INHUMAN CONDITIONS: The UNHCR says Dadaab refugees must form water committees to ensure a supply of clean drinking water

Citizenship

UNHCR figures show that there are 77,000 children under the age of five in the camp. There are also 122,000 aged between five and 17 years of age. Once they turn 18, they will have to grapple with the question of their statehood.

In Kenya, one can only become a citizen through birth or registration. Children below the age of eight years, whose parenthood is unknown, are also eligible to be citizens of Kenya. But for the refugees born in the camp, because they have foreign ancestry and are likely to leave once Somalia becomes stable, it is difficult to grant them citizenship.

Under the laws of Somalia, most notably the 1962 Somali Citizenship Law, "only the children of Somali fathers acquire Somali citizenship."

As such, the humanitarian agencies have had few options with regard to raising the children of refugees. Most of them will hold an alien card until peace is restored in Somalia. This is similar to those from South Sudan, who had to wait out the two-decade conflict in their motherland, before moving back to a brand new South Sudan Republic.

Health concerns

To avoid a "generational freeze" of refugees, the camps have limited schools, mosques, churches, hospitals and even youth programs. There are also markets, where refugees with some money - Somalis have a legendary entrepreneurial spirit - or those whose overseas relatives support, sell goods in the camps.

 "The crisis also presents an opportunity to more actively empower refugees to manage the day-to-day aspects of camp life. This includes the engagement of youth in providing informal education to new arrivals in Kambioos, water committees coordinating and ensuring sufficient water per household, refugee reporters publishing their own newspaper, and women forming groups for livelihood opportunities for mothers," the UNHCR noted in a dispatch to mark the 20th anniversary of Dadaab.

The health of the refugees is also a source of concern for the aid organizations. On a typical day, some 1,800 refugees now get outpatient treatment in hospitals and health posts in the camps. Service provision in Kambioos has also improved. However, UNHCR is still seeing new measles cases (11 in the first week of February) and is focusing on vaccinating all new arrivals over 30 years of age.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - Doctors Without Borders - in a briefing paper dated February 2012 points out that there are huge health challenges for the refugees.

The paper titled "Dadaab: Back to square one" seen by ChinAfrica, points out that the situation in the Dadaab camps are still grave.

"Within the camps, the health situation is alarming, with recent outbreaks of measles, acute watery diarrhea and cholera. The situation of the refugees in Dadaab camps is extreme with little hope of improvement in the short term," the humanitarian body noted in the brief.

MSF, whose workers have been abducted by the al Shabaab militants, are of the view that the media and political attention has shifted from the "inhuman conditions" at Dadaab camps to the restoration of Somalia. That, the body noted, is unacceptable.

"While the media and political attention concentrate on the stabilization of the situation in Somalia, we cannot ignore the striking needs of thousands of people who live in inhuman conditions. The international community is failing to provide those men, women and children fleeing conflict and drought with more than the bare minimum," reads the brief obtained by ChinAfrica.

 "Refugees need protection and care as their lives are becoming more difficult everyday. Their health is at risk of deteriorating rapidly while humanitarian aid agencies are struggling to provide meaningful assistance on an ongoing basis in an increasingly insecure context," said Dr. Monica Rull, an MSF program manager for Kenya and Somalia, quoted on the MSF website.