Kenya has vowed to close the world’s biggest refugee camp within a year and send hundreds of thousands of Somalis back to their war-torn homeland or on to other countries, a plan decried by aid and human rights groups as dangerous, illegal and impractical.
Kenya says it needs to close the sprawling Dadaab camp, home to 330,000 mostly Somali refugees, to protect the country’s security after a string of terror attacks by al-Shabaab.
The Somalia-based militant group was behind the massacre of nearly 150 students at a university last summer and the Westgate mall siege in Nairobi in 2013, as well as other deadly attacks.
The Kenyan interior minister, Joseph Nkaissery, said al-Shabaab fighters used the camp as a base for smuggling weapons.
“For reasons of pressing national security that speak to the safety of Kenyans in a context of terrorist and criminal activities, the government of the Republic of Kenya has commenced the exercise of closing Dadaab refugee complex,” he said at a news conference in Nairobi.
“The refugees will be repatriated to their countries of origin or to third-party countries for resettlement.”Kenya’s second-biggest camp, in Kakuma, which largely houses refugees from South Sudan, appears to have been spared for now, although earlier government announcements had said all refugees would be told to leave. Those at Dadaab have been given until the end of May 2017 to depart Kenya.
The United Nations and aid groups have said the closure of one or both camps could be devastating, and said that even if Kenya tries to push ahead, it may not be possible to force large numbers of people over the border into a country where a war is still raging.
William Swing, director general of the International Organization for Migration, said: “It’s very difficult to send people back to Somalia. We’ve done some returns there, [people] who wanted to go back, but there are only certain areas they can go back to.”
When asked if there was a precedent for forcibly removing refugees on such an immense scale as from Dadaab, he said: “I haven’t seen large numbers.”
Human Rights Watch said it feared that a government desperate to empty the camps might resort to abuse and violence. Gerry Simpson, a senior researcher and advocate for the refugee programme, said such tactics were used three years ago when the Kenyan government decided to move refugees from scattered lives in cities into camps.
“Do they have buses to take 350,000 people across the border? No, so I think the aim of sowing fear though abuses and harassment is likely to be the strategy,” he said. Simpson cited rape, extortion, fear, beatings and arbitrary detention among the abuses that pushed Somalis to flee the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
“Back in 2013, that strategy was pretty successful – thousands of Somalis left because of the overall level of abuse against the community,” he added.
It is questionable whether there will be any security improvements. The border is porous and people pushed back across it might return again to Kenya. Without food or shelter, they could be easier recruits for extremist groups in both countries.
“Refugees in the country have fled the very violence the authorities say they are trying to combat,” said Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK. “If the closure of the camps goes ahead, it will have devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of refugees.
“Forcing them back to violence and persecution is as immoral as it is unlawful, and risks increasing instability and displacement in the region.”
More than a dozen aid groups who work in the camps, including Oxfam, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee, have called on the Kenyan government to reconsider the move.
“Shutting down the refugee camps will mean increased protection risks for the thousands of refugees and asylum seekers – [the] majority of who are women, children and unaccompanied minors,” they said in a joint statement.
“The current humanitarian situation in Somalia and South Sudan remains dire and fragile. Somalia is faced with drought and other security risks that are likely to see an increase in displacement and vulnerability.”
Kenya has previously threatened to close its camps, but has always backed down. This time, however, the government appears to be more serious, having set a timeline and budget, and disbanded the Department of Refugee Affairs.
That has left refugees and the humanitarian organisations that work with them in administrative limbo, unable to get travel passes that they need to move around Kenya for studies or urgent medical treatment.
Kenya may be willing to back away from the plans if it receives more international support, aid groups say. The government has been increasingly frustrated by what it sees as tepid backing for a voluntary resettlement programme returning refugees to Somalia.
The refugee population has decreased, but not quickly enough for the Kenyan government, which is worried that militant violence has sown fear and damaged the economy, perhaps especially so with an election on the horizon.
Aid organisations and the IOM are calling for greater support for Kenya and neighbouring countries that have provided refuge to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the conflicts in Somalia, South Sudan and other parts of the region.
Swing said: “The refugee camp situation in Kenya is complicated because, like many of its neighbours in east [Africa] and the Horn of Africa, Kenya has looked after large numbers of refugees and is host to the largest refugee camp in the world.”
Europe’s refugee crisis and the fallout from the war in Syria are absorbing so much aid and international attention that other emergencies are being neglected, he suggested. “These countries which carry the burden of hosting refugees on a scale far higher and for far longer than anything experienced in Europe today must not be left in the lurch.”
