Communication in Protracted Refugee Encampment: A Humanitarian and Development Approach to Youth Engagement: Practice Brief

This practice brief, Communication in Protracted Refugee Encampment: A Humanitarian and Development Approach to Youth Engagement, is the product of a collaborative research partnership between FilmAid Kenya and Dr Valentina Baú from the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI). Bringing together practitioner expertise and academic research, the partnership reflects a shared commitment to strengthening evidence-informed approaches to youth engagement in contexts of protracted displacement.

FilmAid Kenya’s long-standing presence in refugee camps and its extensive experience in participatory media, communication for development, and youth-focused programming provided a critical foundation for this work. At the same time, the empirical findings underpinning this brief arise from collaborative research conducted in refugee camp settings and consider how young people themselves use, adapt, and create media and communication practices as part of everyday life in conditions of long-term encampment.

Rather than focusing solely on organisational interventions, this brief centres young people as communicators, cultural actors and social participants. It explores how media and communication function as tools for expression, connection, learning and negotiation in environments marked by uncertainty, restricted mobility and limited formal opportunities. In doing so, it highlights the ways young people engage with both formal humanitarian communication initiatives and informal, youth-led media practices that often operate beyond programmatic frameworks.