Innovation in Refugee Camps
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:19
Yeah, I'm very happy to welcome such a diverse group of experts here on stage today.
00:26
What I find very awesome is that we both have practitioners in the field of, let's say, refugee camps, but on the other hand, we also have researchers in that field, and also people, as we realize, from all different kind of countries with all different
00:41
kind of experiences. I'm really looking forward to that panel. I'm briefly going to introduce people and explain a little bit what they did regarding that topic that we're talking about today, innovation in refugee camps. So it's not an overall bio, but something that I found interesting.
01:02
So next to me is Kieran Kleinschmidt. He's the former manager of the Saturday camp in Jordan. And one quote that I found from him, and he can elaborate on that maybe later on, is that arms are so derogatory, meaning, yeah, maybe thinking about aid in a different kind of way.
01:22
Then we have Marlene de la Chaux. She's a researcher on business activity and informal markets in refugee camps, among other things. And some quote that I found from her says, let refugees decide themselves what they want their camps to look like. Then we have Ana Laura Santos, founder of Rethink Relief, a yearly design collaboration
01:47
of different kind of stakeholders, all in that field of humanitarian aid. And from one of the papers she wrote, I found a quote saying, collaboration and design thinking tools can empower the humanitarian sector to identify opportunities for innovation
02:03
and create a shared vision for more sustainable and efficient aid. And last but not least, we have Grace Kagee. She's a former teacher and journalist in a refugee camp in Kenya. And what she said was, instead of investing so much or thinking so much about investing
02:26
in the refugee camp, invests in the capacity of the refugees, which meaning in the people. I would like my four panelists to have the opportunity to give a few statements in the beginning, and I would love for Kilian to start around that topic of innovation in
02:45
refugee camps. We have to change the paradigm completely. Rethinking refugees as a theme is very paramount to this. We see and look at refugees as victims, as poor little things.
03:01
We have to assist and give charity to. And in that consequence, we consider that refugee camps, and let's just recall that only 10% of the world's refugees are actually living in camps, that refugee camps are just survival stations where people are kept alive, stored away until eventually they go back.
03:25
That is sort of the way of how we look at camps. Instead of looking at camps as a place where change can take place, when your impulses must be set, where there is actually access to a new life and opportunities eventually.
03:43
And besides, again, we need to look at all the populations, even in other agglomerations. And I would also dare to say that, in fact, most slums of this world are refugee camps. Thank you.
04:02
So I'm a management researcher, and the angle that I bring to this is a management perspective. And what I'm interested in is that we continue to manage and approach refugee camps in the same way that we have for the past 40 to 50 years. But all the variables have changed. Camps are no longer temporary spaces.
04:22
As we heard in the introduction, the average stay in a camp is 17 years. The camp that I study, which is Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, has existed for 24 years. And so what I think about is what are the opportunities to update the way we manage camps. Refugees have started updating, have started innovating, are building markets, and are building
04:44
a city inside of the camp. There are informal schools, there are informal courts, there are informal police forces, there are markets. You can buy anything you want in a camp. So where does humanitarian aid come in? How does that change the role of camp management?
05:00
And I'm looking forward to discussing a lot of those opportunities with you today. Thank you. Hello. My name is Anna Laura. In my perspective, in that sense, it's the perspective of innovation. I've started a group which works together with humanitarian organizations, social workers on the ground, beneficiaries of that aid, so the refugees themselves, in development
05:25
organizations. And we try to really bring them all together to discuss something that is actually a very high-level political discussion to a very common ground, which is through design, through building tools together, making decisions together in the sense that that would empower
05:42
them to also make decisions at a higher level together. It has its challenges, of course. But my perspective in this and from that experience is that refugee camps should remain temporary. They should, I mean, you know, that things happen while people are there is not an excuse for us to not build the bridges and so set the innovation to do the journey of
06:05
the refugees rather than that one stage of their journey. My name's Grace Keji. I actually lived as a refugee in Kakuma. My family fled to Kenya in 1989, so I lived in Kenya for quite a while.
06:26
My perspective on the refugee situation is that there are tensions between what a refugee is and what they need. So we find tensions between the short term nature of the interventions that organizations
06:45
and governments tend to have versus the reality that the refugee camps actually exist for a very long time. Kakuma refugee camp is now about 25 years old. We have a generation that was born in Kakuma that is still there until now.
07:01
So we tend to look at refugees as temporary and not our problem. Most countries have, like in the example of Kenya, we have three solutions to refugees, which is resettlement, repatriation, and reintegration.
07:20
Very rarely do countries integrate refugees into their communities. So in Kenya, most of the time, with the Somali and South Sudanese refugees, they are repatriated to their countries voluntarily or resettled to countries in the West. So what happens is there's not much of an investment in the refugees themselves.
