Kenya begins closure of world's largest refugee camp

By Andrew Ross

NAIROBI, Kenya

Kenya moved ahead Wednesday with plans to close down refugee camps as the government announced a $10 million fund for repatriation.

Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery also announced that only Somali refugees from the Dadaab camp - the world’s biggest refugee camp - would be forced to leave. The country also hosts a significant number of refugees from South Sudan.

“For reasons of pressing national security that speak to the safety of Kenyans in a context of terrorist and criminal activities, Kenya has commenced the exercise of closing the Dadaab refugee complex,” Nkaissery told reporters in Nairobi.

Nkaissery repeated government claims that the camp had provided a base for al-Shabaab militants to launch terrorist attacks in Kenya, including the Westgate shopping mall and Garissa University attacks that claimed more than 200 lives.

The attacks “were planned and deployed from Dadaab refugee camp by transnational terrorist groups”, the minister said.

Dadaab is a UN complex made up of five camps close to the town of Garissa in eastern Kenya. It was opened in 1991 and houses up to 330,000 Somali refugees.

Nkaissery said a timetable for repatriation would be released on May 31.