Many refugee and IDP camps existing today were originally created as only temporary relief centers, yet for too many they have become long-term encampments. Living within these camps are a fragmented peoples from a war-torn society who have become disconnected from their original social framework, even from society at large, and from the security and protection of a sovereign nation-state. They are left with little or no opportunity for human or economic development. They are left suspended in a no man’s land surviving with a dis-ease I term Camp Coma, with an inability to develop a secured community structure. Though there are many complex and seemingly unresolvable problems and circumstances, there is one area that can help to alleviate Camp Coma.

Its functional design that would help to provide the necessary framework for the transition from relief to rehabilitation, to human development and ultimately communal freedom from the social, political, and even economic doldrums that effect so many in refugee encampments. I am proposing here, in this design draft, is at the early stage of a camp’s set up is to consider and utilize urban planning concepts to help community development to take place naturally, and to add utilitarian design elements based upon ancient fortifications for a self governing security system to take hold. Such a planning design would create a non-violent defensive strategy that maximizes the use of space-to-force ratio, thereby creating an environment that ensures ease of providing equitable distribution of services and resources by relief agencies, and at the same time create a natural and man made barrier for the community to develop a system of self-protection against human rights abuses from outsiders who look to prey upon them.