07:45
And when we talk about innovation in the camp, it's usually people who have previous experiences from where they come from. So this whole generation that was probably born when the refugee camp started or when parents moved to the refugee camp, we have someone who is 25 years old right now that
08:05
does not have that kind of investment put in them. So what does that person do after this? How have they been empowered? So we need to empower this upcoming generation in ICT. And that means empowering the structures that are already there in terms of education and
08:25
putting in spaces for creative input from the refugees themselves, as opposed to bringing in programs where there's a director telling you, OK, I want you to do maybe an art project and this is what I want you to make. Why don't you give them that space and say, OK, do what you want to do and allow them
08:44
to respond to their needs creatively? Great, thank you. So I would like to start. So also our audience has like a common ground where we can start from. You all mentioned different kind of challenges. So maybe you can pick your three challenges, each one of you.
09:02
Let's see if there's a I heard some kind of similar statements, but maybe we also have some controversy here. So, Kilian, what are your top three challenges that refugee camps and people in the refugee camps are facing at the moment? I'm burning to talk about Kakuma camp because you don't have to talk about
09:21
No, I can talk about Kakuma camp because I came across the border from Southern Sudan with 20,000 South Sudanese in 1992, and we had to build a camp and that camp was called Kakuma. So I was the first field officer in the camp, which was established in summer 92.
09:43
That's why I worked used to work for UNHCR. The camp hasn't moved in the sense of changing technologies or changing infrastructure. It has grown from 20,000 to 180,000 people.
10:00
In fact, 60,000 local Turkana people, more or less, if you want, integrated into the camp because it provided livelihoods to them. And I remember when I was there in 92 staking out the camp, there was nobody. There were three families living in that area. Now it's 60,000 non-refugees living off the camp.
10:21
So I'm arguing, I think we have a little difference there. I'm arguing that there is absolutely no reason that a camp is not developed as a refugee city, as a settlement. It doesn't matter of how long a place stays, but you have to apply the rules and the methodologies we have in terms of urban planning, development, social design and
10:44
so on and so forth. So would you say that the challenges you saw back then are still the same today? I mean, the challenges, I mean, there's a place which was created in 1992. It's still there. It still functions the same. My son was trying to fix, my son who is now 20-something, fixing the same
11:02
water systems that he was establishing back in 92. I mean, it's ridiculous. So we need to invest from a moment when we recognize people stay somewhere and really making them to real living spaces. No matter, one day hopefully they disappear. But it doesn't mean a city is something bad.
11:24
Dadaab, we made it a project, we called it in 2011, the project Dadaabia, the city of Dadaabia. These are huge economies which we should be actually planning into a broader framework of the local area.
11:41
So it seems like you're daring to answer to that? Yes. I think there's one important distinction that is not necessary to do in all of these conversations and that's what kind of refugee camp that we were talking about, who are the refugees, because there's many differences. I mean, Dadaab, the camps in Jordan are different than open,
12:01
smaller settlements in Uganda, for example, where we are working. And what we see there, having worked with refugees on their actually refugee journey, is much more that there's no innovation or planning on their return. And so, of course, nothing changes because back in the camp, it's much better than, you know, in our villages where things are still destroyed.
12:22
There's no water infrastructure, no sanitation. And so there's a reason for that. So when you, for example, talk about innovation in a camp, so what would you say, what's the innovative part? We were talking about the, you're talking about the resettlement. So that's more, that's not infrastructure, but more maybe also a policy topic.
12:45
So when you talk about innovation, what do you mean? So I think to tie this back to the, because you were asking about challenges. I think the major challenge is the switch that needs to happen between when refugees first arrive and our vulnerable victims are traumatized or injured or
13:02
malnourished and require immediate assistance. So the switch from that kind of temporary victim to the longer term when people actually stay, when the situation is a little more complicated, when war doesn't just end in a year or two, or when whole countries are destroyed. And even when war has ended, people go back to nothing.
13:20
And I think it's that switch that we're not doing. We just kind of keep managing camps as if they were temporary after a decade, after two decades, after we all know it's kind of ridiculous. And I think this is where there's an opportunity for innovation. Now, refugees have started innovating, right? They're the ones who wait every day and who spend those 20 years, those 30 years in the camp.
13:42
There are huge markets. The annual turnover in Dadaab is around 25 million US dollars. And yet there's kind of the challenges like how do you regulate this informal financial market? How do you let refugees have a say in the actual aid that's distributed to them and the programs that you run and how you manage the city?
14:01
How do you relate the camp to the host community? And also, how do you relate refugees back to their countries of origin? So one very concrete example, speaking and working with a lot of business owners in Dadaab refugee camps, they've told me I would go back to my home country if I could start transitioning the life I have built for
14:20
myself in the last 20 years back to Somalia, back to wherever they've come from. But that's not possible. It's either you're in the camp and you're a refugee or you decide to leave and you're kind of on your own back and forth. We haven't really found a framework for that. And I think that's really where the opportunities are to innovate and to rethink humanitarian aid.
