Kenya unveiled its innovative Shirika Plan at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) meeting in New York. The country detailed a new method that would convert refugee camps into fully, fledged municipalities.
While interacting with 2026 Humanitarian Affairs Segment (HAS) at the UN headquarters, the Secretary for National Administration exhorted the global community to change their mindset about humanitarian crises.
He explained that instead of merely reacting to the crises they should focus more on long, term resilience and finding sustainable solutions.
Moses Lilan disclosed that Kenya is a proponent of locally led responses that empower communities through anticipatory action, climate change adaptation, and livelihood programs that focus on the causes of displacement.
“Kenya urges for enhancing the locally led responses which lay the foundations for resilience through the scaling, up of anticipatory action, climate adaptation, and livelihood programmes to tackle the root causes, ” Lilan said to the delegates during the session of the three, day forum.
The Shirika Plan strives to change refugee management by the old camp, based methods towards integrated settlements where refugees and the host community will have access to good housing, services, and economic opportunities.
The current refugee count in Kenya is over 800 000 making it one of the largest refugee, hosting countries in Africa.
Besides, the huge refugee population has put the host communities under a lot of strain, Most of all those living in the arid and semi-arid regions.
Through this, the government wants to foster self-reliance among refugees and at the same time back the development of host counties and create the most sustainable humanitarian responses.
