This project on the Kakuma News Reflector came from connections and relationships I built while working as a photographer for International Bridges to Justice and Christian Legal Education Aid and Research(CLEAR) in Kenya. While doing research on the camp I found the Kakuma News Reflector, KANERE, the only refugee run newspaper in the world, and contacted the editor to look into doing a story on his team of journalists. I loved the idea of an independent refugee voice and from my first e-mails with the editor I knew that it was truly a wonderful group of people.

KANERE, was started in December 2008 by a group of refugees in order to create a human voice for refugees. They were helped by Bethany Ojalehto, an American Fulbright Scholar, to start a blog to reach the wider media and world and to help force NGOs and the Kenyan Government to have transparency in financial decisions and policy creation. The newspaper grew into a source of hope for many of the journalists involved. I want to help recreate this hope and empowerment in other camps and communities with lost identities.

Kakuma is a permanent refugee settlement that sprawls over 10km with urban centers where you can buy fancy hijabs and fresh fruit, use a cyber café, or watch Bollywood movies over satellite television. Amidst this warehouse, where some residents have lived for 17 years, where you can eat at a fancy Ethiopian restaurant that plays Feist, Yael Naim, and Bob Marley live more than 50,000 people from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Djibouti, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, and other areas. It is a strange and confusing place and nothing like the temporary tent and barbed wire prison I imagined.

One KANERE writer said of life in the camp, “I don’t feel like a normal person. I feel isolated, not like a human being.” On top of the difficulties universal to everyone in the camp, such as crowding, boredom, and malnutrition, the newspaper staff has to also fight threadbare finances, without concrete recognition by the Kenyan Government, UNHCR, and other NGOs that they can even exist. This project is trying to push for recognition of freedom of press for refugees.

I am planning on creating a book about the camp using articles from the Kakuma News Reflector to help tell the story of the various communities in the camp and the larger more universal story of life in refugee camps focusing on boredom, loss of rights, loss of hope, and loss of identity. I want to use this book to help publicize the newspaper and popularize the idea of a refugee newspaper. I want to send the book to aid organizations that work in refugee camps or in other communities that are victim to loss of identity to encourage them to start similar projects to give voices to those who lost theirs. The project could also help to push for the right of free press to be cemented in UNHCR camps and validate KANERE's efforts.