This event that is hosted by open society and buyer friends at politics and prose. To hear about bens a new book, city of florence. We are very proud actually because been to part of the work for this book while he was an open Society Fellow and so we are happy to have made that particular contribution to the work. Were also pleased this afternoon to have karen who is an editor at the Washington Post and is going to be interviewing ben. She will say more about bens background but let me tell you about karen. Before joining the Washington Post she reported for the Associated Press from curacao and her work has appeared in publications across the world including, have a list your but i wont go through the whole thing, the sahara reporters, saline, morningside post, haitian morningside popes, haitian times, she is also made Television Appearances on a number of International Networks including mtv africa and al jazeera. She has degrees from columbia northwestern and was a fulbright scholar in ghana. We are very happy to have her here. She is going to interview ben for a while and then there will be a questionandanswer period. Then there will be a book signing, as you probably saw coming name politics and prose has copies of the books available outside. While the book signing is going on, were simultaneously going to be removing the chairs from this room for the reception which i hope you will all stay for. My colleague toby shepard, when we get to that point she will provide some guidance on where people should line up so that we can do the book signing, remove the chairs and set up for the reception all at once without too much of a mess. I welcome you again to open society. Im very happy you are here, and particularly happy that ben and karen have joined us and with that, karen will handed over to you. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining, im happy to be here and its very excited to talk about this book with the ben ben is a former in africa and his the author of a radio and has written for a wide range of publications including the new york times, the guardian and prospects. He lives in wales with his family and for city of thorns he spent four years the book goes from 20142015 making the needed trips to research the lives of people in this camp. So with that they in kenya often have a refugee camp which i imagine gives the image of the makes shift pens and families going there temporarily. But in the city of thorns its much more than that its an ecosystem, a metropolis, african geopolitics and just the basic human need for survival. We have the theme of intervention, it was the last bit of neglectful hope government of kenya, but a lot of it has to do with relationships and the need for survival in the ways that ordinary people cope in extraordinary circumstances and to quote from the book the refugees are literally between a rock and a hard place. On one side of the government that harasses the refugees and on the other on the terra of al shabab so again thank you so much for joining me and i would like to be able to start big and then telescope in and out to discuss the book. Can you give us a background and a sense of the history, what lead people to begin fleeing there in the first place . The dab was established in 1991, many of you will remember that time, following the collapse of the government and some ali in 1990. It was then the failed u. S. And un intervention, black hawk down was a single event and it was the u. S. With the drew, the countries file further into civil war and pretty much continued in that ever sense. With various flareups in different points from the invasion and the rise of al shabab to now the fragile peace in mogadishu but still conflict and other parts of the country. That initial camp was three towns, each one about 30,000 people. They were arranged in a hemisphere around the town which is a dusty outpost in northern kenya 17 miles from the border of somalia. Password 25 years later, there are now five camps, each one between 70 and 100,000 people and there are three generations of people from those initial population and 91 who came, theres a character called lonnie in the book who is a person was in the book and his father came and his mother came in 91 he was a very young boy, he has now had children, some of them will soon be having children and their friends of his who have grandchildren so we are now its for Third Generation of the camp and people have never left. Those people are coexisting with more recent population, people who came into thousand 11 and everybody is in this makeshift metropolis and of course weve all seen images of these grids of ten slate out, these crazy aerial photos that suggest but thats quite easy to picture but whats hard to picture is the daily life that is going on within those grids. The people coming and going making a living, working in the market and collecting their food rations, falling in love, falling out of love and those are the kinds of finegrained stories that will probably get to. So somalia in the camps but one thing that i did not particularly know until reading the book is that parts of it is quite cosmopolitan its an oasis for the conflicts that are the setting of the region so can you talk a little bit about the other populations that are in the camp. The reason i first went there in 2010 was for research on human rights in africa. I joked that at the time with my colleague that we should go there so