Somali refugees nervous as Kenya eyes their return

 
Photo/FILE Somali refugees wait to be screened by UNHCR officials at
Dadaab camp.   

Row after row of tin shacks and shelters made of plastic and branches stretch almost as far as the eye can see in the world's largest refugee camp, home to over 427,000 Somalis who fled war.

Dadaab, in northeast Kenya, is a grim place few would choose to call home, but many here are nervous about the growing pressure to leave this camp and return to their unstable homeland some last saw two decades ago.

Kenya, which hosts more than 600,000 Somali refugees, has made clear its ambition to send them back, and is in talks with the government in Mogadishu to start the move.

"I don't know of a stable place in Somalia" to return to, said Abdi Arte, leader of the Kambios section in the sprawling camp, set in arid bushland some 100 kilometres (60 miles) inside Kenya.

"But the government is insisting to have refugees relocated back home."

Last month, Kenya and Somalia signed a deal for "voluntary repatriation", with plans under way to work out how people can start moving back.

Kenya's new government has steered clear of strong-arm statements made last year when Nairobi ordered more than 30,000 refugees living in urban areas to return to remote and overcrowded camps.

But based on past experiences, refugees are worried.

Rights groups have accused Kenyan police of a brutal campaign against Somali refugees, following a string of grenade attacks or shootings inside Kenya blamed on supporters or members of Somalia's Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents.

Human Rights Watch, in a report released in May, documented multiple cases of police rape of Somali refugees.

"The police held the detainees -- sometimes for many days in inhuman and degrading conditions -- while threatening to charge them, without any evidence, with terrorism or public order offences," the report said.

Somali refugees say they are eyed with suspicion by police, even though many of those actually charged for attacks have not been ethnic Somalis.

Impoverished Somalia spiralled into repeated rounds of bloody civil war beginning in 1991, allowing piracy, militia armies and extremist rebels to flourish.

Last year an internationally-backed government took power in Mogadishu, defended by a 17,700-strong African Union force -- including Kenyan troops -- but its control beyond the capital remains fragile at best.

Eager to leave, but nowhere to go?

There is no doubt that many refugees long to be able to return to a safe home in Somalia. The problem is whether that is available.

"I want to go back home," said Amina Yussuf, who lives in Dadaab's Ifo 2, a crowded camp, insecure and beset by violence and abductions.

"I fear being raped here in the camp," she added.