Refugee transfer from Mandera authorised at last

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is set to begin the transfer of more than 5,000 Somali refugees who have been stranded for nearly two months at a makeshift camp in the northeastern Kenyan town of Mandera, along the unsafe border with Somalia, to Dadaab refugee camp, some 500 km to the south, the agency said on Tuesday.

The transfer follows the approval UNHCR received from the Kenya government to move the refugees, who were among a total of 10,000 Somalis who had fled inter-clan fighting in the Somali town of Bula Hawa, just across the border from Mandera.

About 5,000 of the original 10,000 went home during May, allegedly under pressure from Somali and Kenyan officials, while most of the remaining refugees have been stranded at the camp, which is sited barely 500 metres from the insecure border, for the last few weeks without adequate food or shelter, according to UNHCR.

The UN refugee agency said in a statement released on 14 June that it had received a letter from Kenyan Vice-President George Saitoti authorising the immediate relocation of refugees from the border zone to the established Dadaab refugee camp.

"Aid workers have been unable to assist the refugees at the border camp due to fear of attacks by armed militia from across the border," it added.

Emmanuel Nyabera, information officer for the UNHCR office in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, told IRIN on Tuesday that his office had already mobilised trucks and buses to begin the transfer of the first batch of 180 refugees to Dadaab on Wednesday.

"The government gave its approval. Now we are conducting registration," he said. "We want to be sure these people want to go there. We don't have the capacity to force refugees to move. All we can do is to encourage them to adhere to government policy."

The refugees to be transferred to Dadaab first are those in good health, while the weak ones continue to receive intensive feeding, according to Nyabera. At least 40 people, mostly children, who had been camping in Mandera town, have died of disease and malnutrition over the past few weeks.

However, only 650 of the refugees have so far voluntarily registered to be transferred to Dadaab, and will be travelling in convoys, escorted by police to guard against possible attacks along the bandit-prone route, according to Nyabera.

Kenya hosts some 250,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, 130,000 of whom are from Somalia. The Kenyan authorities insist that their policy on refugees remaining in camps where they can receive humanitarian aid has to be observed.

Simon Kipkeu, the police officer in charge of the police station in the Kasarani district of Nairobi, recently told IRIN, following sweeping arrests of illegal aliens in Nairobi, that Kenyan laws only permitted refugees to stay out of camps under special circumstances, and only at the request of UNHCR.
[See http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28128]

"Refugees are not supposed to be in Nairobi," he said. "They should be in camps. They are not authorised to be on the streets. The law is very clear. Who will take care of their needs if they are not in the refugee camps? It means they will be forced to steal for their survival. I don't like that.

"Some of them sell illegal firearms, which is a big threat to our people. Some can even be terrorists. We have a duty to protect our citizens but, at the same time, we sympathise with the refugees," Kipkeu added.