Plight of student refugees highlighted

The Refugee Consortium of Kenya said it was concerned that, with the recent influx of asylum seekers from Ethiopia, fleeing soldiers were receiving preferential treatment. In a press statement released on 15 June, it said: “Hundreds of university students fleeing from violence that has claimed many lives of their colleagues are either holed up in northern Kenya, or live in abject dejection outside the offices of UNHCR.” The statement said that while soldiers had been receiving special treatment and refugee status, in the case of the students “the process of addressing their plight is slow and tedious”. It called on UNHCR to “expedite the issue of student refugees fleeing from the Ethiopian violence” and to treat all the Ethiopian asylum seekers equally. The statement followed the announcement in the Kenyan media on 13 June that seven Ethiopian soldiers had been granted political asylum.

However, a UNHCR spokesman told IRIN that the granting of refugee status was the province of states, and not UNHCR. In the case of Kenya, an Eligibility Committee, which included an observer representative from UNHCR, decided who was a genuine asylum seeker and who was not, the spokesman explained.