Floods and a funding squeeze push Dadaab refugee camp toward food emergency

Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp is projected to deteriorate into Emergency-level (IPC Phase 4) food insecurity between October 2026 and January 2027, according to the US-funded early-warning network FEWS NET, which attributes the anticipated crisis primarily to this year's short rains, expected to bring severe, weeks-long flooding, compounding a chronic humanitarian funding shortfall.

In its August 2026 update, FEWS NET said fiscal year 2026 funding for World Food Programme (WFP) assistance to refugees in Dadaab, Kakuma and Kalobeyei will end in September. The network expects new fiscal year 2027 funding to be announced that same month, letting WFP keep distributing aid at present, already-reduced levels — helped by recent food donations from South Korea — even as it shifts in October from a mix of cash and in-kind assistance to in-kind rations only: 80 percent of the minimum expenditure basket for the most vulnerable households, 60 percent for those with limited ability to meet basic needs, and just 20 percent for households deemed partially self-reliant. FEWS NET said it expects Dadaab specifically — not Kakuma or Kalobeyei — to deteriorate to Emergency level even with that assistance continuing, driven mainly by anticipated flooding rather than by any additional cut in aid.

More than 600,000 refugees live in Dadaab, Kakuma and the neighbouring Kalobeyei settlement — about 82 percent of the total population in those areas, the network said. As of April 2026, Kenya hosted about 847,780 registered refugees and asylum-seekers, with roughly half in Dadaab and just over a third in Kakuma and Kalobeyei combined, according to World Bank figures citing UN data.

Why the camps are so exposed

FEWS NET points to chronic underemployment, not only this year's flood risk, as a root driver of the camps' vulnerability. A World Bank-backed household survey conducted between 2022 and 2024 found employment among camp-based refugees roughly halved, from 13 percent to 7 percent, while inactivity — people neither working nor looking for work — rose to 89 percent, with 64 percent of those citing a lack of available jobs.

Humanitarian aid made up about 75 percent of camp refugees' household income in 2024, the survey found, so each ration cut translates almost directly into a household income shock. As assistance shrank, 64 percent of camp households said they had reduced food consumption and 44 percent had borrowed money to buy food, according to the World Bank.

Legal work is theoretically open to refugees: Kenya's 2021 Refugee Act allows holders of refugee status to apply for a Class M work permit, which the Directorate of Immigration Services lists as free of charge. In practice, fewer than 1 percent of refugees held a work permit as of the 2022–2024 survey, which attributed the gap to administrative hurdles and mobility restrictions that limited entry into the formal labour market — leaving most households dependent on camp markets and declining rations.

A history of shrinking rations, now added flood risk

This is not the camps' first brush with severe hunger. WFP cut in-kind rations for Kenya's roughly 720,000 supported refugees to 28 percent of the full food basket in mid-2025 and suspended cash assistance entirely, citing a critical funding shortfall, before appealing for tens of millions of dollars to restore support. Acute malnutrition in the camps has repeatedly exceeded the 10 percent emergency threshold.

FEWS NET's August 2026 outlook forecasts Critical levels of acute malnutrition (15–29.9 percent) in Dadaab specifically, on top of rations that are already reduced. The network also expects this year's short rains to bring widespread flooding lasting weeks, which would disrupt food distributions, damage roads and bridges that carry trade and livestock to camp markets, push up local prices, and increase waterborne disease. It is this flooding, more than any additional funding cut, that FEWS NET names as the driver of the Emergency-level forecast.

Kakuma and Kalobeyei, by contrast, are forecast to remain at the less severe Crisis level (IPC Phase 3) through January 2027, reflecting somewhat lower exposure to the flooding driving Dadaab's outlook, FEWS NET said.

A new status, unresolved barriers

The warning comes as Kenya moves to formally end Dadaab and Kakuma's three-decades-old status as pure refugee camps. In November 2025, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen announced both had been converted into municipalities under the government's Shirika Plan, which aims to fold the settlements into county administration in Garissa and Turkana. The plan is meant to extend Class M work permits, abolish camp movement passes, and enrol refugee children in public schools, according to the announcement reported by Kenyans.co.ke.

Analysts and aid researchers note the reclassification does not by itself solve the labour-market access problems the World Bank survey documented; implementation of work rights and service transfers to county governments is still under way and could take years to complete. For now, the more immediate test for the camps is less whether donors restore full funding — FEWS NET's own outlook already assumes WFP assistance will continue near current, reduced levels — than whether this year's short rains bring the flooding the network expects. It is that flooding, rather than a further cut in aid, that FEWS NET projects will push Dadaab into Emergency-level hunger from October.