often, its an outpost of all of the conflict in that region. We are going frequently to order people who had come from somalia to find out about human rights in somalia. And also to find out what was going on in ethiopia and then of course there is the human rights in of that itself which later on i think in 2010 you can correct me but there were two reports on human rights crisis itself. The way i approach that in the book is to talk about a love story between luna who is a young somali girl who was born in the camp and raised in the camp and a young sudanese boy who was a friend and profiled, he was one of the boys that settled to the United States but there are tens of thousands who stayed in the region in refugee camps. The boy was one of those, hammen luna fell in love, had a baby, but that went very much against the conservative of her family and there was a witchhunt for these two especially for the infants, they wanted to capture the infant and sacrifice it as a honor killing because the the dignity of the family had been offended by this half christian half muslim child. Part of that story is hiding from this mob and be in defended which is far from the other parts of the camper luna live, and through that we learned a lot about luna. In fact as i was researching that story i found that this was the third time the church of the Sudanese Community have been burned down by people at from their adjacent block but that story goes on and on. Let me stop there. Then we talk about a couple of characters ivan keep calling them character but they were they are real People Living in the camps that you had a chance to get to know, can you talk of who you add the is and how he ended up in the camp the first place. He was first arrived in the camp in 2010, he grew up in mogadishu through the first chapter basically deals with the somalia from 1991 and he was in fact born but he doesnt really know we think he was born in the war district which is the district where they were and where they crashed. He grew up in that district in 2010, he was a 16yearold who was 16yearold who is going to Primary School in mogadishu. One day in his geography class seven armed men to shut up at the back of the school and pulled out seven students and he was one of them. He was taken to a Training Camp for about a month he worked for the al Shabab Police in mogadishu. This was in the aftermath of the 2010 battle for mogadishu which was very brutal, in fact at this time human rights i was covering the abuses. He was there in the middle of it trying to go to school then working for al shabab. He got an opportunity to run away and escape. Of course he cannot stay in mogadishu because he was afraid of retribution. He made his way as a young boy 400 miles south to the border of kenya. Then across that to no mans land to get to the camp. When people dont realize is its not just a question of work into the refugee camp, even to get there is an incredible challenge because from the border kenny is very hostile to its refugees. There is no Welcome Center where you get it cup of tea and a fast ride to the camp. What you have to do is make your own way across that scrubland. In the meantime most likely whats can happen is the kenya police will lock you up, shake you down and take you back to somalia again. So youve got to run in order to reach the camp, once youre there which he managed to do you present yourself to the un, you get registered have a ration ration card and then you can begin your life as a refugee which is by no means it roses and coming from one bad situation to another. But that journey was to show you what it takes to reach that place. What i like about the stories as they all use these vehicles to explain certain factors and conditions in the camp. So you mentioned earlier human mention this very bright and entrepreneurial youth leader. As the book progresses he learns how to take on expectations of the ngo world then learns and puts on the mantle of accountability and so we mentioned some of them spent their entire lives in the camp. What interactions with them, how did they see themselves, how did they cope when youre in a situation where the future is uncertain, youre in a place where a government doesnt want to acknowledge your existence and yet leaving doesnt seem to be an option. How do they see themselves . He arrived in 2010 or 2011, but he was one of what we call the new arrival so luna and have been met from the start and they call it the good old day effect where access to education was easier, where most most kids could go to Primary School, were the rations were mainly rice and beans instead of sore gum militant things now that people have to cook. Not to mention all the ration cards. That group who came then referred to themselves as the 92 group. Many of them have since been pedal lot are still there. To one he was a leader for a while. For the last several years they have gone through Primary School and secondary school. Theyve taken diplomas now, theres an people have also done degrees through the mail on the internet. All of this activity is based on the presumption that their preparing for life outside. A life somewhere else. A life after they escaped from the refugee camp. As time goes on that horizon is looking unlikely and the reality they have lived up until this point so over the five years i have known tommy his mental state has become more more flexible under pressure. So for those guys are most people