- Background
The three refugee camps in Dadaab namely, Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley, continue to receive a significant number of new arrivals. As of 26 November 2010, the overall population in the Dadaab camps stood at 294,338 persons. This number is significant given the fact that the three camps were originally established to accommodate 90,000 refugees (30,000 per camp) in the early 1990s.
Since 2008, the camp management agency Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has stopped allocating new arrivals with residential plots of land, due to lack of available space in all the three camps. On arrival, most refugees prefer to settle in a camp where they have relatives, friends, or clan members.
Thus, registered refugees, both old and newly arrived in the Dadaab camps, continue to live in congested and over crowded areas and the camp boundaries in all the three camps continue to expand outside designated camp areas.
Dagahaley, being the third-oldest camp in Dadaab, is home to approximately 94,000 refugees. Currently, the number of refugees living outside the designated camp peripheries in Dagahaley is around 10,000. Refugees living in the flood prone areas are around 3,000 individuals.