14:42
I mean, one of the points I mean, talking about return, to return to what people change. And we also do not reflect on our policies, return policies. And I've had to do a number of return programs in my life. It's supposed to be something positive, but even those we're messing them up because we are forcing people to return exactly to the same
15:02
place where they came from. People are changing. People are urbanizing. People are not the same anymore if they have lived suddenly with 20, 100,000 people together. And so we're not reflecting on that. We did this mistake in Bosnia. We did it in Afghanistan. We do it everywhere. That's our that's our dogma.
15:21
You return where you come from. So we're keeping people really from for 20 years exactly at the same level. And this is how everything is going. Just to say in terms of now innovation, what means innovation? I mean, first of all, for me, innovation means to have a totally different look at this. It also means moving away from that whole thinking that because it's a
15:43
refugee situation, there has to be humanitarian organizations taking care of people. These are people. It's not a disease to be a refugee. You're still a human being. So let proper people take care of this, whether it's the private sector, whether it's and we worked in Jordan a lot with the city of
16:01
Amsterdam, for instance, as a partner with real specialized entities which know much better. Have the people themselves do their own clubs. Don't wait for an NGO to play soccer with you. I mean, they can play soccer alone and can set up a club. That is innovation. So you were also teaching in the refugee camp.
16:23
So because all of you mentioned that perspective, that at the moment, a lot of refugee camps are focusing on, I would call it maybe crisis response, what you were saying, like, okay, somebody comes and is traumatized or hurt or whatever, and it's pretty obvious what there is to do.
16:41
But people develop. You were saying people are changing. So education is one very important aspect, not only for children. I believe you were a primary school teacher. But maybe your thoughts on one thing is to keep educating people. Children are one thing, but what's also happening with all the
17:00
other ones who might be able to use that time, no matter if they are students and university afterwards, to actually have a life and a situation to return to. Okay. One of the things I used to do when I lived in the camp, I used to love going to the library. But it was very outdated.
17:21
The books were old. Some pages were missing. Sometimes I'd have to reread books that I'd already gone through because we didn't have an extensive library. And in terms of the students that I was teaching, they faced a lot of challenges. Last year, I went back to the camp in August.
17:40
I volunteered as a girls' education advocate for this project called KIP, which is the Kenya Equity in Education Project. And a lot of interventions have been put in place. But one of the gaps that kept on coming up as a theme was lack of the girls especially having that support to get into
18:05
the sciences and the technology. You would find a student who maybe scored a B plus in physics and they got an A in history or religion. And the teacher tells them, we need you to take history because that's what you perform better in. But what the student is dreaming of being is a doctor.
18:24
So they need that kind of mentorship and support and also an innovation hub because before the government has outlawed having any kind of holiday programs. So what happens is the schools have after club
18:43
activities, which one of the things that the project did was support what they were doing. So there's a school called Kakuma Refugee Secondary School which has a science club and they have this project that they would like to implement which uses the waste
19:01
from the toilets, from the pit-platrine toilets to generate biogas. That's very innovative but what happens during the holiday season when they are no longer in class? What do they do with their time during that period? Where do they go and meet to innovate, to be creative by themselves?
19:21
That's what's missing. And the gender divide of course, there needs to be a lot of support for women to be part of the science-based subject so that as they grow, they also identify their interests and they're not afraid to explore. Okay, so innovation in the whole field of education
19:43
when it comes to primary but also secondary education is one thing that I hear and another range of education I want to tackle is that of course also grown-ups can keep on learning. So you guys are focusing on entrepreneurship for example
20:01
and maybe you can comment on that, what it means to become an entrepreneur and how this can be taught and maybe Kilian can afterwards comment on, I met some people in Jordan when I was there that you're also working with the people from 3D MENA who were doing a project in the Satori camp like in the Fab Lab and the Maker context and space
20:25
and for example teaching refugees how to use 3D printers and one of them, I think he's, I don't know if he's speaking today, who was manufacturing his own prosthetics so that's also one way of training not only children
20:42
but also grown-ups who are also eager to learn but maybe you can start with the entrepreneurship part. Sure, so how we are doing innovation and how we're doing this training on entrepreneurship on capacities is really to do a lot with the bridges that you can build with the organizations that are in place, with the host populations
21:02
that are in place and amongst adult populations you also see a very, very large gender divide in which who are the innovators that are available for you when you set up a workshop, those are mostly men so we're trying to break through some of those barriers and that's, I mean when you take an inclusive lenses
21:20
then there's not only gender issues but also a lot of other divides amongst the population which include religions, handicapped people, et cetera so we're trying to keep the lenses onto that. When giving people the spaces, providing the spaces to create and the capabilities in the sense
21:42
you're trying to convince people of their sense of identity, allow them to have the space to create that to identify themselves but there is a challenge on keeping things running when you leave so one of the key things that we've done is to set up a parallel trainer system
22:01
which allows this to be done. So you need many fronts of innovation, you need not only the moments you're there working with people, you need to give it continuity but also bring it to outside partners, bring those ideas out. The fact is many of the solutions that we've come up with and the refugees have come up with now are rarely scalable in any way
22:22
and that's still a challenge so by engaging with organizations that are on the ground we try to provide them with a reason how to be more responsive to the refugee needs. Well, I mean, to say and now going back
22:40
to the Zaatari camp in Jordan which has become an example of how people took their lives in their own hands. They're basically maybe with very violent means in the beginning kicked out the aid agencies basically from doing anything sensible in the camp because they said you don't know who we are and what we want, we do it ourselves.