in the camp in order to get through the day you have to have hope that somehow your life is leaving outside the camp. Daily life is in exercise and manufacturing hope. So for tommy sometimes he talked to him and he would say yes im way back to somalia soon, theres a new government its all going to be great, and the next day its all doom and gloom and depression and did you see theres fighting in he still is very much affected and received trauma, not that he experienced himself because he was growing up in the camp but all the stories that he has been told about how is brothers were murder and his father was beaten and abused, the way sorta see it is like a pressure cooker. A stable point of view, stable mental attitude is very hard to maintain. This group has been brought up on this bias of hope, its wearing very thin and by now theyre struggling. In the camp we hear about programs that we launched in washington, psychosocial support, is there anything like that in the camp for these people. Yes there is. Cairo, one of the women i followed does work in the center but this doesnt really apply, people like tommy on the rocks of the community, these are the normal people, these are the guys who have not been sexually abuse, theyre not victims of domestic abuse. Their problems are very much a result of living in the camp. And certainly the programs are not meant for people like that nor is there capacity really. This is just the reality of this life which is what ive tried to convey. The role of facebook and social media, and construction hope and. In a way facebook is a bitter pill to be honest. It makes it worse. So for tommy he has friends, one of his friends now is in the u. K. And coming to the launch in london and it just kills him that this guy got a lottery, i got a Lottery Ticket in effect is how it is to get resettled to the u. K. Through the system and to tommy didnt. Its massively on fair and theres no reason why one guy should get it one didnt. Its a total lottery, though, though they see in their facebook groups for example, close group that everybody is talking to each other and people in minnesota and washington, london and stockholm, the posting photos of whats going on in the camp and everybody says wow its changed and dont you remember these days than putting up old photos and theres a lot of love and a lot of support but its also very painful to see some people well off, well fed, having a nice life and others really suffering. One interesting side on this is that i recently checked a facebook profile and it turns out he recently went to paris and theres a photo of him in traffic with his face photoshop to on Wayne Rooneys body. So thats quite common. People say theyre from ohio, london, or wherever or wherever in their constructing these fantasy profiles for themselves look living out this life and laying claims to the images that are inaccessible to them in the camp. But that they can do on facebook. So moving on a bit too another set of people who we follow so these to end up together in some part of the book is so romance places demands on the future but there is a gym a trick that broke many marriages. Can you talk about these individual pressures that how does it play into men and womens relationships with one another and can you talk a bit about that . As i mentioned earlier there is a refugee from al shabab. Before he fled he got married and its very common to marry young the ages going down, they got married when their 16 just before he was kidnapped. When he arrived he had to make a phone call, one thing he wanted to do is make a phone call to tell his wife use okay. Getting hold of cash is very difficult because you are dependent on the un for rations, theres no way of earning a living, you cant work officially because the kenyan government doesnt allow it. So the first thing he did when he got his rations was to sell them so that he could buy a phone call to call his wife and tell her he was okay. Of course when he spoke to her on the phone she said how is it an he said its great theres food, the un will give us a house and maybe we can go to america. He oversold it. Which was a foolish thing to do because then she said well im coming you have to get me a ticket so i can come and how much do you need as you could buy a bus ticket and you could jump the risk over the border. She need 50. Which she was then distraught, how would he get 50 so for several months he tries to find work in the informal plaque economy and the great economy of the market to get work to raise the money so she could come. Long story short, he failed and she found the money another way she comes. Now this is about five or six months after he arrived. When she showed up she has a secret, before he was kidnapped she got pregnant, so so she shows up in a cap six months pregnant and of course its not the paradise he described. Its hundred 10 degrees, its dusty, its overcrowded, there are no houses for newcomers the campus for, she needs juice she needs extra food, theres not enough food basically she has a meltdown and they have a big crisis and she says well at least it mogadishu i had my mother and a washing machine. Here there is nothing. So that tension goes for about two or three years and at various points theres different crisis in their marriage. At several points that she to go back to mogadishu because for her and her equation that is the better option than being in the camp. For him his equation is