Refugee Needs: Physiological, Psychological, Psychosocial, or Spiritual? Dignity Approach to Refugee Assistance in Kakuma Refugee Camp

The influx of refugees around the world has been increasing exponentially these last years, and refugee assistance became a plight. Current aid and relief agencies' approach to refugee assistance primarily parallels Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory that prioritizes fulfilling biological and physical needs over psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs. I argue that Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory presents needs in a static progression, as if the satisfaction of needs was linearly determined, and furthermore ignores the value of psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs as basic human needs inherent to human dignity.

Moreover, I challenge the aid and relief agencies' approach to refugee assistance as negating refugees’ ultimate concerns and mastery over their life. The indignities generated by this neglect of refugees’ basic needs are in a permanent interaction, creating a general malaise characterized by depletion of purpose, the energy of which leads refugees into a problematic reentry into everyday life and purpose. In the long term, I argue that neglecting refugees' voices and ignoring their psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs results in a cycle of indignity during the encampment process, and also portends readjustment problems following repatriation or resettlement.

I then problematize both this hierarchy as well as aid and relief agencies' approach to refugee assistance through ethnographic research on the dynamic relationship between well-being and satisfaction of needs/worries among refugees (n=49) from the Great Lakes Region refuges living in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. Data analysis of interviews and participation observation suggested a complex process in which lower attention and/or neglect paid to refugees' voices, and their non-biological/physical needs resulted in long-term to decline of well-being, including a general malaise. This in turn fed back into and affected bio-physical well-being, and resulted in an overall observed depletion of purpose, creating a legacy of indignity.

Based on my findings, I suggest that relief providers understand that psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs are as important as bio-physical needs. Furthermore, it is only when humans come to grasp with their own dignity that they are capable of making their life useful. Hence, I provide a dignity approach to refugee assistance, an alternative approach to Maslow, wherein human physical, biological, psychological, psychosocial, and spiritual needs are interconnected and interdependent i.e., they influence and complete each other in a dynamic web of intersections and interactions.