23:01
So they redesigned the space, they redesigned their homes, they redesigned the way of how you go to the toilet, they redesigned the way of how you cook, they basically changed the entire way of looking at things. All what they needed was electricity which they stole from the public lighting because we didn't think it was necessary for anybody to have electricity
23:21
so they just took it and they basically created their own maker space in that sense with anything they could find, recycling to the extent that anything was recycled into something else. They needed welding machines, they needed a few tools which they somehow managed to get in. So they didn't wait for anybody and a beautiful example was when the city of Amsterdam
23:42
wanted to donate bicycles which eventually came one and a half years later. They made their own bicycles, they made their own e-bikes, they made actually also after a while discovered that on a horse cart you just put an engine and then it becomes a car so they built their own cars.
24:01
So what I'm trying to say here is that we're taking really because we have that association refugee equal something as I said before like a disease or something totally enabled and incapable. They have no clue what's going on in the world. They know very well and there are people and this is what I think is needed
24:21
who are extremely active. They know, they use social media, they have access to tech, they're coming out of societies which partially already had jumped into the next let's say century or millennium or whatever you want to call it. They need actually access to some tools
24:41
and they'll be coming back to what 3D MENA, what the refugee open ware is doing with having them access 3D printers, laser cutters and other things. We're having now but it's still complicated because the Jordanian government is not permitting this inside of the camp in Amman doing coding classes.
25:01
There's a reboot camp going on. I mean it's basically building up on what people already know and so basically out of that, they're creating their own designs. They don't wait for us to tell them what they need but they need the ways and means to do this and that's where we can all work together
25:20
and it's not, this is my big point, it's not giving. It's working together and trying to figure out of how we can all transfer maybe some of the tools and the knowledge we have across. So we're not only talking about technological innovation but also social innovation.
25:41
If you'd say for example that the self-organization of a camp can for example also be innovation though it's not, it doesn't have to do anything with IT but it's a kind of way how people work together and how they live together. Again, I mean we're having this approach that is somebody innovates something for you
26:00
and that's also with due respect to the colleagues, my former colleagues in the aid agencies, every aid agency has an innovation department. They're innovating something for the people. Let the people themselves innovate. I mean that's the point. That's the real true innovation. That's changing the whole way of we move away from us and them.
26:22
We are the rich, intelligent, technology-aware people and we are transferring something down there to the poor little people who we think also have a right to land eventually in the 21st century. They have landed there already. They are living with the consequences of our conflicts.
26:41
They know exactly what's going on. It's just a question of having them again access and to be treated like normal human beings. Thank you. No? So I absolutely agree on that. I mean we do have a common ground. I do think that giving the tools,
27:04
giving the capacities to build things allows for many things to happen, although not in all the settings of refugees, but it does make it easy to improve the health systems that are in place if they're not there. If there's not bridges for the local systems, the hosting countries that have the education systems
27:22
in place, the welfare, the healthcare in place, then there is a huge gap between what you can do with a welding machine and what you can do to have access to that health clinic or to that information on family planning. Maybe if we come to the fact that,
27:41
and you were mentioning it at the beginning, refugee camp, like only around about 10% of refugees live in a refugee camp. A lot of others live in the cities, but if you focus on the refugee camp now as a place that's kind of segregated from the rest, and you were mentioning like the hosting or welcoming countries, so what about innovation,
28:02
this field of the hosting country interacting with those people who came who are staying in the camps now? Any thoughts on how we can open up that link and how to innovate in that field? By building those bridges,
28:20
that's what I was arguing for, because I mean with the involvement and the decision-making together, this is... I have a mic. Oh? Close to your mouth, I think. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. No, just building the bridges is absolutely essential in developing the tools and the capacities to have a discussion on the table, doing it together.
28:41
Do you have some examples? Any one of you where you tried to open up that conversation? I mean, look at Northern Iraq. I mean, it's a typical example. Look at the region of Duhok. It has sort of a million people or something. Nobody really knows. In addition to the local population,
29:02
so the population is basically doubled. Some of them live in camps, and some others don't live in camps. I mean, what does the region need? Those camps actually should become extensions of the cities in a way. That's the bridges we talk about. Don't treat them as something different. The mainstream, the municipal services in this.
29:21
The municipal services are very poor. They're very weak. So now let's look into how to work together on doing something with all the waste. The city of Duhok used to produce 600 metric tons of waste a day. Now they have 2,100 tons of waste a day. Is that a humanitarian response? No. Do we divide between refugee waste and other waste?
