Kenya’s refugee response is under immense and growing strain. Over 700,000 refugees rely on critical services spanning health, education, protection, WASH, and livelihoods. In 2025, deep funding cuts, triggered by U.S. Stop Work Orders and wider global shortfalls, converged with the rollout of Differentiated Assistance (DA), which shifts from blanket food aid to targeted support. This convergence has left the system overstretched, jeopardizing refugees’ immediate well-being and undermining prospects for durable solutions envisioned under the Shirika Plan.
Services Under Strain
A new report from the NGO Refugee Group (NRG) draws on survey inputs from ten organizations and 116 refugees and shows how these pressures are eroding essential services across every sector. What emerges is not just a decline in individual areas, but a cascading crisis in which one shortfall feeds into another, amplifying risks for refugees and stretching remaining providers to the breaking point. The survey indicates the following impacts across core sectors:
Protection: GBV cases have doubled since January, with adolescents disproportionately affected. Key services such as resettlement, legal aid, and psychosocial support are being scaled down or closed.
Education: Over 112,000 learners are impacted by teacher and reductions in learning materials, overcrowded classrooms, and suspended safeguarding programs; leading to dropouts, child labour, and early pregnancies.
Health: Up to 67% of the hospitals in Kakuma and Dadaab risk closure, additionally, immunization, maternal care, and HIV/TB adherence are declining, while referral systems are collapsing.
WASH: Water access has dropped below emergency standards to 10–14 litres/person/day, with borehole monitoring gaps fuelling tensions and violence amongst refugees and between refugees and the host community.
Crucially, cuts in one sector are destabilizing others. Reduced WASH capacity is fuelling health risks, while the loss of one organization’s protection services has increased the burden on others. One health agency reported absorbing costly referrals after another partner’s withdrawal. This domino effect illustrates how funding shortages ripple across the system, amplifying vulnerabilities for refugees and stretching remaining providers to their limits.
Refugee Perspectives
Simultaneously, the refugee survey responses paint a picture of worsening daily life. More than 76% said service standards have become “much worse” in the past year, with food, health, education, and WASH identified as areas most severely affected. Refugees also reported a sharp rise in insecurity: 94.8% said they or someone they knew had experienced attacks in the past six months, most often carried out by police, security forces, or fellow refugees.
DA was widely mentioned as a turning point, as many refugees said the loss of food and cash support had left them with fewer livelihood options, especially with Bamba Chakula (the mobile cash transfer program many used for both food and small business capital) now discontinued. Refugees reported being pushed into debt, relocating to survive, pulling children out of school, or relying on negative coping mechanisms such as survival sex and child marriage.
Durable Solutions Under Threat
The most pressing concern is of course the immediate impact on refugees themselves: hunger, deteriorating health outcomes, unsafe learning environments, and rising insecurity. Yet these immediate effects also carry longer-term consequences, directly undermining the vision of durable solutions in Kenya. Shirika’s ambition of socio-economic inclusion rests on strong, stable systems and trust between refugees, host communities, and government. Today, both are being eroded.
When asked about their future, 68.1% of refugees said they hope to resettle in a third country; 17.2% said they see themselves returning home despite instability; and 11.2% were uncertain. Very few expressed confidence in local integration. As one refugee explained: “I have been here for more than twenty years with no job opportunities and no food in Category 3. I have nowhere else to go.”
The survey shows why these risks are so urgent. If health facilities are weakened or at risk of closure, county governments will struggle to absorb these services within already limited budgets. If education standards continue to decline, with teachers reduced by 23% and learning materials reduced, refugee children will be left behind, undermining the human capital needed for integration. If protection systems collapse, risks such as GBV, child marriage, and exploitation will escalate, eroding safety and trust in public institutions. And as NGOs scale back, the loss of institutional knowledge and capacity-building partnerships further reduces the ability of counties to prepare for handover. Instead of laying foundations for Shirika, the response is drifting toward collapse.
NRG’s Ask to Stakeholders
The picture that emerges is clear: without urgent intervention, both refugee well-being and the Shirika vision are at risk. In response, the NGO Refugee Group calls on all refugee response stakeholders, i.e. government, donors, UN agencies, and NGOs, to take urgent, coordinated action to prevent further erosion of services and restore refugee trust in durable solutions. Specifically:
Conclusion
Kenya’s refugee response is buckling under dual shocks. Funding cuts and the rollout of Differentiated Assistance have coincided to strain services across every sector. This is not only a humanitarian emergency but also a policy challenge, with declining standards, growing insecurity, and diminishing prospects for durable solutions under Shirika.
If core sectors falter and collapse, county governments with already limited budgets will face an uphill task, not only taking over but also rebuilding critical services with minimal transitional capacity. To prevent this trajectory, stakeholders must urgently restore flexible funding, strengthen coordination, and align investments with Shirika’s pillars. Durable solutions will only succeed if refugees trust that integration is viable; without this, resettlement pressures and premature returns will rise, undermining both humanitarian outcomes and Kenya’s long-term strategy.
The NGO Refugee Group (NRG) brings together over 55 NGOs to coordinate Kenya’s refugee response. It strengthens collective advocacy, supports operational collaboration, and amplifies refugee voices in national policy discussions.