Nairobi City County Government leads the way with new refugee-informed strategy
IIED and its partners, including SDI Kenya, have worked closely with Nairobi City County to co-develop a pioneering, locally led and refugee-informed integration strategy that is transforming how the city includes and supports urban refugees.
Celestin Mbaruku fled war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and took refuge in Kenya. His informal tailoring skills were certified by the government through a programme aimed at refugees (Photo: ILO, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The Nairobi City County Government’s (NCCG)’s pioneering Refugee Integration Strategy recognises Nairobi as a place of sanctuary for refugees displaced by conflict, persecution and violence. It describes the city’s commitment to inclusivity, diversity and respect for human life as the “bedrock of [its] social fabric”.
The strategy comes out of the city authority’s deepening engagement with IIED and SDI Kenya, and their work with displaced communities.
In the lead up to the strategy’s launch, Susan Kimani, assistant director at NCCG and part of the team leading the development of the strategy, participated in a screening of the documentary film ‘Far Away from Home’, a collaboration between urban refugees, Nairobi-based community filmmakers Koch films and researchers at IIED.
In a moderated discussion following the film screening, Kimani said that the Refugee Act 2021 and the process of creating the strategy had given the city council the space and opportunity to work directly with urban refugees for the first time.
The strategy, shaped by IIED and SDI Kenya’s work over the last five years, shows how Nairobi has shifted to take the lead on refugee inclusion – an area typically handled by humanitarian agencies – to arrive at a locally led, refugee-informed strategy.