different. Going back to mogadishu for him means certainly that he will get lynched and al shabab will get revenge. So she is playing down al shabab and meanwhile shes hes playing up the camp. And so and so some of these relationships between men and women are the reason of Domestic Violence in the camp. Yes back to luna and her husband who are under incredible strain for people want to kill their child. Its a standard sad story because they get relocated to a safe area where people were at risk for supposedly protected because its a special area next to the police station. But for those familiar with the kenyan police, its not always the safest place to be. So luna ends up in in a slightly unequal relationship with the policeman. This causes all kinds of problems with monday who normally is a calm generous nice man, but luna falls in with some of the prostitutes who live around and live on the black next to the police camp and things go from bad to worse. The man ends up breaking someones jaw and getting in jail, theres a lot more domestic complex, that story has a happy ending though. We wont give it away for sure. You manage to beautifully capture the details of these relationships and the details of the the choices these people had to make. I know youre a researcher but did it take you a while to gain the trust of these people to be able to tell their stories . What was that like in getting to know them in getting their trust in you. Im always surprised by how willing people are to talk and that is definitely part of the eight years that i work. Especially this project it was astonishing how willing people were and i think thats partly a function of the inequalities of the relationship between refugees and outsiders. Its also a function and effect that you dont have anything do, life is really boring, and to tell your own story is an opportunity to dignify your own story, to give it some sort of meaning, people, people really want to talk about themselves. The curious thing is the refugees themselves dont seem to share their own victim stories with each other because everybody has a founding victim narrative of how they came to the camp. So the selfpity if you like in some respects and nobody really talks about it. So the relation amongst the camp is focused on the now, on the on the political and social, on the struggles of staying alive and to escape the camp. So talkington outsider was perhaps their play but also an opportunity to be on stage in some respect. So i found no difficulty in people tell me all sorts of stuff that they probably shouldnt have. Some i had to edit that did not make it in there. Theyre very willing to talk in a way that i find i tried speaking of and im sure plenty people in this room are part of the ngo development community. I found myself in the book not only worried for the safety of the people in the camp from the kenyan government, from armed groups in danger in the camp, to al shabab, also a little nervous about when ngos came or when budget cuts happens you find yourself really worrying for their wellbeing. There is a part of the book and i found myself holding my breath a little bit. Theres theres a part in the book basically where an indian entrepreneur has an idea and wants to recruit literate grandmothers to go back and it causes a bit of a fuss in the camp. Number one theres questions about vulnerability and number two theres questions of distress. A bit about that and about the responsibility to do no harm to refugees. And what that means for the ngo development community. Well what i tried to do in the campus give the total picture that it took to describe the whole world. Im i have just as much sympathy for the ngo worker and theyre dealing with their own levels of Mental Health problems as well as the refugees, and the ways that those two things interact. If we lowdown to the photo mama story you should lead during the famine of 2011 with her children and she walked 15 days and bound their feet with rakes because of this had treaded the souls of their feet. They generally walked at night because it was cooler than the day. They lived in the camper couple of years and then its called, and to remember the name, Barefoot College by an indian philanthropist who had a project and he takes illiterate grandmothers and trains them in nonverbal methods so they can learn how to be engineers to fix solar panels. The idea is they put solar panels in certain blocks in the camp, the the ones that have been most affected by Sexual Violence and it would powerlite and therefore making the blocks more visible. So tiesha was one of the women selected for the program. The whole thing was done in a haphazard way, the un and really raise their eyebrows and said we need some grandmothers, who wants to, people there handset. In fact was also going on behind the scenes was the community was selecting who they thought they could spare. So for example one lady was chosen because she was the second wife of somebody. Another lady was was chosen because she wasnt illiterate, she was a teacher in somalia. So she did not tell him that she actually could read. Nowhere she a grandmother at that point. She just looked old because she had been through the famine. So he collected the women and said youre going to india and there is promises made but of course the bureaucratic system wont allow that to happen and did not give them any travel documents. Meanwhile nobody told told these women they were