29:43
No. So it's really looking into an area where there is simply more people and maybe a different composition. Their needs in terms of housing, affordable housing. Their needs in terms of water, of energy, education, health systems, access to something,
30:02
and then maybe transform. And that's where we're talking about refugees or migration becoming an access to opportunities. Use that as the trigger to jump ahead and actually improve systems. Use that as a trigger for true investment.
30:21
And again, true investment doesn't have to be only charity. We're also talking about money, investment, cooperation, all these other things. It doesn't have to be just a giving sort of operation. Maybe in response to what you're saying, communities that tend to have first experienced
30:43
any type of development or improvement of their lifestyle, when it comes from a humanitarian agency, they don't understand what they need to demand from their government. Like in South Sudan, a survey was done and people were asked, what do you think the UN is responsible for
31:01
and what is the government responsible for? Healthcare, education, and other types of development, people said, oh, it's the humanitarian agencies that are responsible for that. And then the government is responsible for security. So that kind of mindset brings about a situation
31:22
where if the government can do the bare minimum, that's what it's going to do. Most refugee camps are located in very marginalized areas. In Kakuma, the refugees live much better than the host community. They actually employ the host community to do domestic work, to carry their food rations
31:41
from the distribution centers to their home states. So there's that kind of imbalance and what they demand from the government and what they think the UN should be doing for them, those are two very different kind of things in their minds. So if the population is not sensitized
32:02
as to what their government is responsible for, then it becomes very difficult for development to be coming from the government. That's why in terms of sustainability, if interventions in the refugee camp are not done in isolation to the host community,
32:23
then that would bring about a more sustainable type of development even when camps are closed, if people are able to still remain in that area, then you can see visible transformation in the capabilities of the populations in those areas.
32:40
So to come back to sort of the link between host communities and the refugee camp, I think there are two layers that we have to think about. So on the one hand, there's the relationship between the refugee camp and the government. So we're talking kind of ministry level or department level. And then there's the interaction between the refugee camp and the people that immediately live around the camp,
33:02
the host community. And in Dadaab, what's very interesting is that there are no formal borders. There's not a like fence or a wall around Dadaab refugee camp. Actually, Dadaab town and Dadaab refugee camp are relatively integrated. You can move freely as a refugee or non-refugee.
33:20
Where there's a real border is beyond that. So as a refugee, I cannot move freely in Kenya as a country, I cannot travel to Nairobi. But actually, the host community benefits massively from the camp being there. And the camp is a city. Like just to kind of illustrate the dimension, there's 300,000 people living in Dadaab refugee camp.
33:42
That's Pittsburgh in the US. That's the size of Nice and France. Like these are big cities in one of the most deprived regions of Kenya. And so the host community is integrated into this kind of illicit market that's emerging in the camp benefits with around 14 million US dollars in turnover between host community and camp every year.
34:00
Now, locally, people accept that this is kind of a city and it's there and it's not gonna go away anytime soon. But at the government level, so if we go to Nairobi, the capital, there's no acknowledgement that this camp will sort of be there for the foreseeable future. We still plan in annual cycles in terms of management budgets. Refugees can't start work, they can't own property,
34:22
and they formerly can't run businesses. So there's really two different layers and they're often very contradictory when we think about the relationship between host country community and refugee camp. Yeah. Yeah, again, the aid community puts in something like 300 million dollars a year into one of the poorest areas of Kenya in this case.
34:44
And yes, it's true, the government stops the moment you start building something more durable, it stops. I remember I was deputy representative in Kenya for a while. We started building with bricks and then all the refugees started building with bricks and it was forbidden.
35:00
Of course, because again, because the logic they don't understand when it is an aid agency doing that. And the aid agencies are considered to have an agenda, an agenda to stay, not to go, which is true. In Kenya, good example, 20 something years,
35:23
they have been there and they have been living there and working there, nothing has changed. So governments will, of course, be very suspicious. So what I'm arguing for is put the right people across the table to negotiate a durable solution in the sense of setting up a durable,
35:42
sustainable settlement which somehow flows together with the economy of the surroundings, which is now, by the way, interestingly happening in Jordan, where the government is moving in the direction of accepting special economic development zones to be established between basically the camp of Al-Zatari and the city of Mafrak,
36:02
which is also heavily impacted, as we say, by refugee presence. What is it for is to creating a special economic development zone which creates jobs for anybody and it happens to have a lot of people available because they're refugees, but they're also local people who need jobs.
36:20
And what is this done or who is this done by? Certainly not UNHCR or UNDP or somebody like this. It's going to be done by investors, Syrian investors, Jordanian investors, international investors, and it's going to have some interface, hopefully with some facilitation of trade with the European Union or something. That is the way forward
36:40
and that is what the Minister of Planning of Jordan will understand and he will say yes and he will not say no, no, no, no, I don't trust you. And I remember having had that discussion with the Minister of Planning where he said I don't trust you aid agencies because you come, you have a lot of money in the beginning. You do all sorts of things, but you leave us with unsustainable infrastructure,
37:01
with messy, messy social systems which don't match with the systems we have, with the governance we have around. So we are in a mess when you have no money anymore. So putting somebody across the table who knows what they're talking about, I think that's the way forward. So aid agencies, first responders,
37:20
and then let's talk business, basically. Okay, before we open up the question round also to the audience, so you have a few more minutes to think about questions, I would like to summarize a little bit the different hurdles and barriers you mentioned, but also the different areas of innovation.
