News about refugee camps and displacement

Photo courtesy of Inkomoko
What if the global development sector has been approaching forced displacement from the wrong angle? Instead of seeing forcibly displaced people as passive recipients of aid, what if we recognized them as individuals with agency, ambition and entrepreneurial drive?
@Hiiraan Online
Somalia has been heavily reliant on international aid, particularly from USAID and other donor institutions. While this assistance has been crucial for humanitarian relief, infrastructure development, and institutional rebuilding, it has fostered a dangerous dependency that stifles Somalia’s potential for economic and political self-determination.
With energy needs far beyond the capacity of solar lamps, these solar mini-grids could support critical services, from healthcare to local businesses, transforming the possibilities for camp residents, who often live there for many, many years.
Representative Image
The Rwanda Energy Survey highlights significant progress in expanding electricity access, with 63.9% of households now connected,though rural areas and refugee camps still face substantial gaps in both electricity and clean cooking services. Targeted policies are needed to address these disparities and advance toward universal energy access by 2030
Vasco Hamisi, who fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2010 and ended up in the Kakuma refugee camp, is playing a pivotal role in ensuring that the refugee camp has access to renewable energy despite not being connected to the country’s main electricity grid. His breakthrough came in 2018 when he participated in a grant challenge.
Solar is the energy of choice in refugee camps around the world that are turning to clean energy, whether at the initiative of UN agencies, humanitarian groups or governments. And manufacturers and distributors are eagerly jumping in to meet this need in a buoyant sector, valued globally at US$167.83 billion in 2022.
As part of the UK’s Building Resilience and Effective Refugee Response (BRAER) Programme, the UK is issuing a call for proposals requesting organisations to submit a solution to the identified ‘clean cooking challenge’; searching for approaches to reduce the high level of woody biomass consumption in the refugee response.