Is it Voluntary?

In November 2013, following a terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, the Foreign Ministries of Somalia and Kenya along with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agreed to facilitate the repatriation of all Somalia nationals living in Dadaab, citing Kenya’s concerns over national security. Following the Garissa University attack in April 2015, in which al-Shabaab killed 148 students, the government’s resolve to take action hardened. Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto announced that all remaining refugees in Dadaab would have to be repatriated by that September. Although this deadline came and went, and the Kenyan government has since admitted it will be too difficult to evacuate the camps by November 2016 as later promised, the spectre of Dadaab’s closure still hangs over the remaining 260,00-odd Somali refugees living in its five camps. The voluntary repatriation process is expected to end in 2018. Those who won’t go back, UNHCR has said, will be resettled in a third country, while non-Somali refugees will be rehoused at the Kakuma refugee camp in the north of the country. In addition, there are an estimated 40,000 Kenyan citizens of Somali origin thought to be living in Dadaab (primarily because they receive free food rations, according to a report by the Danish Refugee Council).

The country’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Mwenda Njoka explains, “Kenya’s refugee policy is to provide temporary stay for refugees and to let them go back home.”

In practical terms, this means that most refugees are only permitted to live in camps, unless they are seeking hospital treatment or pursuing further education. At present, it is almost impossible for a refugee to secure the legal right to work in Kenya.

“The Kenyan authorities are not giving Somali refugees a real choice between staying and leaving, and the UN refugee agency isn’t giving people accurate information about security conditions in Somalia,” said Human Rights Watch (HRW) refugee rights director Bill Frelick in a press statement. “There is no way these returns can be considered voluntary,” which goes against international law.

Dadaab - A refuge?

When people fled the civil war in Somalia they hoped their  stay across the border in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp would be short-lived. Twenty-five years and three generations on of refugees 350,000 Somalis call this barren, dusty settlement, home. Dadaab was initially established as a temporary haven for some 90,000 refugees fleeing the 1991 clan fighting. It is now a sprawling, bustling complex of five camps, boasting cinemas and soccer leagues – the third largest city in Kenya, after Nairobi and Mombasa. Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee complex. It is a commercial hub, with refugees running successful businesses from bakeries to designer boutiques. It provides services and a ready market for locals, and a huge tax return to the Kenyan government. A report commissioned by the governments of Norway, Denmark and Kenya in 2010 found that the camps’ businesses generated an annual turnover of around $25 million. The host community earned some $1.8 million from the sale of livestock alone to refugees.

“We pay a heavy tax to the government every year. Much more money than what they collect from the locals. Yet they don’t give back anything to us,” said Ali Kasim, a member of one of Dadaab’s business associations. “We cannot challenge them. Unlike the host community, who are not afraid to demand their rights.”

One reason for Dadaab’s growth is the Kenyan government’s strict encampment policy, which prevents refugees from settling outside. Most governments have traditionally seen this as convenient logistically, and as a way to reduce potential friction with host communities. It’s increasingly argued that refugee camps should only be a last resort as they create more problems than they solve. They are not only unsustainable over the long term – damaging to the environment and a turn-off for donors – but in corralling refugees behind their gates, they also deny them basic rights and freedoms.

Dadaab is under the overall control of the Kenyan government and UN refugee agency, UNHCR. But its five camps – Dagahaley, Hagadera, Ifo and more recent additions Ifo II and Kambioos – are in practical terms run by democratically-elected community volunteers.

“We work hand in hand with the aid agencies. We have developed a very smooth system where we coordinate all the activities of the camps ranging from sanitation to security,” explained Rukia Ali Rage, the chairwoman of Ifo camp. "It would be impossible for UNHCR and its partner agencies to implement their programmes without the support of the community leaders,” she told IRIN. 

Rage took over the leadership of Ifo in a camp-wide election in 2014, and is due to step down when her term ends later this year. It’s a lesson in democracy that the Somali government in Mogadishu, where elections are also due this year, will hopefully emulate.

The role of community leaders became significant out of necessity. UN staff temporarily pulled out of Dadaab in 2011 following the kidnapping of aid workers, and youth volunteers took over running the camps' basic services.

“We have an umbrella youth consortium consisting of several youth groups. Each group carries out a project that is similar to the ones run by the UN and its implementing partners,” said Ali Hussein, deputy chair of the Ifo youth consortium. “In this way, we not only develop our capacity, but we also hold the agencies accountable and help our community in return.”