not going. So you show was a governor of a school in the camp, she has small business, she liquidated her assets and resigned her position for which she was paid a small amount of money and the family is now back waiting for this phone call and she feels she has conducted herself honorably. She did not want to continue her duties when she knew she was leaving. So this is terrible consequences for this particular family. Until i followed up and told them whats going on on and finally we found the source of the problem and she said can you just take a message for me and tell them to come here and apologize. Obviously that cannot happen. Its interesting because when youre dealing in the sense with selling rations for things that that the refugees have been a sense theyre not powerless in all of this. No not at all. In fact theres other examples of refugees who dont take it seriously at all. They manipulate the agencies processes and procedures. So can we talk about the relationship with kenya . In the book not too long after the Westgate Mall attack there were pronouncements and declarations of accusing the camp of hovering al shabab, can you talk about what impact that had on those types of pronouncements it had on the camp . What i do like about the book is some of the major new stories that we see on our end of the 2011, the westgate attack, we see from the ground and how that really created it and effects. Especially after westgate what happened in the camp after the government threatened to close the camp . That was when the most fascinating things to me was the view, seen the news unfold but from there it looked very different. After all that time in getting to know the lives in the camp when someone says go home pecans are closing, its very, very easy for me to laugh alongside the refugee. However earth is that going to happen . How are you going to wipe out a city the size of new orleans, just like that . People initially after westgate everybody shut their doors and waited. They just assume there is going to be some almighty revenge from nairobi because nairobi continued and they were responsible for terrorism. But it never came. So slowly like a back to normal. But there are consequences because the ngo who were working in the camp they follow the lead of the kenyan government. The kenyan government made this announcement and the ngo has to start planning. They were reluctant to commit money to make investments in programs. So think start shrinking. Then of course when the World Food Program at about the same time and in fact theyve done this every november cents cut rations because they had a funding crunch toward the end of the year. The syrian crisis, the other crisis which we now know about more detail than we did then, means rations are getting cut. So for the refugees the obvious interpretation is youre starving us so we will go back to somalia. Quite a few people did. Hundreds of families to go back. You called the cut in the food rations a crime. It is a crane on it is a crime. Were were asking these people to have hope and to stay in these camps and offering them hope and to return them to their country when its peaceful or resettlement to a third country. But that International Regime is now broken. What i know with some irony is what theyre calling the European National crisis and thats the one victim of a global refugee crisis. This pipeline is broken. Once upon a time people go to the refugee camp and wait for a solution and they had some realistic prospect that perhaps within a decade the situation would be resolved. It would be regularized somehow. What we have now is the cities in limbo which are growing and the numbers of those cities are growing. And people are stuck in the situation. Were asking people and its even harder in kenya where they cant leave raskin people to be contained in this prison when were not even going to feed them. Not even give them enough food to eat. Can you imagine if people in prison would say you only have one meal a day now not even that, the rations are one and a half meals a day so now are saying that youre going to have half a meal a day. Its illegal under american law, these legalities are becoming normalized. Refugees are supposed to have the freedom of movement, the right to work, after seven years under the kenny constitution yourself post have the right to private citizenship. There we too many broken all the time. But nobodys talking about the refugee crisis. As a crime against humanity which im sure there are a lot of human rights which would jump up and down and tell me emotionally its a crime against humanity that all of these laws are broken. People are being confined in these places and being starved. People are dying. Thats a very important thing to understand. What was it like afterwards . The end of the book was a year ago and 2015, the last time was the central character in the book who fled he was in a difficult situation. So by cutting that 30 percent you are shaving off all of your luxurys with nothing talking about the bare minimum to keep alive. And Marion Merrell is pregnant again. So when i met him we went for a meal because i was coming back from my final trip immediately to see if there is anything they wanted me to change and he fell asleep and could not keep his eyes open. And then said it is a right. And is 23 years old. Sons are in this is very emotional. Again that is a very powerful book but in the end it is unfit. End for me