A new life with fewer lifelines
UN plan sends thousands of refugees back into a war zone in Somalia, writes Ty McCormick
FOR years, Katra Abii dreamt of moving her family back to Somalia. All eight of her children were born in neighbouring Kenya, in the world’s largest refugee camp, but she hoped one day they would be able to marry and start families of their own in their home country.
As long as al-Shabaab insurgents continued to maim and kill in their quest to topple the weak Somali government, however, she and her children planned to stay put.
Then, in May, Kenya announced its intention to shut Dadaab, home to more than 300 000 refugees, Abii and her children among them, because it claimed al-Shabaab had made inroads there.
Under pressure from the Kenyan government, which reluctantly hosts the seventh-largest refugee population in the world, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) agreed to accelerate the repatriation of those Somalis willing to return home.
Soon, it was sending as many as 1000 people back to Somalia every day. But Abii says there is nothing voluntary about UNHCR’s “voluntary” repatriation programme, which is partially funded by the US government.
She agreed to relocate to Somalia in August only because she had been led to believe that the Kenyan government would evict everyone by force.
She knew if the army began sending refugees back to Somalia, as it did after terrorist attacks in 2014, there would be no time to take advantage of the limited financial assistance UNHCR was offering.
So Abii decided to take her children back to Kismayo. Once there, she found that even the bare-bones support they had been promised – schools, health care, a meagre cash allowance for food – was insufficient or didn’t exist at all.
She and her children ended up in a camp with internally displaced Somalis – people uprooted by the war who hadn’t made it across the border into Kenya.
Their new home, one of hundreds of flimsy huts huddled together on a trash-strewn beach, was similar to the one they had left behind in Dadaab. Except it was less secure.
“I was poor in Dadaab, but I am destitute here,” said Abii. “The Kenyans told us it’s time to return to your home country. They told us we don’t have a choice.”
Since December 2014, UNHCR has facilitated the return of more than 24 000 refugees to Somalia, all of whom it says went willingly.
But as the agency has accelerated the repatriation process to keep pace with Kenyan efforts to close Dadaab, the line between voluntary and involuntary seems to have collapsed. UNHCR now appears to be managing a process that violates the cardinal rule of refugee protection: that refugees and asylum seekers shall not be returned against their will to any country where they face a threat of persecution.
The principle of non-refoulement, as it is known, is enshrined within the 2013 “tripartite” agreement between UNHCR and the Kenyan and Somali governments that govern the current repatriation process, as well as the 1969 African refugee convention, to which Kenya is a signatory.
Evidence that Kenya is subverting these agreements – and that UNHCR is enabling it to do so – has mounted in recent months as rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have documented incidents of intimidation in Dadaab.
But interviews conducted by Foreign Policy (FP) in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo offer the first concrete evidence that refugees have been sent back against their will.
This month, more than a dozen returnees from Dadaab said they were intimidated by Kenyan authorities and felt forced to leave Kenya.
The returnees, as well as multiple aid workers and Somali government officials, described a UNHCR-facilitated repatriation process that is not only coercive, but haphazardly executed and unsupported by any long-term plan to prevent returnees from becoming de facto refugees in their own country.
“These people are being dumped here with no international support. They have no shelter, no food, no health, and no schools,” said Ibrahim Mohamed Yusuf, the mayor of Kismayo.
Somalia is still at war. A 22000-strong AU force has expelled al-Shabaab from most urban areas, but the al-Qaeda-linked group continues to strike at will.
Even before it began accepting returnees from Kenyan refugee camps, the country housed more than a million displaced Somalis.
The few hospitals and schools still standing are mostly private – and prohibitively expensive for all but the richest Somalis. Four in 10 people don’t have enough to eat, according to the UN.
UNHCR has nonetheless certified certain parts of the country as safe for return, including Kismayo.
Somali officials say male returnees are at risk of recruitment by al-Shabaab.
Hundreds of returnees from Dadaab have streamed into displacement camps, 86 of which are scattered around the city, according to the regional government.
At one called Tawfiq, or “Unity”, dozens of makeshift dwellings, rigged up with empty grain sacks and whatever else residents could get their hands on, are arrayed across yellow sand dunes. Of the 200 families who eke out a living here, 60 are returnees from Dadaab.
Returnees described multiple pressures that forced them to leave Dadaab. Intimidation by Kenyan security forces, whom returnees blame for whipping up rumours of forced evictions, left many convinced they could face physical violence if they remained.
The appointment of army generals to the government committee tasked with closing Dadaab registered as a clear warning: stay after November 30, the government’s deadline for closure, and risk being caught up in a military operation to clear the camp.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme’s 2015 decision to cut food rations by 30% began to look in retrospect to some residents like a covert plan to starve them out.
Mark Yarnell, a senior advocate focusing on Somalia at the lobbying group Refugees International, said the repatriation process amounted to a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
“It’s a sham to call it voluntary return when you have the Kenyans waging an effective information campaign to instil fear, and then you have UNHCR providing inducements for people to return to a place that’s unsafe,” he said.
UNHCR continues to defend the repatriation process as consistent with its mandate to ensure that all returns are voluntary, safe and dignified.
Current and former UNHCR officials say they were faced with an impossible choice when the Kenyan government made it clear it was serious about closing the camp.
If they recused themselves from the process, the Kenyan government might have started its own mass deportations that could have precipitated a humanitarian disaster. But a “humanitarian disaster” is precisely what the regional government in Kismayo – the Jubaland administration – has called the UN’s existing repatriation programme.
It’s not that UNHCR has obscured the apparently involuntary nature of the repatriations; it has downplayed the conditions that await returnees.
Some returnees said they had been given false information about the safety of their home regions, arriving in Kismayo only to discover that their ancestral villages were still controlled by al-Shabaab.
Virtually everyone said they were going hungry and that the financial support they received from international organisations – an initial lump sum from UNHCR of a few hundred dollars per household, plus a $200 (R2729) monthly lifeline for the first six months, redeemable with a World Food Programme (WFP) ration card – wasn’t nearly enough.
Local vendors are said to regularly hike prices for anyone who tries to pay using the ration cards.
Flights from Dadaab to Mogadishu continue to land several times per week. Passengers leave behind a hard life in the camp. They begin a new one with fewer lifelines, in a place that is less forgiving.
Often, it appears, they do so against their will and in violation of international humanitarian law.
McCormick is Africa Editor at Foreign Policy, based in Nairobi