Kenya: Stop Deporting Somalis Fleeing Conflict

Nairobi (Keydmedia) - Kenya should immediately stop deporting back to Somalia civilians fleeing the conflict there, Human Rights Watch said today. Kenya should allow humanitarian agencies to assist Somalis displaced by fighting and should not close makeshift camps without providing alternative sites and offering displaced people the opportunity to seek asylum.

News Keydmedia Online
3 April 2011

On March 17, 2011, Kenyan authorities forced the Kenya Red Cross to stop providing services at a temporary refugee camp in Mandera, in northeast Kenya, which was housing 13,000 people, many of them Somalis who had recently fled fighting across the border in Bula Hawo. District authorities, who had given the Red Cross permission to establish the camp, abruptly changed course, ordering the Red Cross to stop providing services and close the camp. That evening, according to several organizations working in Mandera, government officials accompanied by armed Kenyan security forces intimidated camp residents, telling them to leave the camp and return to Somalia by noon the next day.

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