The recent criticism from the Capital Hill in Washington DC, and the United Nation regarding Kenya's move to close the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Nairobi, and thus initiate the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of refugees (mostly of Somali extraction), is not only insincere, but also hypocritical.
The United States of America (the world's largest economy), to date, has only admitted 100,000 Somali Refugees within its borders according to Refugee Resettlement Watch. That is just a sixth (1/6) of what Kenya (a developing economy) has taken in excluding those who have since been integrated fully into the community according to UNHCR. You would be surprised also to learn that the Obama's administration still lags far much behind in meeting its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees by October 2016.
The case is even worse with USA's European cousins, whose majority, with the exception of Germany, have been developing cold feet as far as taming the runaway immigration crisis is concerned. Such gestures have since evoked strong criticism from the United Nations, with Angelina Jolie Pitt (who is also the UN Special Envoy for Refugees) warning that the humanitarian system in the world is in the verge of collapsing. According to her, the world must overcome what she termed 'fear of migration' and a 'race to the bottom as countries competed to be the toughest to protect themselves'.
It is true that Obama's 2014 infamous Executive Order on Immigration has since sheltered millions of undocumented immigrants, but it is also true (according to the Human Rights Watch), that the very same executive order has failed terribly in addressing rights of immigrants. To date, USA Head of State and the Republican-Majority Congress are yet to amicably address the harsh treatment of refugees (including close to 10,000 of Somali origin this year alone according to Refugee Resettlement Watch), unnecessary detention, and unfair criminal penalties that tear families apart.
The tripartite pact established way back in 2013 between Kenya, Somalia, and the United Nation through the UNHCR, was and still is the only permanent solution to the Somali Refugees crisis. That the UNHCR has since admitted it won't be meeting the refugees repatriation target any time soon, is reason enough to cast some serious doubt on its commitment. Given that the Daadab based refugee camp has been invariably cited as an implicit source of insecurity woes, and the UN and other bodies have been slow to fund the project, Kenya is justified in setting the record straight once and for all.
The announcement of the US Secretary of State John Kerry that his government was willing to support Kenya financially so as not to close the refugee camp, and the scheduled visit by top UN Agents to the country to discuss the refugee crisis, is a welcome gesture, only that it is coming too late.
My fear is the US is only concerned about the security risk the closure of the Daadab camp will pose to the West. Why for instance are there no American boots in Somali battlefields, yet the US and its European allies are the major funding sources of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM)? Why is the US government seemingly keen to tighten its immigrant policies when it is busy chastising other governments for doing the very same thing? Is it American lives only that matter and not those of Kenyans who are endangered by Al-Shabaab adherents and their sympathizers that have been known to use Daadab as their safe haven?
