Rights Displaced: The Effects of Long-term Encampment on the Human Rights of Refugees

This paper investigates the use of long-term encampment policies in protracted refugee situations. Unlike most contemporary scholarship on the subject, this work focuses on the human rights of encamped refugees rather than on their rights under international refugee law. The author uses Kakuka refugee camp in Kenya as a microcosm by which to explore long-term encampment and to assess the ability of encamped refugees to claim their human rights in practice. This research also questions the role played by host states, international organisations and by refugee discourse in normalising and promoting such policies. Given the lack of durable solutions available to the majority of the world’s refugees, this paper puts forth recommendations for how to better align the realities