Title:  When Economic Visions Clash with Socio-Ecological and Health Realities: Limitations to Refugee Self-Reliance in Arid and Semi-Arid Landscapes in Northern Kenya

In recent years, relief agencies and donor groups have pushed for converting refugee camps into economic business zones where refugees and displaced populations living in enduring encampment situations and their (usually impoverished) host communities can enhance their resilience and achieve self-reliance. Drawing on recent work on refugee-host dynamics and social economies in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) areas of Turkana and Garissa Counties in Northern Kenya, we show that economic visions of refugees and hosts living self-reliant lives in integrated settlements face numerous and even fatal limitations due to the combination of psycho-social and psycho-biological health of refugees and hosts in ASALs and the specific human-environmental dynamics of ASALs. Abstract: