Since it was established in 1967 under a charter from the Child Welfare Society of Kenya, children have come to Arap Moi Children's Home from all over the Nakuru region of western Kenya. Some are placed at the home by the Children's Department in the Ministry of Home Affairs or by the Ministry of Health. Other children are abandoned in hospitals or recovered from the streets by police and later brought to the home. "The community knows we are here, and knows we can help," says Mrs Justine "Mama" Oduya, the home's director and regional coordinator of the Child Welfare Society of Kenya, Nakuru branch.

In early March this year, over 2,300 Rwandans arrived at the Kibungo transit camp, a centre that receives Rwandan refugees returning from Tanzania. These were not the usual refugees. They were Rwandans living within the local community near the border and had never been in the camps. When the governments of Rwanda and Tanzania had signed an agreement to repatriate all Rwandan nationals living in Tanzania as refugees, these people had not considered themselves part of the target group. Over several weeks in early March, they had been identified and evicted as illegal immigrants. "Most of them left Rwanda in the 1980's, some of them were born there [Tanzania]," Odette Nyiramirimo, the Secretary of State for Social Affairs in the Ministry of Local Administration told Internews.