Thursday, November 28, 2013
An aerial view of the Dagahaley refugee camp which makes up part of the giant Dadaab refugee settlement on July 19, 2011 in Dadaab, Kenya. The refugee camp at Dadaab, located close to the Kenyan border with Somalia, was originally designed in the early 1990s to accommodate 90,000 people but the UN estimates over 4 times as many reside there. The ongoing civil war in Somalia and the worst drought to affect the Horn of Africa in six decades has resulted in an estimated 12 million people whose lives are threatened.
(July 18, 2011 - Source: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)
A Kenyan plan to get rid of Somali refugees is harsh and ill-designed
It is time for the 500,000-odd citizens of Somalia living in Kenya to go home—that is, according to Kenya’s interior minister, Joseph Ole Lenku. He visited the sprawling Dadaab camp near Kenya’s border with Somalia on November 23rd to tell the nearly 400,000 refugees there that it was closing time. “The time for debate” over whether it was safe for them to return to their conflict-ridden country was past, he told them. “There is no turning back on the process [of repatriation] of refugees.”
This has rattled the UN’s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). While progress in some parts of Somalia is stumbling ahead after two decades of civil war, the country remains one of the world’s most dangerous. Refugees have rights under international law; strict conditions must be met before they can be sent home. Normally a survey would be conducted to establish whether they think it is safe to return. Little of this appears to have happened before a deal was signed on November 10th between the UNHCR and the governments of Somalia and Kenya.
“We have quite a few spontaneous returns,” says Raouf Mazou, who heads the UNHCR in Kenya. The agreement was meant to “facilitate” such voluntary returnees, he insists, rather than deport any of those who wished to stay.
Human-rights groups are concerned that the UNHCR has been pushed into an agreement that looks harmless on paper but will be used to drive unwelcome refugees back over the border. Kenya’s government is keen to look tough on Somali immigrants in the wake of a recent terrorist attack in Nairobi, the capital, for which the Shabab, a Somali militia allied to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility.
But where, then, would the refugees go? Mr Mazou says that three places in southern and central Somalia have been chosen: Luuk, Baidoa and the port of Kismayo. The UNHCR has a duty to protect the returnees, which it says it will do with the help of Somalia’s government. But Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Somalia’s president, has no authority over Kismayo. An erstwhile stronghold of the Shabab, it is now run by a former warlord, Ahmed Madobe, who rejects Mr Mohamud’s authority. The UNHCR has no international staff at any of the trio of places because they are not considered safe enough. If the refugees are kicked out of Dadaab, they may seek a haven elsewhere—but not in Somalia.