Rethink forced return of Somali refugees

NAIROBI: What is the motive behind the Government of Kenya’s decision to suddenly repatriate the more than 400,000 people in refugee centres around Dadaab and Kakuma?

The recent declaration by the Government that the refugees from Somalia shall be forcibly repatriated is, to say the least, unfortunate and borders on inhumanity.

From my understanding, Kenya is one of the 148 states that are signatories to the Geneva Convention of 1951 and its subsequent protocol of 1967 that gives rights to people who need refuge.

The sudden turn of events for these refugees was influenced by the recent unfortunate terrorist attack on Kenya. There are reports that some of the people involved in that attack resided in one of the refugee camps.

Despite that incident, many hundreds of thousands of the refugee communities are innocent in as far as any form of organised crime is concerned.

“Those attacks couldn’t have happened without the same kind of vulnerabilities you find across Kenya,” says International Crisis Group’s Cedric Barnes. I couldn’t agree more.

The Geneva Convention on refugee rights advocates for case-by-case decision for refugees. And therefore, any collective decision disregards individual risks involved in repatriating people collectively. Not all the refugees come from the same region in Somalia.

There is a common thinking within the Kenyan establishment that the areas secured by KDF are free from security risks for the refugees, so camps can be established, for example, around the Jubaland state of Somalia which recently declared itself an autonomous region.

Of course, those who feel safe and are bounded by ethnicity to this region are able to go back. But the camps in Dadaab and Kakuma in Turkana county host people from all over Somalia including territories still under Al Shabaab control. The Geneva Convention is particular about taking people back to areas they don’t belong.

Most refugees in Kenya, especially those from Somalia, started arriving around 1991 when the regime of former President Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed.

Since then, the second generation refugees makes up more than half of the total refugees since most of them were born and brought up here.

Forced repatriation is a breach of our own laws since under the current Constitution, any child born in Kenya automatically acquires the Kenyan citizenship.

So what happens to those children who were born here and some of them have even schooled and obtained university degrees here in Kenya and feel more at home here than in Somalia, a country that many of them have never seen in their entire lives?

The best option would be to comply with the Kenyan immigration law and allow those people who have resided for more than seven years the option of being granted the Kenyan citizenship and get assimilated in Kenya.

Most developed countries give refugees this option and have since benefitted from the presence of refugees. In European countries, refugees have put some life in towns and villages where due to aging, the demographic numbers have dropped.

Even in Kenya, many of these refugees have proved to be very enterprising and have increased the volumes of trade in some areas.
For example, the towns in North Eastern Kenya are booming with trade because refugees have brought competition in free market trade. The impact of the economic activities by refugees in Nairobi’s Eastleigh area is well known.

Therefore, the solution to the refugee issue is not forced repatriation but in dialogue with the concerned people so that if any refugee wants to go back, he or she is given the option to go back voluntarily. Those who have stayed in Kenya more than the required number of years to acquire Kenya residence should be given the opportunity to do so.

This does not imply and underestimate the contribution the refugees can do for their motherland. The educated ones, who feel obliged to take part in national building and increase capacity in their country of course, should be facilitated to return to the areas where they feel safe and accepted.

The Kenya government should take cue from Tanzania where close to 170, 000 Burundian and Rwandese refugees were granted Tanzanian citizenship after they stayed for more than 20 years.

There is nothing wrong with granting these people the same status. Besides a significant number of the so-called refugees are actually Kenyan citizens who have sought refuge in the camps for livelihoods due to poverty and hopes of getting further relocated to other countries overseas as refugees. This category of people even when repatriated will still sneak back and go to where they have known as homes.

The danger of forcing people to go back forcefully could mean giving the Al-Shabaab even more recruits since most of the desperate young people could easily be lured into their fighting force.

That is not in anybody’s interest. “Moving half a million people out of Kenya is impossible, at least without immense cruelty,” said The Economist, a widely respected magazine recently. That is something the mandarins at the Interior ministry need to ponder about.