37:43
So I heard a lot that barriers are in that field of policy and legislation. Quite often it's not within the camp or the knowledge of the people, in this case the refugees who don't know how to innovate, but it's more the barriers that are put in place from all different kind of stakeholders
38:01
and also opening up the discussion between also new stakeholders and maybe rethinking the whole, let's say, aid system as it is today. So it seems a bit more like system innovation than so much like we need to find a new way
38:22
of installing pipes, for example. But something that I would like to ask before I open the questions is innovation is quite often linked with something connected to internet or technology. So one last question from my side,
38:40
would you say that internet has become a necessity and what are the stakes on that, on the different experiences that you made? How's the connectivity, for example, and the access to telecommunication in the different areas where you worked in? If I can start on that one. 2013, in the Zaatari camp,
39:02
when Secretary John Kerry came, we were still discussing the quality of water and stuff like this. A year later, the big issue when any US delegation or any foreign delegation was visiting the camp was the speed of internet.
39:21
And it was really a nuisance because it was either not available or too slow. So connectivity became a major issue for people because they were trading. So it was one thing. Communication, obviously, is another one. And many more, besides social media, of course, but many more using new technologies
39:42
if you want to educate themselves to have access to the many tools we have today in terms of online learning and so on. So we really, once we moved out of the tent and container distribution panic, it was clear that was the real challenge. And people wanted that.
40:00
And they said, now we're here, we have time, and you treat us like animals because we are not part of this 21st century. Yeah, I very much agree with that last statement. And I think a big question, I mean, in the UN we talk about beneficiaries, right? We don't talk about people.
40:21
And so maybe a little controversial here is really thinking about, well, are we looking at innovation here? Aren't people just being people? Aren't refugees just doing what any of us would do as well if we sat around in a camp for two decades? Wouldn't we also want a phone, being able to call our cousins and maybe parents in another country?
40:40
Wouldn't we also just want to be part of the 21st century? And so I think there's kind of, because we think of refugees as not being people and we attach all these assumptions to what a refugee is, we are surprised when people don't just sit around as victims but actually go out and do stuff and change things and challenge a system
41:00
that determines what they're supposed to be eating every single day. And so I think, as you said, there's a lot of system innovation. There's an opportunity for system innovation. But really what we're seeing is people being people in the 21st century. And we can call that innovation or empowerment, or we can slap on a label, but that's, I think, effectively what it really is. And I think understanding that helps
41:21
to recognize the opportunities that lie in something like that. And there's one more agreeer here, of course. There's a few to add, that's definitely true. Internet, although not one of, I mean, not the only asset that you need to consider as very important as absolutely a critical infrastructure,
41:43
does break a lot of these constraints around the definition of a refugee, which is where I think innovation should also happen. I mean, let's redefine what a refugee, what does that mean, what this status means, and can we not just change that in the view of what you say?
42:00
This is just people, everybody does the same. And yesterday in your panel, we saw that apps for refugees are not really what penetrates the best, but apps for people, right? Apps for people that are mobile, that want to keep being mobile. So I do think it does help to break
42:22
these barriers and to create a new definition of what that refugee is. In the case of Kakuma, I would say to bring in infrastructure at a level where it would be highly impactful, that requires a lot of resources, a lot of money, and a lot of commitment.
42:41
Now, in relation to what Kilian was referring to, I wanted to bring in this whole idea of what is an ecosystem and what is a more important ecosystem, I would say. In the case of the encampment policy in Kenya, Kakuma right now has the 180,000 people
43:01
as a result of people who are located in other areas of Kenya, refugees, they were all moved to Kakuma. The explanation was there was environmental degradation in those other areas, but when we look at the environment, we tend to want to save then the ecosystem
43:22
that has the green trees, the grass, and everything, but Kakuma in itself is another ecosystem. It's quite fragile. So to bring all those people into that small space and strain those resources, that is not development friendly. So creation of other zones where people can go
43:42
and contribute and develop and put less strain on the areas where they settle in, that's very important. And right now we have a university branch that has been established in Kakuma, Masinde Mulira.
44:02
They had a graduation, a class that graduated in 2013. Some of them, I'm sorry, in 2015 March, sorry, 2016 March this year, and I worked with some of them and it's had an impact on them. So it's bringing the resources to the people also right now.
44:21
But in a long-term kind of a plan, it would be important to have people taken to where the resources are well. So there's going to be a push and a pull factor and building up in both areas. And now Kilian wants to comment, but I'm sure that a lot of you guys
44:40
might also have questions where you can then put in your comment. So anyone out there who wants to, yeah, ask a question to any one of the panelists on what we've discussed so far. Do I see any hands? Oh yeah, there's the long blonde here. Maybe you can stand up, please.
