Government decision to shut down refugee camps ill advised

The government has yet again announced plans to shut down refugee camps in the country, citing ‘national security threats’. It ordered immediate closure of the Department of Refugee Affairs in the Ministry of Interior, and ‘closure of the two refugee camps within the shortest time possible’. Kenya hosts nearly 600,000 refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma camps, majority of whom are Somalis and South Sudanese. After the Westgate attack, the government announced it would close the camps. Last year, after the Garissa University massacre, it again announced it was shutting down Dadaab camp, citing it as a safe haven for terrorists.

Kenya is a signatory of the 1951 UN Refugees Convention since 1968, and domesticated it by enacting a law in 2006 that recognised the rights of refugees in the country. Shortly after the 2013 announcement, a tripartite commission of UNCHR, Somalia and Kenya Governments was established to pursue voluntary repatriation for Somali refugees in Dadaab. In 2015, UNCHR sent home some 6,000 refugees voluntarily and had planned to repatriate a further 135,000 by the end of 2017, subject to funding. In October last year, donors pledged USD 94 million in Brussels for the exercise that the government now says is ‘slow’. UNHCR reportedly spends about USD250 million annually on the refugees in Kenya but has faced reduced funding in recent years at a time when refugee inflows from South Sudan have been increasing.