Dr Katy Long is a lecturer in LSE’s Department of International Development. As Kenyan troops march into Somalia on the pretext of countering recent border raids, Dr Long says that the real reason for the military incursion is the culmination of a long-incubated and self-interested political strategy

Long, Katy

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24.10.2011Kenya, Jubaland and Somalia’s refugees: no quick fixesblogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2011/10/24/kenya-jubaland-and-somalia%e2%80%99s-refugees-no-quick-fixes/Dr Katy Long is a lecturer in LSE’s Department of International Development. As Kenyan troops march intoSomalia on the pretext of countering recent border raids, Dr Long says that the real reason for the militaryincursion is the culmination of a long-incubated and self-interested political strategy.In recent days, Kenya has launched a military incursion into Somalia , to push back the Al-Shabbab militantsresponsible for the recent murder and abduction of Western tourists and aid-workers from Kenyan territory. Framed as a necessary security response to counter creeping extremist Islamist expansion, Britishcommentators have largely applauded ‘a brave move’ painting Kenya as a state willing to ‘step up to tackle anAfrican problem, rather than sitting back and then complaining when the West tries to do it for them’. Dadaab Refugee CampSuch praise is misguided.  Kenya’s military advance into Jubaland is – far from a defensive response to borderraids – the culmination of a long-incubated and self-interested political strategy. Wikileaks cables show that UK and US governments repeatedly warned Kenya against attempting to shore upan autonomous Somalia “buffer zone”, fearing likely failure. Yet even if successful, the Jubaland initiative is likelyto have profound humanitarian consequences, above all for Somalia’s refugees.Kenya is – notoriously – host to the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab.  Though recent attention has focusedon the arrival of those fleeing devastating famine in Somalia, other residents have spent over twenty years in thecamp, having left Somalia in earlier cycles of crisis.  Unable now to repatriate safely to Somalia, they are alsounable – at least officially – to leave Dadaab and seek work.  The West resettles some 2000 refugees a year.  Itmakes little difference when 10 000 more Somalis currently arrive each week. Kenya has long resented its “refugee burden”, despite the fact that recent reports have suggested that activitiesin Dadaab actually add some USD $14m to the North-eastern province’s economy.  Security fears – closelyrelated to the Kenyan government’s complex relationship with its own Kenyan Somali population – have also fedan encampment policy that has created irregular migration flows and exacerbated pressure on services andmarkets within the camp.The Kenyan solution?  Jubaland.  Kenya has long been advocating the creation of a Somali “buffer zone”, and inApril this year backed the creation of the semi-autonomous region of Azania .  Kenya formally closed its border1/2with Somalia in January 2007, with limited practical impact, but a loaded political message.  Immediatelyfollowing the border closure, the Kenyan government  argued that it  “is not a written rule that when there isfighting in Somalia, people should run to Kenya” and that “UNHCR has provisions…  to set up camps anywhere,including inside Somalia”.  This latest effort to secure Jubaland is therefore likely intended not just to provide Kenya with security fromIslamist incursion, but also facilitate the future removal of Kenya’s unwanted refugees.  Kenya has long declaredrepatriation to be the only solution for its Somali refugees. In attempting to secure Jubaland, the likelihood of an early return of newer Somali arrivals – who have alsofrequently been portrayed as victims of drought rather than refugees from persecution  – has increased.  Yetwhile a “safe zone” may provide access to food aid and an end to the immediate threat of famine, it is not asubstitute for the absence of a functioning state.The longevity of Kenya’s Jubaland initiative is uncertain.  But Kenya’s plans are the latest iteration of a worryingglobal trend to contain would-be refugee populations within their own border.  “Safe zones” have been put inplace by Western powers to facilitate repatriation before, while international borders were quietly closed at thesame time. This happened in Northern Iraq in 1991 and in Afghanistan in 2000.States are anxious to avoid the obligations of asylum as laid out in the 1951 Convention on the Status ofRefugees: the language of “home” and the invocation of a “right to remain” provide persuasive cover for what isultimately political self-interest. Certainly, “safe zones” and militarised humanitarian aid delivery may offer someprotection to internally-displaced people (IDPs), but in cases like Somalia – where borders are closed as internalspace opens up – their construction is also deliberately intended to prevent these same IDPs from becomingrefugees. This is because refugees, unlike IDPs, hold a recognised claim to international protection. Though the GuidingPrinciples on Internal Displacement stress that protecting IDPs must not become a means of preventingrefugees claiming asylum, protection and containment can elide in practice.  Similarly, presenting the recentinflux of Somalis as solely in flight from ecological disaster ignores the fact that many may also hold validconvention claims to refugee status, and that a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ will not disappear even whenrain returns.In 1991, a UNHCR official protested  that returning Kurds to Northern Iraq from the Turkish border was ‘ a falserepatriation…people did not return because it is safe in their country of origin: they returned because they wereprotected from the government of their country of origin’. The same sentiments could be applied to the Jubalandadvance today. There are no quick fixes to an absence of adequate governance. Returning refugees under such conditions toSomalia would require unprecedented international engagement, not disengagement. It would mark only thebeginning of a process of “solution”, not the end of a refugee crisis. It would also represent a fundamental blowto the basic right to be a refugee.For these reasons, it is to be hoped that international actors publicly commit – as Human Rights Watch hasurged – to protecting Somalis’ continued access to asylum space, and ensure that Kenya’s advance intoJubaland does not become anything more than the security pushback it ostensibly claims to be.Related2/2

Kenya, Jubaland and Somalia’s refugees: no quick fixes

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