As of 2026-06. UNHCR's Kenya figures are as of 30 June 2026 and are revised monthly; the camp population has grown with continued arrivals from Somalia, South Sudan and the Horn.
Kenya has required refugees to live in designated camps since the early 1990s, when Dadaab was opened for Somalis and Kakuma for Sudanese; refugees who leave the camps without a movement pass are liable to arrest, and access to formal employment, business licences and freedom of residence has been limited. Some of the camps have now operated for more than thirty years, with second and third generations born inside them, and the government has periodically announced closure - most prominently in 2016 and again in 2021 - on security grounds linked to the conflict in Somalia, plans that were suspended after litigation and international objection. The Refugees Act 2021 introduced a more inclusive framework, including provision for identity documents and easier access to work, and in March 2025 Kenya launched the Shirika Plan, which proposes to transform the camps into integrated settlements open to host communities and to move away from encampment toward inclusion and self-reliance. Implementation has been slow and contested locally, and a review one year on found the plan only partially realised, with most of the camp population still dependent on rations and without effective freedom of movement. The camp population continued to grow modestly through early 2026, with almost no voluntary repatriation recorded.
The Kenyan government requiring refugees to reside in designated camps and to obtain movement passes to travel elsewhere, under the Refugees Act and its predecessor framework
UNHCR's Kenya operational data records 857,065 refugees and asylum-seekers as of 30 June 2026 - 630,946 refugees and 226,119 asylum-seekers - of whom about 420,000 are in the Dadaab complex in Garissa, 319,000 in Kakuma and Kalobeyei in Turkana, and 118,000 in Nairobi. Camp residence and movement passes are required under the Refugees Act, with the urban caseload the principal exception.
Encampment is an administrative restriction on residence and movement and no source attributes a death toll to it. Kenya hosts more than 750,000 refugees, the majority in Dadaab and Kakuma, with over 100,000 in urban areas. Mortality and malnutrition inside the camps are monitored by UNHCR and MSF — with sharp spikes during the 2011 Somali famine influx — but are reported as rates against emergency thresholds, not as deaths attributable to the encampment policy.
Human Rights Watch's 2010 report 'Welcome to Kenya: Police Abuse of Somali Refugees' documented arbitrary detention, beatings amounting to ill-treatment and torture, and rape of Somali refugees by Kenyan police, with further mass arrests documented during Operation Usalama Watch in 2014.
Kenya