Repatriation of Somali refugees from Dadaab easier said than done

Dadaab Refugee Camp, The largest Refugee Camp in the world.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

NAIROBI: One of the immediate (and unfortunate) reactions following the Garissa University attack was a call by Muslim leaders from North Eastern that the Dadaab Refugee Camp - established in 1991 as Somalia imploded after the ouster of former President Siad Barre - should be closed.

To them, the camp has stopped being a place of refuge and become a recruiting and training ground for the Al-Shabaab terror group that has claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed nearly 500 Kenyans since 2013.

Deputy President William Ruto's proclamation that the Government has ordered the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to close the camp within three months or Kenya will forcefully repatriate the more than 500,000 refugees in the camp is the stuff of political campaigns.

Despite that, we understand Mr Ruto's anger and deep frustration: he is aware that come 2017, he and his boss President Uhuru Kenyatta will be hard-pressed to explain away the security lapses to a citizenry growing increasingly impatient about unkept promises of safety.

Understandably, Ruto reckons that after 24 years, Somali nationals ought to have grown weary of the sound of bombs and bullets ringing in their neighbourhood. That is easier said than done. The dynamics playing out in Somalia have confounded the world. Moreover, Kenya is a signatory to the Geneva Convention that outlaws the forceful removal of people considered vulnerable as they flee war or such situations. Secondly, the provisions of a Tripartite Agreement between UNHRC, Kenya and Somalia signed in 2013 on the voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees to safe areas seems to have achieved little. Also, a blanket condemnation of refugees at Dadaab is not fair.

Yet many will view Mr Ruto's pronouncement as a red herring to cover up for the ghastly flaws in the security machinery. Wouldn't it be like sending sheep to the slaughterhouse were the refugees to be sent to a land still torn apart by sectarian war? Kenya's approach to the Somalia equation has been on two levels: political and military.

Before the Kenya Defence Forces rode into Somalia in 2011, Kenya played a key role in the establishment of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia in 2004 that transitioned to the Federal Parliament. Then, law and order in Somalia looked so near, so real. Those efforts went to waste. But it is not yet time to give up.

Other than building a wall to keep away would-be-terrorists, the least Kenya can do is force the hand of political leaders in Somalia to form a stable, all-inclusive Government that will take care of the interests and aspirations of all Somalia nationals.

The rest of the world can help in many ways. Most importantly, it ought to acknowledge that Somalia is not solely a Kenyan problem. The threat of homegrown Jihadism in London, New York or Paris is as real, as it is in Nairobi.

Cases of immigrants going back to Somalia to get intoxicated by the terror gospel have been on the increase. In other words, the world is less safe as long as Somalia is a lawless outpost on the world map. Rather than washing its hands of Somalia, it would help more if Kenya were involved in the exploration of other options to make peace in that nation a reality.

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