Hiiraan Online
3/29/2024
Today from Hiiraan Online:
Home
Somali Map
Sports
Opinion
RSS
Somali Music
Contact Us
Facebook
Twitter
Google Plus
advertisements
Human Rights Watch faults State plan to relocate refugees to camps
Standard
Thursday, May 30, 2013
advertisements
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has termed the Urban Refugee Relocation Plan as unlawful citing real risk of further violence and abuses against refugees.
HRW is asking the Government to refrain from relocating refugees to the camps and stop putting pressure on them to return to Somalia as it is still insecure and mired with conflict.
“The authorities have repeatedly made statements indicating that they think all Somalis should now return to their country yet Somalia is not safe for return. Kenya should not force Somalis back to their country but should ensure they continue to receive assistance and protection until they feel safe to return,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at HRW.
Last year, Kenya’s Department of Refugees Affairs (DRA) announced that all refugees and asylum seekers living in Nairobi should move to the country’s closed refugee camps near the Somali and Sudanese borders (Dadaab and Kakuma respectively) or face forced relocation and that all registration of, and services for urban refugees would immediately end.
A report by HRW shows that according to the statement by DRA, the move to relocate them was because of an unbearable and uncontrollable threat to national security caused by grenade attacks on streets, churches, buses and business places that have killed and injured many people.
The report indicates that the transfer announcement fails to show that the plan to force tens of thousands of refugees living in Kenya’s cities into closed camps is necessary to achieve enhanced national security.
It reveals that if carried out, the plan would be an unneccessary and disproportionate response to national security concerns.
Simpson said that tranferring refugees from cities to squalid, overcrowded and closed refugee camps facing a funding shortfall would violate a range of their rights.
S. Africa: Somali man killed in Port Elizabeth
- Sapa
South Africa: All Somali shops in Booysen Park looted
- News24
Journalist shot in Somalia - officials
- AFP
Regional competing interests in Somalia threaten its progress
- MEOL
Kenyan girls win landmark rape case against police
- Reuters
Internally Displaced Women: Record Number, Unresolved Challenges
- Brookings Institution
Kenya: Calm Returns to Damajaley After Al Shabaab Attack
- The Star
European Union: IEBC conducted credible elections
- EU
Holidays in Somalia? Mogadishu hopes to be tourist hotspot
- CNN
Terror suspect dies in Garissa IED explosion
- Capital FM Kenya
Somalia: IFJ Hails Somalia Conference for Promoting Media Peace and Safety
- IFJ
Kenyan president moves to slash wages, continue war in Somalia
- WSWS
SeaTac, Wash: Community Building Committee Formed
- SeaTac City C.
Home
Email