Those fuelling conflict should be responsible for the refugees

A few months ago, I had a near-nervous breakdown after visiting a camp in Turkey that is hosting Syrian refugees and later met a group of bright young Somali refugees who live in Dadaab.

I am not sure what brought about the meltdown. Perhaps it was the face-to-face interaction with shattered people who are desperate for a place to call home.

Or maybe it was because I got to know some of these refugees and, therefore, could no longer view them as mere numbers but as living, breathing human beings with dreams and aspirations for a better life.

Images of the beautiful Syrian children I met at the refugee camp in Gaziantep and of the desperate Somali women I saw in Dadaab haunt me to this day. I try to imagine what it would be like to live their lives — but cannot.

Those who have visited Dadaab know that living conditions there are dire. Because the Kenyan Government does not allow refugees to build permanent structures or to find work, even the relatively well-off refugees in Dadaab are forced to live in tents donated by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, or in shacks made of wattle that the refugees build themselves.

The days in Dadaab are hot, dry, long, and boring and the nights are dark and scary. I would not wish that life on anyone.

However, the demand of the Kenyan Government that all Somali refugees in Dadaab return to Somalia is not a solution to their plight either.

Last month, the Jubbaland regional authority’s interior minister told Voice of America that returnees from Dadaab would not be allowed to enter the main city of Kismayu as Jubbaland did not have the resources to provide for them.

He said that lack of humanitarian assistance to support the refugees’ return was hampering the authority’s ability to deal with the returnees, who are apparently given only $400 and some rations by UNHCR to start their new lives in a country most of them do not know.

According to UNHCR’s own analysis, most of the 24,000 or so people from Dadaab who have returned to Somalia so far are either students or do not have the skills needed to operate a trade. Many of the returnees have no family or land to return to in Somalia, so essentially, they will probably end up as internally displaced persons if they go back.

SOMALI UNSAFE

This means that the burden of dealing with the returnees will fall on a fragile and under-resourced government that cannot even provide essentials such as schools and hospitals — unless the authorities allow in humanitarian agencies, which may still not be possible as much of Somalia is still considered unsafe.

Unfortunately, it is not just the Kenyan Government that has taken a hard line stand on refugees. Last month, Pakistan announced that it would forcibly repatriate Afghan refugees. In Europe, walls and barriers are being built every day to prevent Syrian and other refugees from crossing into European countries. And if Donald Trump becomes president, no immigrant or refugee will be welcome in the United States.

Before human beings created borders between countries, the world belonged to the whole of humanity. Political and economic interests led to wars and competition for resources, which left death and destruction in their wake and created a class of people known as refugees.

Some of the current wars are being propagated by foreign interests, who supply arms to warring factions but who do not take any responsibility for the refugees and internally displaced people that emerge from these conflicts.

When China supplies arms to South Sudanese warlords, when the United States and Russia militarily support opposing sides in Syria, and when Saudi Arabia wages a war in Yemen, these countries become party to the conflicts and, therefore, should shoulder the responsibility of taking care of the refugees that are a result of these hostilities.

Yet, China, Russia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia have been reluctant to take in refugees from these countries. But they expect European countries, Turkey, countries in the Middle East, Africa, and UN agencies to take on the bulk of the refugee burden.

Hopefully, the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, which is taking place in New York on Monday, will address some of these issues.

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