Wednesday, March 12, 2014
NAIROBI – Somali refugees in Kenya are being "coerced" to leave the country either through intimidation or service denials, according to rights activists and refugees.
"What we discovered was that a lot of refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya are returning to Somalia or considering returning to Somalia because they feel the situation in Kenya isn't conducive for them," Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International's deputy regional director, told Anadolu Agency in an interview.
"So, it's due to negative push factors in Kenya rather than positive development in Somalia that are making them leave," she said.
In a recent report entitled "No Place like Home," Amnesty cited a number of cases of nighttime police arrests of Somali refugees.
Several refugees complained the arrests were usually accompanied by police extortion.
Abdi Majid, a 21-year-old Somali, said freedom of movement had been increasingly limited, especially after Nairobi's Westgate Mall attack last September, which left 67 people dead and scores injured.
"Before you could walk the streets without anyone asking where you were going or who you were," he told AA.
"But now that's not the case... If you don't have your registration papers, you'll be immediately arrested," Abdi Majid said.
"I just gave them a little something, and they dropped me off from their already crowded lorry," he added.
Kenya currently hosts more than 610,000 documented refugees, including 520,000 Somalis, in several designated camps.
But nearly half a million other refugees, mostly Somalis living in different parts of the country, remain undocumented.
Nearly 400,000 Somali refugees are currently staying in Dadaab, Kenya's largest refugee camp.
Set up in 1991 in Garissa in the northeastern part of the country, the camp can absorb a maximum of 90,000 people.
Not voluntary
Last November, Kenya and Somalia signed an agreement calling for the gradual, voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees currently living in Kenya over a three year period.
The move came amid mounting fears that the country's refugee camps had become recruiting grounds for the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab, which had claimed responsibility for the Westgate Mall attack.
"We were concerned that the tripartite agreement could send the signal that everything was okay in Somalia and that everybody was returning," Kagari told AA.
"We wanted to find out from refugees and asylum seekers themselves and hear their perspectives on the returns," she explained.
Kagari went on to cast doubt on the "voluntary" nature of the Somali refugees' repatriation.
"If people are returning to Somalia or considering returning to Somalia because they feel they're no longer welcome in Kenya, that doesn't qualify as 'voluntary' return," she said.
But Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kenya, defended the repatriation campaign.
"The [Kenyan] government expressed concern about the security situation, saying they wanted to help Somali refugees who were willing to go back home voluntarily," he told AA.
"It's not forceful repatriation – it's voluntary," Nyabera insisted. "All of this is according to the tripartite agreement with the government of Kenya and the government of Somalia."
The spokesman said they planned to launch a pilot voluntary-repatriation program organized by the UNHCR and the Kenyan and Somali governments.
"We will take about 10,000 refugees who will in return share information with those left behind," he told AA. "Nobody wants to stay in a place where there's conflict or where they feel their life is threatened."