Testing a new paradigm: UNRWA'S camp improvement programme

Abstract

The article will critically reflect on recently launched Infrastructure and Camp Improvement Programme of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) – an initiative that still remains at a pilot stage, yet bears the potential to radically overhaul the agency’s approach to prioritizing and delivering services, its relationship to refugee communities and its engagement with the physical, social and cultural fabric of Palestine refugee camps. Focussing on two distinct, yet inextricably linked themes – the built environment and camp governance – the authors will speculate on how the ongoing experience could lead to a long-overdue, radical re-conceptualisation of what constitutes a “refugee camp” – from a space of victimisation towards an emancipated space where refugees live with civil rights – a new model with potentially global repercussions. Based on the conviction that both defending refugee rights and civil life in an environment of dignity and optimism are compatible, and fears and suspicion of “normalization” should be overcome, a series of projects are currently being implemented across the dispersed camps of the Middle East, which reflect a more developmental approach for improving, in a holistic sense, the refugee camps’ physical and social environment. Here, the adoption of a participatory, community-driven planning approach offers the opportunity to learn from past mistakes. Camp refugees, for the first time, felt empowered to become active participants shaping their environment rather than just passive recipients of aid.