderlands are notorious for banditry.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees set up the camp in the early 1990s to shelter refugees fleeing civil war in Somalia. The original capacity was 90,000 but it now houses about 350,000 people. Numbers swelled considerably in 2011 when parts of Somalia were ravaged by famine. Many of Dadaab’s residents have been in refugee limbo for two decades and a growing number of children have been born and raised there.
Residents survive on meagre fortnightly food rations provided by international aid organisations. Simply claiming those rations can be an ordeal given the vast population.
Play time: A game of football inside the camp. Photo: Edwina PicklesT
he township of Dadaab has been overtaken by the humanitarian community. Trucks and four-wheel-drives emblazoned with familiar aid brands such as Care, MSF and Save the Children congest its dusty roads. But security is a major problem – the heavily-guarded UN compound is ringed with a bomb-proof wall and aid workers often travel with armed escorts because of the threat of abduction.
source: The Age