as well. And to go back and that is read traumatizing. So in 2013 with the apartheid agreement in your book now to say to repatriate 5,000. So the agreement is september of this year. Does that have any bearing on the situation Going Forward . By and large it is irrelevant. So it is useful to set some numbers against each other according to the formal Legal Process there are around 1,002,000 settlements. Sweden takes around 100 as well. Ms p1000 a month so that will keep pace with the birth rate. And even if you add that it still doesnt keep pace. In any new refugees are coming so this system is totally broken but it is a political thing because kenya definitely wants to shut the camp to say this is wrong or illegal but they buckled under those political reasons and then they follow the money which is fiction. Some of those places are okay to return but it is the solution that everybody is waiting for. It is the side show. But there are all sorts of issues that are not dealt with in that system. Overall to be seen as a much bigger problem but to have this global refugee crisis is for two decades you have a mismatch between the burden sharing in the number of refugees raising. If you look at the historical trend but especially since 9 11 bc rising of an increase of nationalism and also in the United States for a country that has a much more inclusive history so that means the numbers keep going and asked to do nothing with that underlying pipeline to make sure there is a fair and Legal Process. If you have a crisis every six months with the fight about numbers that will keep reoccurring. Were hoping with this book we have a conversation around refugees to address the problems that you have come up with. I think i have seen discussions where were at a certain pitch of those radicalization with Highlevel Panel said are quite large and that can precipitate a sensible discussion from the Media Coverage of the refugee crisis. So for those that are accepting the permanence someone to live there forever as a better situation. To see that these are humane so to except that permanence and allow them to become an open city in the last thing is to get the state out of the way. With a population movements. That it allows the private sponsorship of refugees and they are really expanding. From those communities and that xenophobia you the great as those channels to be opened at more as it has into share that burden we need to be more sophisticated with the nations state to be much more inclusive with those secular administrators and now in europe have a very different history. In to see the places where they live. From the government administered to everybodys needs. Talk about the permanence of the death of and then to be in the desert. With the safety net of food. That city of thorns had a life of its own beyond the refugees so with that i will wrap up our conversation to be open to questions or comments from the audience. Please join me. [applause] and also as he switched to questions please wait for the microphone do you want to call on people and please introduce yourself. And we havent had a chance to a was curious what was a structural the retake several of one time . Editor of the bulletin and with the flow of monetary resources. With the official humanitarian agency to be totally committed that the governments are impeding there are families around the world with the relatives and the funds with banks being shut down some people find ways to get around it so that raises the cost the people should travel freely as many this but not willing to go that far in those you do make it out get a tax break to send funds back to their relatives rather than having all types of problems. I will answer those quickly. So the majority of the are refugees came from 1991 as a take various twists and turns. When about 200,000 people came as a result of the famine. There is loads of support with the different conflicts to flee somalia up. In from Southern Ethiopia that claims somali identities. It is called the smaller program. Another piece is northern kenya. So part of the reason why the jets have had deep seated interest. Not to mention of the rise is the problem with a colonial route that is of a big issue with the restrictions. Everybody survived to some extent. That coping mechanism so if you have to there were 40,000 kenyans in the official refugee population in in the half a million with 2012 but what theyre able to get where well over half a million there were half a million kenyans live in there from other parts of the country. It is the biggest economy the largest for 1,000 miles in any direction. And to develop its own dysfunctional way. Thanks for the book and look forward to reading it. Go back with the crisis and then to go with cherry picking so how would one insure equal protection . If the private sector gets the ball. And to morph and then to close that . In with George Washington university the kenyan government is rather paranoid. About the infiltration of all shibani. Now that may be an exaggeration but i am interested to know your opinion to know how it has penetrated as an operative teammate exaggerate the security. It is totally non existent. I am rather skeptical to the wider region with a free economic enterprise. It is a generic part of kenya is the degradation would result that could be catastrophic in a short period of time with the major demographic environment if he were to do that. Because is supplied