A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people may live in any one single camp. Usually they are built and run by a government, the United Nations, or international organizations, (such as the Red Cross) or NGOs.
Refugee camps are generally set up in an impromptu fashion and designed to meet basic human needs for only a short time. Some refugee camps are dirty and unhygienic. If the return of refugees is prevented (often by civil war), a humanitarian crisis can result.
Some refugee camps have existed for decades and some people can stay in refugee camps for decades, both of which have major implications for human rights. Some grow into permanent settlements and even merge with nearby older communities, such as Ein el-Helweh and Deir al-Balah.
Read more about Refugee Camp: Facilities, Duration, Exportation, Notable Camps
Famous quotes containing the words refugee and/or camp:
“The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.”
—John Frederick Nims (b. 1913)
“When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents—about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)