Camps for People in Flight

Camps play an important role in the international refugee regime alongside and as an alternative to asylum and repatriation. Established for the temporary custody and protection of refugees, protracted refugee situations camps come to function as permanent homes for refugees and internally displaced persons, that is, IDPs. Often refugee camps are militarised in the sense that fighters are recruited among the refugees by insurgents, which may even transform refugee camps into training camps and bases for rebel groups. In response, refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) camps are sometimes attacked as part of counter-insurgency campaigns. The chapter also deals with the phenomenon of ‘boat people,’ that is, refugees arriving by sea.