from outside but from northeastern kenya with though why it ecosystem is not sustainable 450,000 people to be into the political economy i feel it is the non starter sid you can see the concerns of the kenyan government about that kind of strategy probably sensibly to preserve it so i am interested in your opposition. Says he articulated it talks about closing the degradation and the security threat. And to connect those two questions that is present in the camp but my experience on the main road and it isnt a congenial place to plan anything because you have blocks of very tightly that of the somali who know each other so it is very hard for strangers to show up and the people pass through endless be easier to monitor and then to identify. I dont think there are legitimate reasons because the reasons why can it is hostile is a bit more complicated. To use that there is a terrorist attack with corruption and incompetence. It is much easier political argument to make. Certainly there is an attempt and then to talk about divide and rule. With the provincial list of politics it is barry easy to scapegoat and also convenient to avoid what the Kenyan Military is up to. One of the issues that i discovered that we had spoken about to load and unload sugar and there was the very big business because there were senior people who control this and then they opened a gap in the market. It was worth half a Million Dollars per year. And so there are competing interest and sometimes interests overlap with the human communities and then to talk about the private sector question and then to have a government track in the private sector track and as far as i can tell they complement each other. And they are still drawn as the u. N. Is to control as they were consistent everyone have that crisis that we have now this to talk about the refugees with those in those areas and with the refugee crisis. I was struck by your observation earlier to be in short supply of the everyday manufacturing. Can you share with us your impression . Is their repatriation . Some have voluntarily but what would it take for a good portion of the population . Or alternatively is that prevalent hold in the camp to be able to integrate to the population . Kenya has a Large Corporation and twice in recent years to around those people up so theyre on the watch ed to check the papers or have written it up. Is the of the pretext eventually they were released to try to keep all of the people in camps. It is hard to generalize. So that is not necessarily the case. And with though work permits lebanon obviously is another situation. With the palestinian one is to be supplied from outside supposedly pending international sentiment that never arrived. That were by no means in to in every situation so in times as you will see in the book that one day theyll look forward to move to canada and in going back to somalia. And desperately trying to put that back into somalia. Did it get a chance to talk much it considered going to italy. That is the most talent tangible way out. With much of the time dreaming because europe you can get to the overlap to cost about 10,000 the main reason it is part of the next. Because it is cheaper it is only 2,000 to go from syria to europe but the horn of africa is 10. But to see the extended families investing in one person in this journey. So the stable point of view it is very hard to come by. To figure out who they are and where theyre going every day. I really want to make an observation. But it comes from during my sabbatical was one of vegetarian agencies said when talking earlier how easy it was to build trust i had to reflect on how difficult it was working for humanitarian agencies to talk to people on a human level that you connected with them that is reflected in the book. But on the humanitarian side with health or nutrition and then malaria cases. It is an assembly line. There is no time to really see that living circumstances. I was in the camp in the compound of the ngo. And you could not venture outside without armed guards to have one experienced to be a convoy between the camps in this white guy on the side of the road. But it is amazing that to be in the security bubble to the in the larger bubble into the and the unitarian beneficiaries as they are dedicated to helping but you are providing a service basically. Even when we were having meetings and what was reflected in the book and with that attention to detail and then talk about those political issues ended reflects the refugees of the of global problem so these are not just numbers it a potential terrorist by real people with dealers humanity and dignity and then to care about these people. To be at this time has not looked upon as a terrorist threat. With Refugees International because he had experience with the camps for the refugees come to you so im interested to hear. Dineley ms. Mackenzie smith and a piece of the work that we do is looking at this sorts of crisis through gender line into have experienced to serve of need or lack of access to services so could you speak a little bit more the system the situation of Domestic Violence of multiple child birth and to speak a little bit for gender for men and women. Ion from the embassy of kenya. So if you look at those three generations which are more hopeful to build the country . I will take those three. And it depends on those circumstances and to have to take for mogadishu it you will find brothers and sisters