When the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya had swollen to about 230,000 people, hundreds of new arrivals gathered each morning outside UNHCR registration offices before staff arrived. For people who had fled Somalia, registration was the entrance to an aid system.
The three adjoining camps had become one of the world's oldest, largest, and most congested refugee sites. The queue began before the office opened because arrivals were outpacing administrative capacity.
Waiting here was not a voluntary inconvenience. It was the first procedure through which displaced people could make themselves visible to an institution and gain a route to assistance.