Refugee hosting zones or zone d’accueil des réfugiés allow nomadic Malian refugees to continue practicing their pastoral lifestyle by providing more land for livestock. These areas permit refugees to live with greater dignity, and independence, compared to centralized refugee camps, where opportunities of self-sufficiency is more limited.
Intikane 13,237 refugees in 600 km2
Zaatari Refugee Camp 79,354 refugees in 3.3km2
Protection challenges
Monitoring protection violations is much more difficult even though procedures for response are established. Culturally sensitive issues, such as early marriages, female education, and child labor are particularly under reported. It is also difficult to sensitize popul to sensitize populations about protection issues, as typical communication mediums do not work.
Adapting SPHERE standards for pastoral nomads
Successful implementation of alternatives to camp requires understanding a populations’s socio-cultural and economic background. In Intikane, UNHCR increased the availability of water quantity to meet water needs to raise animals, though this far surpassed minimum SPHERE standards. UNHCR also helped by giving larger sized water containers to containers to remotely located refugee families.
