Refugees living in Kakuma will, for the first time, be able to formally petition the Turkana County Assembly after the House amended its standing orders to recognise refugee participation.
The development is being welcomed as a concrete step toward implementing Kenya’s refugee inclusion agenda under the revised Refugees Act, which promotes participation, local integration and access to public services.
Under the amended standing orders, refugee affairs are now explicitly included within the Assembly’s mandate. The revised provisions expand oversight to cover constitutional and legal matters, ethics and integrity, human rights, and refugee-related issues, including inclusion, local integration, and participation in county development planning.
As quoted by Nation, the amendments also open the door for refugees to submit memoranda on issues that directly affect them. Previously, despite living in Turkana and being impacted by county policies, refugees were effectively locked out of the petition process because the forms required a Kenyan national identity card.
Mitchel Ambasu, the Kakuma operations field coordinator for the Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK), said the requirement had long hindered meaningful civic engagement.
“Frequently, the county assembly conducts public participation forums on policies that guide county operations,” he said. “However, when refugees attempted to submit petitions, they found no avenue to do so because the forms only allowed the use of a national ID. After consultations, the county assembly agreed to amend the standing orders.”
With the revised petition process, refugees can now use their refugee identification cards, formally granting them access to a civic space from which they had long been excluded.
Mr Ambasu described the move as a best practice and said RCK is urging other refugee-hosting counties to adopt similar reforms. He noted that the amendment is one of the early outcomes of the Inclusive Refugee Response Programme (IRRP), a policy-driven initiative implemented by RCK to support government-led refugee inclusion at both national and county levels.
Kakuma, located in Turkana West, hosts more than 185,000 refugees and asylum seekers from over 20 nationalities, according to United Nations data.
Although the Refugees Act of 2021 provides a progressive legal framework for protection, inclusion and self-reliance, its implementation has been uneven, particularly in counties hosting large refugee populations.
