Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Nairobi
(AFP) - Kenya said Wednesday it had set aside $10 million to help fund
the closing of the world's largest refugee camp, home to around 350,000
mostly Somali refugees, citing security fears.
Kenya hosts around 600,000 refugees, some of whom have lived in the country for a quarter of a century.
On
Friday an interior ministry official announced a plan to refuse new
refugee arrivals and shut Dadaab on the Kenya-Somalia border.
"For
reasons of pressing national security that speak to the safety of
Kenyans in a context of terrorist and criminal activities, the
government ... has commenced the exercise of closing Dadaab Refugee
Complex," Interior Minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery told a press conference
in Nairobi.
"The refugees will be repatriated to their countries of origin or to third party countries for resettlement," Nkaissery said.
Nkaissery
said the government would provide $10 million (just under nine million
euros) "to kick-start the repatriation process and subsequent closure of
Dadaab", adding that a timetable was being drawn up.
Charities
and the UN refugee agency are dismayed by the plan while human rights
groups have warned that forcibly repatriating refugees would break
international law.
Nkaissery
repeated claims that terrorist attacks on Nairobi's Westgate shopping
mall, at Kenya's Garissa university and elsewhere, "were planned and
deployed from Dadaab refugee camp by transnational terrorists," but no
credible evidence has yet been provided to support these allegations.
Nkaissery compared Kenya's Somali refugees to Syrian refugees in Europe.
"ISIS
has taken advantage of refugee inflows and processes to install its
destructive cells. So much so that governments across Europe and the
Middle East have taken unprecedented efforts to limit refugee inflows
into their countries on the grounds of national security," he said.
Nkaissery
said Kenya, too, faces a potential threat from the Islamic State group,
adding: "Kenya cannot look aside and allow this threat to escalate any
further."
"This
decision has been made by government reflecting the fact that the camps
have become hosting grounds for Al-Shebab as well as centres of
smuggling and contraband trade besides being enablers of illicit weapons
proliferation," Nkaissery said, referring to Somalia's Al-Qaeda aligned
group.
Dadaab
residents, aid agencies on the ground and independent observers deny
that Islamic militants find a safe haven there, while numerous reports
have highlighted the role of corrupt Kenyan officials in the smuggling
of charcoal, sugar and people through Dadaab.