The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has announced today that the IKEA Foundation is donating 43 million euro to spend on emergency aid in the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab in Kenya. The gift is said to be the largest private donation ever made to the UNHCR.
The Dadaab camp opened in 1990 to accommodate people who fled Somalia because of the war and droughts in the East-African country. The camp was meant to be used by 90,000 people, but it is currently home to 440,000 – over 150,000 have Somalia in the last few months.
While Ikea’s help can ‘only’ aid 120,000 people, this huge donation comes “at a critical time”, according to UN High Commissioner António Guterres. The Ikea foundation, founded to promote architecture and interior design, expanded its scope to children’s rights and education when parent company Ikea was attacked for using child labour in its supply chain. In 2009, the Foundation widened its attention further to the general improvement of living conditions in the third world.
