Adhieu Achuil: Championing for The Rights of Women in Kenya’s Dadaab Refugee Camp

Dadaab, Kenya - A typical day for Adhieu Achuil, 31, starts with an early morning walk within the sprawling Dadaab Refugee camp in Kenya’s north, advocating for women’s rights. She has lived here as a refugee since she was two when her family fled the civil war in South Sudan.  

Established in 1991, the Dadaab Refugee Camp is the largest such camp in the world. Today, it is home to nearly 300,000 people from the Horn of Africa escaping civil war, conflicts, drought and other climate-induced hazards.

Given her young age when her family fled South Sudan, Adhieu has no recollection of what life was before the camps.

“My mother tells me the journey was quite challenging, as she trekked 600 Kilometers while taking care of five small girls”, she narrates solemnly. “We found refuge in Kenya”.

Adhieu has always been haunted after witnessing her 12-year-old sister forced into marriage by one of her uncles. As a single parent, her mother could not stop the forced marriage, something Adhieu says she has been unable to come to terms with.

Growing up in a single parent household of five girls and living in a camp, she experienced firsthand the impact of a lack of resources on one’s education and choices in life.

“I cannot sit in the office while women and girls are suffering in the community,” she remarks proudly as she narrates the motivation and drive that led her to start Mony Qadow, a women-led community-based organization in Dadaab Camp.

“In my community, gender-based violence is a daily activity, it is a culture. I decided to stand-up not just for my sisters and myself, but also for women and girls in the camp,” says Adhieu.

Adieu is the director and founder of Mony Qadow and for five years she and her team have strived to empower women through advocacy and leadership trainings to advocate against Gender-Based Violence while also sourcing scholarship opportunities for girls in the camps.

When covid-19 hit and the little support refugees were receiving in the camp stopped, other essential services such as schools were forced to close. The school closures came with challenges such teenage pregnancies and early marriages.

 “We documented and offered psychosocial support to more than 3,000 girls. Moreover, we advocated and supported 17 of the girls to go back to school and trained 10 girls on basic entrepreneurship skill to start small business.”

“This has been one of Mony Qadow greatest achievement.”

There is some hope for Adhieu and her family. They are among the beneficiaries of IOM’s United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). Photo: Cynthia Meru/IOM

USRAP is managed by the Department of State in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services. Those admitted as refugees are eligible for U.S. government-funded resettlement assistance. The USRAP is a multi-step process.

IOM Kenya has facilitated the resettlement of an estimated 2,000 people to their newfound homes in Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and USA while more than 35,000 people have received migration health assessments services.