45:02
Hello, do you hear me? Yes. Okay, okay. So my question comes from the area how you facilitate this bridging of the gap. Marlene, you were talking about, okay, for one there is like the system innovation, but then also people being people. What I'm interested in, do you have observations,
45:20
you or the other panelists, where people were like relating to like refugees and the host communities relating to each other, like in which moments that happened and how one can facilitate that? I think that's a really good question. I think the link, so you're asking about the link between host communities
45:42
and people in the camps and like how you can facilitate that. So that's happening every day on a massive scale already. Any vegetable stand will buy their vegetables from someone in the host community, right? Like any goods that come into the camp that aren't eight items that are being sold come from the host community in some way. So there are huge kind of informal channels
46:02
of supply and demand and back and forth. I think the real question is it's all illegal, at least in most camps, to kind of the largest extent, how do you formalize that? Like how do you regulate something that's really illegal without kind of challenging the whole system of camp management?
46:21
And so I think the opportunity is really like why don't we just let refugees decide how they want to live in their homes, meaning in their camps? So I think one way forward in terms of system innovation would be to really create formal channels for refugees to partake in planning, partake in management at a higher level
46:42
than they currently do. Yep. As long as you don't treat the refugees as something airdropped from heaven and then suddenly in the middle of, I mean as long as you mainstream, as long as you allow people to have the same normal
47:02
and quote unquote systems as the people around, you have no difference. You have that connectivity which goes, whether it's through sports, whether it's the business, which is a very, very important aspect. Trading is very common as one of the points.
47:20
I'm sure again in Kakuma there has been a lot of other interaction. There have been the marriages. I mean there's a lot of this happening. So as such, it grows together very naturally. But again, it's quite often ourselves who actually prevent people from being treated like others.
47:41
And that's my comment from before. Because we're treating these refugee camps as something where everybody gets everything for free. It starts with that. I mean 50 meters outside, you have to pay eventually for your electricity, for your water. It's very difficult to get it. Then you get it for free. So when we try to introduce the concept
48:02
of you pay for your electricity, and we even suggested to put in smart meters so that people could actually buy credit with smart cards and other things. First of all, it wasn't understood by the aid agencies. They said, these are refugees, they can't pay. I said, but outside there are hundreds of thousands
48:20
of people that also pay for their services. Why they shouldn't be able to pay in here? And we subsidize the ones who need it. That was not understood. So we are creating an artificial barrier with any moment in which between us and people simply because they're refugees. And that's where we have to really move away completely.
48:40
Hold them accountable from day one. So there's another question up front and then third row. My name's Simone Reed and I live in Wiesbaden just across the road from a refugee camp. I have some firsthand experiences with teaching German. And also what it is like to, well,
49:03
as a host community member to come into a refugee camp. So first of all, I think there's a real dilemma of how our perception, the popular perception of refugees
49:21
because trying to fundraise for projects, the campaigns obviously use images of refugees that are, we all know what I'm talking about. It's not an image which is related to the reality of refugees.
49:43
As you say, they use mobile phones. They're not any different than we are. So. You have a question or more of a statement? Yeah, well, I was wondering if we talk about innovation, if we have to rethink also the way we are campaigning.
50:07
Can you hand the microphone for our last question? Rafi, please. Hello, my name is Rafi. Before my question, just like for who didn't know
50:20
about a camp called Yarmouk in Damascus. It's like a Palestinian camp for, and it's a very good example for how it's the refugee camp. It's a good thing. It's like a life process. So in the 50s, this camp, it's a lot of Palestinian people. They decide to, now they are in Damascus.
50:42
They decide to be like a team. We're gonna live here. So it starts from 10th, and in the 90s and 2000, it became the biggest neighborhood in Damascus, and it's very, even there's a lot of Syrian. They're living in the camp.
51:00
It became very good city there, became big city. And yeah, my question is, why Europe, like any camp? Why didn't let it go, let the camp here develop? To be a state or to be a city, why they put it in camps with a security
51:20
and food and controlling? Thank you. Can anyone answer that? I think it's again, I didn't understand the last bit. You're talking about Germany or? So the question was, why are we setting up camps in the way we do? Meaning like having someone providing the food, having security. Why would we create that special place?
51:43
In Europe. I mean, first of all, I think to your point on Yarmouk, I mean, it's a perfect example for the many settlements in the world, whether these are the Afghan settlements in Pakistan, or whether it's in the Western Sahara. In many, many places, camps have developed and transformed
52:02
into more permanent settlements, and you can't even see the difference. However, just a very interesting point. As we were working with the city of Amsterdam's city planners, looking and comparing of how those settlements had evolved, and how in that case a Zaatari camp was evolving,
52:22
we discovered that you can still see today in the Palestinian camps, the way of how the first tents were pitched up. And that in terms of city planning, makes no sense. So these are in fact settlements which are very ineffective,
52:40
when you talk about infrastructure and other things, when basic principles of city planning have never been applied. This is what a city planner will tell you. Why don't we do this here in Europe? Because in Europe we have, frankly speaking, no problem with refugees, because we only got a million or so. So what's the problem?
