Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has warned that the proposed move by the Kenyan government to close the world’s largest refugee camp and send back refugees en masse to their home countries will worsen the security situation in the East African nation.
“Returning refugees by force will only pose enormous challenges and will not solve anything at all. And I hope Kenya, which is among the signatory states of the international convention on refugee law, will not go ahead with this plan,” Mohamud told BBC’s Somali Service on Wednesday.
Announcing the decision, Kenyan officials said they would close the Dadaab camp later in the year, citing reasons of pressing national security, besides the fact that the camp has become a “safe haven for terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab”, a development decried by rights groups and aid agencies as “disturbing”.
In recent years, the semi-arid refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya, which hosts over 300,000 people, has become a point of focus by the Kenyan security after deadly attacks by the Somalia-based Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab group. Established in 1991, the camp largely receives people fleeing conflict in Somalia, as well as citizens escaping prosecution from other East African countries.
Meanwhile, the Somali leader has also protested that the construction of the controversial 440-mile wall along its border with Kenya, by the Kenyan government, will separate people from the two neighboring countries: “We have more important and common interests that we share than the camp’s closure and border wall constructions.”
Kenyan government has decided to build the border wall in a bid to keep out the Al-Qaeda linked Al Shabaab group, which has carried out multiple deadly attacks in Kenya after the East African nation sent troops to Somalia to defeat the militant group.