Kenya hosts over half a million refugees, who, along with their hosts in urban and camp areas, face difficult living conditions and limited socioeconomic opportunities. Most refugees in Kenya live in camps located in the impoverished counties of Turkana (40 percent) and Garissa (44 percent), while 16 percent inhabit urban areas—mainly in Nairobi but also in Mombasa and Nakuru. Refugees in Kenya are not systematically included in national surveys, creating a lack of comparable socioeconomic data on camp-based and urban refugees, and their hosts. As the third of a series of surveys focusing on closing this gap, this Socioeconomic Survey of Urban Refugees's aim is to understand the socioeconomic needs of urban refugees in Kenya, especially in the face of ongoing conflicts, environmental hazards, and others shocks, as well as the recent government announcement to close Kenya’s refugee camps, which highlights the potential move of refugees from camps into urban settings. The SESs are representative of urban refugees and camp-based refugees in Turkana County. For the Kalobeyei 2018 and Urban 2020–21 SESs, households were randomly selected from the UNHCR registration database (proGres), while a complete list of dwellings, obtained from UNHCR’s dwelling mapping exercise, was used to draw the sample for the Kakuma 2019 SES. The Kalobeyei SES and Kakuma SES were done via Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI). Due to COVID-19 social distancing measures, the Urban SES was collected via Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). The Kalobeyei SES covers 6,004 households; the Kakuma SES covers 2,127 households; and the Urban SES covers 2,438 households in Nairobi, Nakuru, and Mombasa. Questionnaires are aligned with national household survey instruments, while additional modules are added to explore refugee-specific dynamics. The SES includes modules on demographics, household characteristics, assets, employment, education, consumption, and expenditure, which are aligned with the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey (KIHBS) 2015–16 and the recent Kenya Continuous Household Survey (KCHS) 2019. Additional modules on access to services, vulnerabilities, social cohesion, mechanisms for coping with lack of food, displacement trajectories, and durable solutions are administered to capture refugee-specific challenges.

Registration in Uganda is carried out by the Government of Uganda through the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) with support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In October 2021, OPM and UNHCR commenced a joint verification and individual profiling exercise (IPE) targeting 1,549,181 refugees and asylum seekers consisting of 388,989 households residing in all settlements and urban areas in Uganda. The main population groups are the South Sudanese (61%), Congolese (29%), Burundi (3%), Somali (3%) and the remaining 3% being refugees and asylum seekers from 27 different countries. The exercise is expected to be completed by end of October 2022. The exercise aims to verify the refugee population in Uganda, issue new generation refugee documents (QR compatible) and assess the social economic profiles of refugee households through Individual profiling. Verification will be combined with individual profiling using a desk bound assessment questionnaire, with validation of profiling data through sampling by making home visits. 10% of the verified households will be sampled based on strata covering settlement, country of origin, ethnicity, household with persons with special needs, family composition and year of arrival. By mid July 2022, verification/individual profiling was complete in 6 priority settlements (Imvepi, Kyaka II, Kyangwali, Nakivale, Oruchinga and Rwamwanja) with 9,480 home visits undertaken.

Since 1992, Kenya has been a generous host of refugees and asylum seekers, a population which today exceeds 500,000 people. The Kakuma Refugee Camps have long been among the largest hosting sites (about 40% of the total refugees in Kenya), and have become even larger in recent years, with an estimated 67 percent of the current refugee population arriving in the past five years. In 2015, UNHCR, the Government of Kenya, and partners established Kalobeyei Settlement, located 40 kilometers north of Kakuma, to reduce the population burden on the other camps and facilitate a shift towards an area-based development model that addresses the longer term prospects of both refugees and the host community. The refugee population makes up a significant share of the local population (an estimated 40 percent at the district level) and economy, engendering both positive and negative impacts on local Kenyans. While Kenya has emerged as a leader in measuring the impacts of forced displacement, refugees are not systematically included in the national household surveys that serve as the primary tools for measuring and monitoring poverty, labor markets and other welfare indicators at a country-wide level. As a result, comparison of poverty and vulnerability between refugees, host communities and nationals remains difficult. Initiated jointly by UNHCR and the World Bank, this survey replicates the preceding Kalobeyei SES (2018), designed to address these shortcomings and support the wider global vision laid out by the Global Refugee Compact and the Sustainable Development Goals. Data was collected in October 2019 to December 2019, covering about 2,122 households.

Afghanistan hosts a protracted population of Pakistani refugees, who fled North Waziristan Agency in 2014 as a result of a joint military offensive by Pakistani government forces against non-state armed groups. As of May 2017, UNHCR has biometrically registered over 50,000 refugees in Khost province and 36,000 refugees in Paktika province, where access remains a challenge. Over 16,000 of these refugees receive shelter and essential services in the Gulan camp in Khost province, while most of the others live among the host population in various urban and rural locations. To better understand the needs of the refugees and the host communities, UNHCR and WFP agreed to conduct a joint assessment of Pakistani refugees in Khost and Paktika. The data collection commenced in May 2017 and covered 2,638 refugee households (2,198 in Khost and 440 in Paktika).

Since 1992, Kenya has been a generous host of refugees and asylum seekers, a population which today exceeds 470,000 people. The Kakuma Refugee Camps have long been among the largest hosting sites, and have become even larger in recent years, with an estimated 67 percent of the current refugee population arriving in the past five years. In 2015, UNHCR, the Government of Kenya, and partners established Kalobeyei Settlement, located 40 kilometers north of Kakuma, to reduce the population burden on the other camps and facilitate a shift towards an area-based development model that addresses the longer term prospects of both refugees and the host community. The refugee population makes up a significant share of the local population (an estimated 40 percent at the district level) and economy, engendering both positive and negative impacts on local Kenyans. While Kenya has emerged as a leader in measuring the impacts of forced displacement, refugees are not systematically included in the national household surveys that serve as the primary tools for measuring and monitoring poverty, labor markets and other welfare indicators at a country-wide level. As a result, comparison of poverty and vulnerability between refugees, host communities and nationals remains difficult. Initiated jointly by UNHCR and the World Bank, this survey was designed to address these shortcomings and support the settlement's development framework, as well as the wider global vision laid out by the Global Refugee Compact and the Sustainable Development Goals. Data were collected in November 2018 to January 2019, covering about 6004 households.