NAIROBI – Thousands of Somalis fleeing drought, famine and war have started moving into a new extension of the world’s largest refugee camp in Kenya, which is increasingly concerned about bearing the brunt of the Horn of Africa crisis.
About 1,500 Somali refugees are now crossing into Kenya each day but there is no room for them in the congested Dadaab camp, which was declared full in 2008.
Instead, 65,000 refugees have been forced to “self-settle” in cardboard and plastic shelters on flood-prone land outside the camp.
“By the end of today, we will have moved around 3,000 people already to the extension,” a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesman Emmanuel Nyabera said.
“As an emergency measure, we are using tents,” said Badu Katelo, acting commissioner for refugee affairs. “Later, maybe, we will replace the tents with housing structures.” The Kenyan government opened Dadaab camp, designed for 90,000 refugees, in 1991 as a temporary solution to the civil war across the border. But 20 years on, it hosts 440,000 refugees with no end in sight to the conflict.
The government fears Dadaab is becoming a permanent settlement. Last year, it suspended construction of a half-built extension for 80,000 people, known as Ifo 2, citing security concerns.
With the declaration of famine in Somalia earlier this month, Kenya came under international pressure to open Ifo 2 given that it has mud brick houses, latrines, water distribution points, health facilities and schools which are not being used. A row broke out within the Kenyan government, with the immigration ministry supporting the opening of the extension, while internal security officials opposed it.
Mr Nyabera and Mr Katelo said the issue has been resolved following prime minister Raila Odinga’s announcement on July 14th that Ifo 2 should be opened.
“It was announced by the prime minister in public and that’s it. We immediately called UNHCR to move in and resettle people,” said Katelo. Mr Nyabera said refugees will start moving into the houses in Ifo 2 “in the next few days”.
“For the permanent structures, we’re just finalising the whole construction and then we’ll start moving the most vulnerable people down there,” he said.
Government spokesman Alfred Mutua remained cautious. “We expect them to move in the next few days,” he said, while warning that the opening of Ifo 2 would do little to end the refugee crisis. “They’ll keep coming to half a million people. It means you have to open another 10 camps. It’s ridiculous and preposterous,” he said.
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Eritrea was behind a plot to attack an African Union summit in Ethiopia in January and is bankrolling al-Qaeda-linked Somali rebels through its embassy in Kenya, according to a UN report.
A UN monitoring group report on Somalia and Eritrea said the Red Sea state’s intelligence personnel were active in Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya and Somalia, and that the country’s actions posed a threat to security and peace in the region.
“Whereas Eritrean support to foreign armed opposition groups has in the past been limited to conventional military operations, the plot to disrupt the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in January 2011, which envisaged mass casualty attacks against civilian targets and the strategic use of explosives to create a climate of fear, represents a qualitative shift in Eritrean tactics,” the report said. – (Reuters)