“Everything belongs to the agencies”: performative refugee elections in Kakuma Refugee Camp

In 2011, the Kakuma Refugee Camp’s Constitution established a system of elected refugee leadership, reorganising the camp into zones and blocks and formalising new structures of governance. Although the Kakuma Constitution was framed as a democratic innovation, elected refugee leaders operate within a constrained governance model that limits political agency and meaningful accountability. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of governmentality and power, interviews with current and former elected leaders, and my lived experience as a former elected leader in Kakuma, the working paper illustrates how democratic structures can function as instruments of control. Elected leadership in Kakuma serves largely symbolic purposes, fulfilling humanitarian actors’ need to demonstrate visible participation and accountability to external audiences, while also acting as soft surveillance agents for the state, and managing rather than voicing community concerns. While the system projects an image of participation, it reinforces top-down control and erodes community trust. This paper argues for refugee governance that goes beyond symbolic participation and control, and instead centres accountability to refugee communities.