Camp Closure Threat Triggers Thousands Returning to Danger

Nairobi (HRW) – Kenya’s repatriation program for Somali refugees, fueled by fear and misinformation, does not meet international standards for voluntary refugee return, Human Rights Watch said today. Many refugees living in Kenya’s sprawling Dadaab camp, home to at least 263,000 Somalis, say they have agreed to return home because they fear Kenya will force them out if they stay.

In May 2016, the Kenyan government announced plans to speed up the repatriation of Somali refugees and close the Dadaab camp in northeastern Kenya by November. Kenyan authorities, with officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), then stepped up a 2013 “voluntary” repatriation program.

During an August 2016 visit to Dadaab by Human Rights Watch, refugees described intimidation by the Kenyan government, silence over alternative options that would allow them to remain in Kenya, inadequate information on conditions in Somalia, and a US$400 UN cash grant they would forfeit if they were deported later this year. The refugees said that these factors were prompting many camp residents to return now to Somalia, where they face danger, persecution, and hunger.

“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 Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “There is no way these returns can be considered voluntary.”

The 1951 Refugee Convention prohibits refoulement, the return of a refugee “in any manner whatsoever” to a place where their life or freedom would be threatened. Refoulement occurs not only when a refugee is directly rejected or expelled, but also where indirect pressure on individuals is so intense that it leads them to believe that they have no practical option but to return to a country where they face serious risk of persecution or threats to their lives and safety.

Under international refugee practice, repatriation is only considered voluntary if refugees have a genuinely free choice about whether to return and are fully informed about conditions in their home country. Human Rights Watch interviewed about 100 refugees and asylum seekers at the Dadaab camp and found that neither condition is being met under the current voluntary repatriation program.

Until the Kenyan government publicly declares that Somali refugees fearing return will be allowed to remain, and UNHCR and its partners fully and accurately inform refugees about security conditions in Somalia, returns under the ongoing program amount to refoulement, Human Rights Watch said.

Refugees said the government’s decision to close the Dadaab camp had left them feeling trapped. They are afraid to return to Somalia, but also afraid of being arrested and deported if they stay in Dadaab until the November deadline. Many have therefore chosen to take US$400 in cash as part of a UNHCR-returns assistance package because they believe that if they don’t, they will be summarily deported later this year with nothing.

“We fled Somalia because of specific problems and those problems are still there,” said “Sahra,” a 42-year-old woman from Hiraan region who has signed up to return to Somalia. “It’s not the right time for us to go back. But every day the Kenyan government is telling us that we have to go, and UNHCR is not giving us any different information… I said I will go back as we have no other option.”

Human Rights Watch repeatedly asked a Kenyan government official in Dadaab, the deputy county commissioner, what would happen to refugees who don’t leave after Dadaab closes and whether they will be able to stay in Kenya. He answered: “The choice is theirs to go home.”

Some Somalis who agreed to return to Somalia after spending years as refugees in Dadaab have fled back to Kenya a second time because of ongoing violence and lack of basic services in Somalia. Human Rights Watch found that newly arrived Somali asylum seekers and refugees who were not able to re-establish themselves in Somalia are being denied access to refugee registration or asylum procedures in Dadaab. This leaves them without legal status and food rations.

Many of the estimated 335,000 Somali refugees in Kenya’s camps and cities fled the conflict in their home country in the 1990s, or are their children or grandchildren. Over the past decade, a new wave of refugees fled a combination of drought, ongoing violence, and abuse including by the armed Islamist group Al-Shabab, which is at war with the Somali government.

Hostility and abuse of Kenya’s Somali refugee population has increased significantly since Kenyan troops entered Somalia in 2011, and after a series of deadly Al-Shabab attacks on Kenyan territory between 2011 and 2015. The government’s formal announcement on May 6, 2016, that Dadaab would close said that because of its “national security interests, [the government] has decided that hosting of refugees has to come to an end” and called for closure “within the shortest time possible.”

In November 2013, Kenya, Somalia, and UNHCR signed an agreement for the “voluntary” repatriation of Somali refugees that says both countries and UNHCR will make sure Somalis return voluntarily in safety and dignity. The current experiences of many Somali refugees in Dadaab stands in sharp contrast to those commitments, Human Rights Watch said.

UNHCR-Somalia officials acknowledged to Human Rights Watch that their assessments indicate that conditions in south-central Somalia are not conducive to mass refugee returns in safety and dignity. UNHCR’s latest assessment in May found: “Civilians continue to be severely affected by the conflict, with reports of civilians being killed and injured in conflict-related violence, widespread sexual and gender-based violence against women and children, forced recruitment of children, and large-scale displacement.”

The information that UNHCR provides to refugees in Dadaab seeking to make an informed choice about returning, however, is mostly superficial and out of date, and sometimes misleading, Human Rights Watch said.

As a party to the 2013 “voluntary” repatriation agreement, UNHCR has been actively engaged in facilitating the repatriations of thousands from Dadaab to Somalia. UNHCR says it is not promoting repatriation, but that it will facilitate repatriation for Somalis who freely choose to return home, a distinction it makes for assisted returns to places it does not consider to be safe for most refugees to return.

The Kenyan government and UNHCR are conducting a verification exercise to reduce the number of refugees counted as living in Dadaab by determining whether people living in the camp are entitled to be there. It excludes formerly registered camp residents with inactive ration cards and asylum seekers who have not been allowed to register as refugees, as well as residents found to be Kenyan citizens. During the exercise, all verified Somali refugees are asked whether they want to return to Somalia and whether they are willing to do so this year. As of August, according to UNHCR, there were 263,000 Somali refugees in Dadaab, a 75,000 reduction from the 338,000 count at the end of July.

As of mid-August, more than 24,000 Somalia refugees had returned to Somalia from Dadaab since the start of the repatriation process in December 2014. Of that total, 18,110 returned in 2016, 10,000 after the camp closure announcement in May. Kenyan authorities told Human Rights Watch in mid-August that they were assisting about 1,000 refugees a day to return. On August 29, returns were suspended because local authorities in Jubaland, an interim regional administration in Somalia bordering Kenya to which many of the refugees are returning, said they could not sufficiently assist returning refugees. Negotiations to resume the repatriations are ongoing.

“UNHCR is aware that south-central Somalia is in no way conducive to large-scale refugee returns,” Frelick said. “UNHCR should not facilitate any returns until Kenya says those afraid to go home can stay in Kenya and UNHCR provides refugees with accurate information about what they will face when they go home.”

Source: HRW