have different opinions based on their ambitions and relationships in material circumstances. And that bureaucratic solution that needs to provide to make their own choices. There are many people who have grown up you were more to mid who will never leave. And then die here but then there are other people who had a bad experience in the camp but everybody is different. But in terms of how gender affects the society there are two interesting studies. Because of the emasculation that felt they no longer had a responsibility because of the policies of the gender mainstream it is like internships a consolation prize. So most of those incentives jobs even the small amounts of money that these internships go to the women. Had with those democratic structures and they are encouraged to run and allowed to run to show them how to run. It is a disproportionate number of women in so those are sidelined and contributing to depression and to react against them. But on the flip side to be of a woman it is a much taller order to live under alshabab. There are more restrictions with your choice of partner and how you dress in debt can be severe as well. In a way going back to somalia. Into a train then goes back to mogadishu. In to on and off the first trip is that i arrived on the day that the workers were kidnapped. My original plan was to live in the camp. And it has been to avoid that. But that was very quickly squashed in the un forbade me from doing that. Because then the u. N. Shuts down and everybody suffers. And then i did go around with security. But they were ted kilometers outside the town itself but there are a lot of people who would tell you otherwise. It to go to peoples houses. And then to sit down and chat with people for an hour to. Bid with the time window and then my window was down to half an hour. And then to ask the questions again. It took a long time but it works in the and. In the peoples willingness to talk. It with the release from the kong go. If you arrive in a place and have nothing to hide it and then had a very different experience in to look after in those circumstances. It in the human rights you are in the convoy. In the fund rates after we talk about i remember one particular girl. What she talked about being gang raped in prison in ethiopia. Afterwords we went outside she made hopscotch in the compound and the five men and her and others played half an hour while waiting. And did you see another side of people. And kai wanted to get that from my initial experiences. From the human stories as well. And the whole equation. In the english purves league football. To work questions. I heard you on the radio this afternoon with a utility contractor i have a fundamental question. The utilities electric water to speak about a generator that was being used doesnt make sense to even talk about the electrical grid in the camps . And if so who built it . Can you speak more about that . I was a little alarmed when you said you wanted to replace the nation the you to go without borders and now you mention europe with the alarming story that just happened in germany and they have large words of refugees and they believe the women it is sure fall. And then he just wandered into a police station. What is your opinion to bring in People Better culturally different . All countries should take their fair share. To be with every country stepping up. It is unfair the european United States should bear a bigger burden than the other economies. But perhaps because they have more of an idea. It to be more intolerable. They were groping them because theyre refugees but because they were badly behaved and traumatized people. The law applies to everybody. Because of somebodys race with the country of origin is somehow worse. And it isnt a meaningful argument. It is far is the utilitys the story about the generator the fact that there is no electrical grid. There is no plumbing or roads there is no sanitation in the water comes from holes drilled into the ground and it is ground water that comes up in every block has the tap everybody on the block cast to officiate philip every morning from the tap. And then you carry that back home. You use that to wash or cook or sew on. Theyre only son various with enterprising people. And then to be in the middle class. It to have more than the heathers. If there was an ability to create more access . It wouldnt be allowed because the government does not want that in the camp. En to remain in temporary. To cause the stabilize soil blocks that they hope they would agree to because theyre not so permanent. They have test houses in theyll look fantastic and the refugees were happy and government officials said they look too much like houses. Everybody is building items by a corrugated iron and two by fours. But could some people just start pouring concrete . They could bid is a legal. Thank you so much. So on behalf of the open society we want to think you for being here today. [applause] now we will switch to the book signing if you would like to purchase the book there is the book for sale just outside. Then we will switch over to a reception that i hope everyone will join us for. And then we will clear the tears away. It will be a little chaotic so bear with us. If you do not have a booktv signed but would like to stay please exit through the doors and wait in the of bobby. There is a great photography exhibit on display. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]