According to the UNHCR, there are 6 million people currently living in refugee camps, or 22% of the total refugee population. According to the same data, in 2021, 830,305 refugees and asylum seekers were living in Ethiopia, making it the third country in Africa for the number of refugees. The vast majority of refugees in Ethiopia come from South Sudan (338,737), Somalia (225,877), Eritrea (158,548), and Sudan (46,616).
The refugee camps are temporary facilities built to provide protection (although various kinds of violence also take place within the camps) and immediate aid to people forced to flee their countries, providing basics like food, water, shelter, and medical care. Life in the limbo of the camps can last for years.
The average time that refugees spend in the camps depends on the crises in their home countries. Some are there for decades, and it is common for entire generations to grow up in the camps. When this happens, the camps should offer opportunities for education, income, and materials to provide more permanent housing. To this end, in 2019 Ethiopia passed a law granting nearly one million refugees the right to work and live outside the camps in a more dignified way, reducing their dependence on foreign aid.
The UNHCR’s refugee camps were built according to three criteria: safety (they are located one day’s walk from the border), geography (a stable environment with easy access to water and trash removal), and accessibility (concerning both logistics and supplies).
A well-designed camp should help to prevent fires and the spread of disease. Food and access to water and bathrooms should be well lit and close to the shelters to protect the refugees from any form of violence, particularly the most vulnerable.
While the UNHCR recommends ensuring that each refugee receives food amounting to more than 2,100 calories a day, the camps often fail to reach this standard. In 2018, refugees in the Gambella, Melkadida, Assosa and Jijiga camps in Ethiopia, received only 1,737 calories per day, while those in Tigray and Afar received only 1,920. In June 2021, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP), and UNICEF sounded the alarm, calling for urgent assistance to face the dramatic situation of food insecurity in northern Ethiopia, which threatened to cause a famine in the Tigray region, where ongoing fighting blocked incoming humanitarian aid.
The conflict there was compounded further by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures intended to prevent its spread. While there have been no serious COVID-19 outbreaks in the camps, the refugees face elevated risks due to overcrowding, and the pandemic reduced the food available in camp markets.
The pandemic had particularly devastating consequences for the resettlement of refugees. In 2020, many countries suspended their resettlement programs. Of the 1.44 million refugees in need of resettlement in 2020, less than 2% were resettled, the lowest number recorded over the past two decades and a reduction of 80% from the previous year.
Living for years, if not decades, in a situation characterized by both extreme precariousness and total dependence on NGOs and international organizations that provide food and basic care has made it extremely difficult for refugees to adapt to life in Italy. Here the living conditions are better beyond compare in terms of personal safety and meeting basic needs. At the same time, however, the way the society is structured does not envisage living for years or decades in total dependence on external actors who provide food and economic resources.
The chances that requests will be geared more toward welfarism than toward aid is, therefore, strictly correlated with the amount of time a refugee has spent in camps. As one older woman, who immigrated to Italy with her adult children, put it:
When we are in Ethiopia we are with JRS (Jesuit Refugee Service) [...] that place is wonderful for the youth, as well as for the women […] It’s a very nice community. But nowhere, things are difficult. JRS, when there’s a problem, or if you don’t have food, you go and ask, they give you rice, or always something.
