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Kenya will not force Somali refugees out, despite impending camp closure
Kenya will not forcibly repatriate some 336,000 Somalis living in one of the world’s largest refugee camps – the Dabaab camp – however, the Kenyatta administration intends to continue with its plans to close the camp within 3 months for security reasons, an official said.
Following a major attack by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militants that originated in Somalia, with some links to the same refugee camp, earlier this month, Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto has given the United Nations until July to relocate all the refugees from the camp.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) and international charities have urged the Kenya government to reconsider its decision, fearing refugees’ lives would be in danger if they are forced back to Somalia.
“While we are committed to the return of all refugees, more so Somali refugees, you will not see us holding people by the head and the tail and throwing them into lorries to take them across the border,” Ali Bunow Korane, chair of Kenya’s refugee affairs commission, said on Wednesday in Nairobi.
He was speaking at a meeting of U.N. officials, aid agencies and civil society, organized by the Rift Valley Institute think tank, to discuss the implications of closing the Dadaab camp.
The camp, near Kenya’s northern border with Somalia, is an hour’s drive from the Kenyan town of Garissa where al-Shabaab Islamist militants killed 148 people at a university on April 2.
Kenyan security officials have determined that the militants use the camp as a hideout.
“The group which attacked the Garissa University earlier this month – they stayed in the refugee camps,” said Korane. “They assembled their arms there.”
Kenya has targeted illegal Somali immigrants after previous attacks by Somali militants. After the 2013 siege in Nairobi’s upmarket Westgate shopping mall, the police arrested thousands of illegal immigrants in Nairobi and took them to refugee camps, describing it as a security measure.
UNHCR’s chief, Antonio Guterres, is due to visit Kenya and Somalia on Tuesday to discuss the Kenyatta administration’s plans. Kenya has requested the U.N. to pay for the mass repatriation.