But while that is positive, “the biggest challenge we have is that we are not involved in the initial design of the projects,” said Rage.  “We would like to be given a more active role in the decision-making at the early stage so that we can better represent the interest of the people of concern.”

A big threat hangs over Dadaab. With the rise of al-Shabab and its high-profile attacks inside Kenya, politicians have been quick to accuse the camps of providing sanctuary and support to the jihadists. That ignores the fact that al-Shabab also recruits - highly successfully - among non-ethnic Somalis in Kenya. In April last year, Deputy President William Ruto ordered the closure of Dadaab and the return of all refugees following an al-Shabab attack on Garissa University – 100km to the southwest – that killed 142 students. Under international pressure, and following an uproar from human rights groups, he backpedaled.

Only a modest 5,000 refugees have taken advantage of a repatriation programme that began in December 2014.  Most of those who have volunteered are the relatively new arrivals that entered Dadaab between 2006 and 2011, fleeing violence and famine.

“We have been here for more than 20 years and we have nowhere to return to. Our homes were destroyed during the conflict,” said Abukar Ahmed, a long-term resident of Ifo camp. “Those who are returning arrived only a few years ago and have all their belongings intact.”

Abdirashid Abdullahi, with Dadaab’s Gargaar humanitarian FM radio, explained.

“For a significant number of refugees, the only home they know is Kenya. So keeping them in camps against their will is not helping them,” he said. “It’s time to review the repatriation process and look for other sustainable solutions to bring an end to the world’s largest refugee complex.”

Back to Africa

The world is accustomed to stories of refugees fleeing Africa. But it is not always one-way traffic. Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told a news briefing that the historical flow of refugees from the Horn of Africa to Yemen – which has contributed almost all of the 250,000 refugees registered in Yemen – was now reversing. In the past 10 days, some 900 people have crossed the Gulf Aden to Djibouti, Somalia's Puntland and Somaliland.

The UN refugee agency said on Friday it is preparing to receive as many as 130,000 refugees who could flee by boat to Africa to escape the conflict in Yemen, even as it works to help hundreds of thousands of other refugees and Yemenis under threat inside the country.

"With 14 out of Yemen's 22 governorates affected by air strikes or armed conflict, UNHCR yesterday issued a position paper to governments calling on all countries to allow civilians fleeing Yemen access to their territories," said Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UN refugee agency called on all countries to suspend the forced return of people to Yemen. Ironically, even as refugees flee Yemen for Africa, UNHCR said hundreds of asylum seekers -- either unaware of the situation or already in the hands of people smugglers -- continued to arrive on the shores of Yemen. Edwards appealed for ships in the Gulf of Aden to come to the rescue of any boats carrying refugees – to or from Yemen -- that were in distress. “The refugees tell us many more people are trying to leave Yemen but are being prevented from doing so by fuel shortages and high fees charged by boat operators," Edwards said. "Ports are said to be closed and boats not allowed to depart."

UNHCR is making contingency plans to receive up 30,000 refugees over the next six months in Djibouti, which already hosts nearly 15,000 refugees. In Somaliland and Puntland, Somalia, UNHCR and its partners have started preparations to receive up to 100,000 people. Those escaping Yemen include both refugees who had originally fled from Africa to Yemen and Yemenis fleeing their own country.

Inside Yemen UNHCR operations are continuing where possible to assist the 250,000 refugees, 330,000 Yemenis displaced by previous violence, and the thousands more affected by violence in the last two weeks. The refugees are mainly Somalis, with some Eritreans, Ethiopians, Iraqis and Syrians. Edwards said in Al Kharaz refugee camp in the south of Yemen, where humanitarian services continue for 18,000 Somali refugees already there, shelter and other aid is being provided to additional people who are fleeing fighting in urban areas.

After World Refugee Day - - -

As Kenya continues to round up and detain refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers in a controversial anti-terrorism operation, fears are mounting over the fate of around 300 children separated from parents arrested during the sweeps. Some of these children are reported to be held in a Nairobi stadium used as a temporary detention facility, without a parent or guardian.

“Our concern is the separation of some 300 children, including babies as young as a few months, from their mothers and fathers or customary care-givers and foster parents,” said Emanuel Nyabera, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesman in Kenya.

Since early April, some 4,000 arrests have been made in Operation Usalama Watch, mostly of Somali nationals, but also Kenyans of Somali origin as well as nationals of other countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo. Around 2,000 of those arrested have been transferred to the country’s two refugee complexes. Some 359 have been deported to Somalia.


from here