Kakuma Refugee Camp, established in 1992 in northwestern Kenya, hosts over 302,000 refugees, the majority coming from South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Initially designed as a short-term safe haven for Sudanese boys fleeing the Second Sudanese Civil War in the early 1990s, Kakuma has become a protracted settlement with limited infrastructure and resembles a sprawling shanty town with innumerable socioeconomic and political problems. Given the ongoing international humanitarian–development financing crisis, growing refugee populations, climate crises and frequent political instability in the region, Kakuma’s residents are increasingly under pressure to support themselves in the face of dwindling food rations and a breakdown in the international order’s duty of care. Yet, recent events – especially the recent floods following a five-year drought – demonstrate that refugees face severe constraints in doing so.
As food rations have been cut to under 45% of minimum daily caloric needs, many refugees have scrambled to find ways to survive. A nearby lakebed offered relatively fertile land and easy access to water via the of digging groundwater wells, for would-be farmers to plant crops, albeit at immense risk. When sudden rains came, these crops and rudimentary farms were washed away, devastating hundreds of livelihoods. In this article we hope to draw attention to this issue by outlining how structural vulnerabilities and international neglect exacerbate such crises, and to propose a humanitarian shift toward supporting locally driven, climate-adapted responses that have a better chance of success in the long run.