Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which Somali refugee women navigate maternal health services in a context of displacement and legal ambiguity in Nairobi.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, UNHCR and their implementing partners have sought to make reproductive health services more accessible for refugees, while simultaneously attempting to improve the services and conditions for the urban refugees, that now make up more than half of the world's displaced population. Yet in Kenya, where the leading causes of death for refugee women of reproductive age are related to childbearing and birth, thousands of Somali women seek maternal health services in private facilities, thereby refusing humanitarian responses and interventions. Drawing on ethnographic research among Somali refugees in Nairobi, this paper examines why such women reject both state and NGO services, and how they navigate a multitude of private facilities. In doing so, this paper illuminates the ways in which kinship networks are made and remade in contexts of displacement and uncertainty.