53:01
So in that sense, we don't need, or we shouldn't need to set up any camps. And anyway the idea is that people live amongst the population. And that gets more into the questions of modern planning, avoiding any sort of ethnic neighborhoods and things like that. This is a totally different ball game.
53:22
But when you have suddenly a million people in northern Iraq and somewhere, yes you will end up in setting up camps as new settlements. And this is what, at least I argue, the moment they come, they should set up new settlements. As by the way Syria has done for the Iraqi refugees when they came to Syria.
53:41
There were thousands and thousands of apartments built for them. Okay, thank you very much. So I would like to ask Mr. Proch on stage now, who is from the GIZ, to summarize what we've talked about so far. I'm sure if anyone else has any questions, the panelists will be here afterwards. And one last hint, which was mentioned before,
54:05
the conference on the 31st of May, the ICT for Refugees focusing very much on the technological part. And today also happening is the Refugica, which is a little bit of a sub-conference, a track here. So if you want to interact also a little bit more
54:22
with those people who we were just talking about, and maybe asking the questions, not only the experts, but also those people who were affected by it, then I highly recommend that you go there. And Mr. Proch, please. Can I have the microphone? Thank you very much.
54:41
I think it's a great pleasure for me to say that there was a lot of agreement and little controversy here on the panel. So for a moderator, I think the other way around would have been better, but this happens. I found first of all very interesting what Mrs. Borneman said at the beginning,
55:01
that Germany has a very special role in all refugee questions, because we have the special memory of refugee crisis, and that Germany has been responsible in the last century for two of the really huge refugee crisis
55:22
after the First World War and after the Second World War. And perhaps this is also one of the explanations why the German government takes now a stance towards refugees slightly different from what other governments do.
55:41
I observed a very strong agreement here on the panel that we are observing a change of paradigm, a change of paradigm from considering refugees as helpless beneficiaries to persons, to individuals,
56:01
but though it was not said so explicitly, this is a change of paradigm which our panel sees and which maybe you see, but what aid agencies don't really understand to the necessary extent and the activities and the actions of many aid agencies
56:23
still follow the old role of treating the people rather as beneficiaries and not as people who want to create their own environment who are innovative, who have ideas, and that the role of aid agencies
56:41
should much rather be helping the refugees to do what they want and not implement and execute their plans. Actually, I would very much like to add that the same attitude of treating refugees rather as beneficiaries also can be strongly observed
57:01
in Germany. I read recently in the neighboring town of where I live that on Monday, a group of 500 refugees were expected and some very active citizens were working throughout the weekend to have everything prepared when the refugees arrived. And I thought, why do you do it for them
57:23
and why don't you give the arriving refugees the chance to prepare their own beds, to prepare their own spaces? And so I think we are not only talking about all the new attitudes in the Near East countries,
57:41
for instance, but also in our own country. There was one controversy, and I found it a very interesting one with regard to the question, should we rather think of converting refugee camps
58:01
into permanent or semi-permanent settlements in the future, or is it also a very comfortable concept for governments in order not to prepare for the returning of the refugees into their home countries
58:20
not to look into the spaces where they came from, not to invest into the original villages. I think this is a very interesting controversy, though when we talk about different refugee camps, I think we would find a different solution for each of the camps.
58:41
What we didn't talk a lot about is what could we do to help refugees, to enable refugees to create their own productive environment, to create workspaces in the camps. We talked a little bit about education.
59:02
We talked very little about health. And I think, especially since we are here in the Republica for all these three sectors, health, education, and creation of employment, really digital approaches should play a much stronger role
59:21
than they are playing right now. And I think also the German Development Corporation is still learning after, right at the beginning, to care for good water and good food and good shelter, now to improve connectivity and see what is really
59:40
the option and the opportunities to work through digitalization to enable the refugees to improve the situation. Thank you very much. I found it a very enlightening and interesting discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
01:00:04
Some very last words from us, from the ministry. When I was preparing my words, I wanted you to go out of this room and to have actually two things in mind. First one, the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development takes the refugee crisis very, very seriously.
01:00:23
And the second one is we believe in ICT and innovation to ease the repercussions of this crisis. But there's one thing that I learned in the panel that I find so important, so that I really like to say that at the end, is what Kilian said, is I think what can we do, us as the audience, what can you do?
01:00:44
Use your tech skills, get engaged, get involved, talk to the NGOs, or as you do, work in your neighborhood, talk to us. But it is super important, I believe, that we need this mind change, as Kilian said,
01:01:00
and we have to stop seeing refugees as victims, or as threats, even worse, but see them as innovators, change agents, and development workers. So, thank you all very much for this panel. Talk to us and enjoy Republika. Thank you very much.