SOMALI REFUGEES ON THEIR WAY HOME FRUSTRATED AT BEING TURNED BACK TO KENYAN CAMPS

Somali refugees who spent 10 days in a crowded transit centre in Dadaab expressed frustration and confusion at being told to go back to the Kenyan refugee camps after their planned journey home to Somalia was put on hold.

Most of the more than 2,000 refugees waiting in the centre, who had signed up for voluntary repatriation to Kismayo in southern Somalia’s Lower Juba region, had packed up their belongings in the camps and given up their homes or shelters.

“We were informed by the UNHCR that we should go back to our houses. I sold my house [in the camp] and have no place to go back to,’’ said Abdi Gahnug Muhumed, speaking to Radio Ergo in the transit centre.

He wanted to take his 10 member family to his native Kismayo after having spent 25 years in Dadaab. He did not want to go back to the camp in Dadaab, he added, especially as the future was uncertain since the Kenyan government’s announcement of the camp closure.

The repatriation of this group of refugees was stalled by an order issued by Jubbaland State of Somalia on 29 August to stop receiving more returning refugees because they lacked the capacity to absorb them.

Refugees said they had not been made fully aware of what was happening and what the consequences were for them.

Some of the refugees had handed over their stick and cloth shelters to camp neighbours as they packed up to go back to Somalia. They had first removed plastic sheeting and anything of value.

“My house was taken apart immediately I left and turned into firewood,” said Khadijo Mayow Mohamed, who is among those people still stranded in the transit centre.

Some of the families had already sent all their household items to Somalia before going to the transit centre.  Dahiro sheikh Abubakar told Radio Ergo she sent all her belongings ahead because she would be back in Somalia very soon.

“This place [the transit centre] has poor hygiene standards, even the toilets are dirty, so we are requesting that our issues to be sorted out immediately,” she complained.

The transit centre is set up to host would be travellers for not more than 24 hours. Radio Ergo’s local reporter in Dadaab visited the centre and saw people sleeping on pieces of cardboard. The centre has only six toilets and three water taps.

Mohamed Mahad Gurhan, coordinator at UNHCR’s Dadaab office, told Radio Ergo efforts were underway to assist these people. He said they were providing locally cooked food for the families in the transit centre three times a day.

In an interview with Radio Ergo on 30 August, Jubbaland’s Interior Minister Mohamed Warsame Darwiish said his administration would not accept Somali refugees from Dadaab until they were given enough support to help them to cope with their new lives. He said there were already 16,617 returnees in Kismayo and Luq who has been “abandoned” on the streets and were struggling to build a new life in Somalia.