The government of Kenya has ordered that the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps hosting over 500,000 persons be shut down within fourteen days.
The government on Tuesday gave the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) a two-week ultimatum to ensure closure of the facilities, failing which it plans to relocate the refugees to the border with Somalia.
Citing national security concerns, the government states that refugees within the camps have been linked to accomplices of the Somali-based Al-Shabaab militant group within the camps.
The camps have been in operation since the early 1990s, when Somalia plunged into civil war. Besides straining resources, Kenya says national security has been comprised through terror attacks reportedly planned from the sprawling camps “while the international community continues to pay lip service.
Interior Cabinet Secretary, Fred Matiangí, yesterday communicated the Kenyan government’s decision to the UNHCR representative in Kenya, Fathiaa Abdalla. The Matiangí was accompanied by his PS, Karanja Kibicho, and Chief Administrative Secretary Hussein Dado.
“There is no room for negotiations” about the closure¸ Matiangí reportedly told the UNHCR delegation.
Dadaab camp hosts 224,462 refugees while Kakuma has 206,458. Majority of the 512,494 refugees are from Somalia (274,299) while the rest are from neighbouring countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan among others.
Matiangí had invited the UNHCR delegation for talks at Harambee House, arising from Kenya’s concerns that the international community had reneged on a previous agreement to repatriate the refugees.
“We must strike a balance between Kenya’s international obligations and her domestic duty. We do have a domestic responsibility to protect Kenyans,” Matiangí said.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government had initially agreed on the repatriation in November 2013 with Somalia and the UNHCR, which would have seen the refugees return home over a three-year period.
However, only 14,000 had been repatriated by April 2016 and the following month Kenya set another timeline for the closure of the Dadaab refugee complex, by November 30, 2016. The government is this time determined to see to it that the refugees are all repatriated within the next four months.
Nairobi maintains that proceeds from the contraband trade including smuggling of khat, and sugar from Somalia into Kenya have been used to finance Al-Shabaab operations.
Kenya cited intelligence that the refugee camps are a breeding grounds for terrorism including planning of terror attacks by Al-Shabaab militants. Terror attacks on Westgate mall in 2013, Lamu’s Mpeketoni in 2014 and Garissa University in 2015 were purportedly planned from the camps.
