BY JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

The Kenyan government has announced that it plans to expel hundreds of thousands of refugees, a move that aid agencies say would violate international law and endanger many people.

For years now, Kenya has threatened to shut down the Dadaab refugee camp, where hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees have been marooned for decades. Dadaab, a sea of tents and plastic shelters spread out across miles of desert near the border with Somalia, has become essentially one of Kenya’s largest cities.

On Wednesday, the Kenyan government said in a statement that terrorists were using Dadaab as a hide-out.

“As a country we have been glad to help our neighbors and all those in need sometimes at the expense of our security,” the government said. “But there comes a time when we must think primarily about the security of our people. Ladies and gentlemen, that time is now.”

Kenya is home to about half a million refugees who have fled years of war and turmoil in neighboring Somalia. But Somalia is hardly at peace now; the Shabab militant group continues to rule large parts of the country, brutalizing and killing civilians.

If anything, after years of defeats at the hands of African Union peacekeepers, the Shabab seem to be making a comeback.

Human rights organizations said international and Kenyan law prohibited the forced return of refugees to any place where they might face persecution or other serious harm.

The threat posed by the Shabab in Somalia and Kenya “is real, but that doesn’t negate Kenya’s obligation to abide by international refugee law,” Bill Frelick, the refugee rights program director at Human Rights Watch, said last week in a statement. “In a single breath, the Kenyan government recognizes that the Somalis it has been hosting for nearly 25 years are still refugees, but then states it’s finished with them.”

The Kenyan government has not set a deadline for expelling the refugees, saying only that it would do so “in the shortest time possible.” Already it has begun to shut down its refugee department, which is in charge of registering new refugees.

Still, it is not clear how the government would pay to move hundreds of thousands of people and what would prevent many refugees from simply escaping any dragnet and melting into Kenya’s urban areas.

Some analysts suspect that the Dadaab refugees are becoming victims of Kenya’s next election cycle. As the migrant crisis in Europe has shown, refugees are easy political targets.

Kenya is scheduled to hold a presidential election next year, and the incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, has been positioning himself as the best candidate to protect national security.

source: The New York Times