Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

Photo EssaySlideshow: A Look Inside The Kakuma Refugee Camp

Getting to the Kakuma Refugee Camp isn’t easy. Once your visit is approved, you board a special UN commissioned flight from Nairobi to the hot and arid desert where the refugee camp is located.

I was invited to Kakuma by IsraAID, an Israel-based humanitarian aid agency that responds to emergency crises and engages in international development around the world. IsraAID has been operating in Kakuma since 2014, focusing on building local capacity to provide adequate medical care, improve community protection, increase access to daily necessities and improve overall living conditions.

Covering IsraAID’s mobile dental clinic was inspiring, but I wanted to look beyond the humanitarian work. I wanted to get to know the humans of Kakuma.

Read the rest of the story here.

1 / 13

A view of the Kakuma Refugee camp in Northwestern Kenya Photo by Lior Sperandeo

2 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

3 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

4 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

5 / 13

Dr. Lior Tamir is an Israeli-American dentist. Together with a delegation of his colleagues, he provides urgent dental care to Kakuma’s ever-growing population of refugees. Photo by Lior Sperandeo

6 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

7 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

8 / 13

Anneta from Burundi arrived at the camp in 2014, together with her parents. They had fled the Burundian unrest after several years of inter-ethnic strife. Photo by Lior Sperandeo

9 / 13

Tenda is an artist from South Sudan who arrived at the camp in 2013 with his brother. When the brutal South Sudanese civil war broke out, Tenda and his brother ran for their lives — surviving a treacherous 3 months walking to the Kenyan border. Photo by Lior Sperandeo

10 / 13

Shamafosa from the Congo had a story that shook me. She had risked her life to leave Uganda with her 3 children, crossing the dangerous waters of Lake Albert, one of the African Great Lakes. Photo by Lior Sperandeo

11 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

12 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

13 / 13

Photo by Lior Sperandeo

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.