The Dadaab refugee camp is the world's largest, located in the hostile desert region of Kenya-Somalia border. It was opened in 1992 with the intent of providing temporary shelter to 90,000 refugees fleeing Somalia under the jihadist regime of Al-Shabaab. Today it is populated by approximately a third of a million people hailing from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Uganda and even a lone Rwandan refugee. If it were considered a city, it would be Kenya's third largest. The Kenyan government has announced that the camp, along with others in Kenya, would be closed by 2016. The action would displace up to 300,000 of the world's most vulnerable people and has been condemned by UNHCR and Amnesty International as a move of political expediency, particularly as incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta is campaigning ahead of next year’s election. With repatriation to war-torn Somalia and Sudan a dire outcome for the camps long-term residents and the ""third-party"" solution being unspecified and unlikely, closure of the camp faces considerable opposition. Similar proposals, such as those made in April 2015, have not eventuated as UNHCR talks complicate the practicalities of the proposal.
Significance
The forced closure of the camp, with thousands being repatriated to Somalia is mammoth security risk to the region. The lives of refugees are at peril, as the Al-Shabaab regime that forced them to flee continues to have a stronghold on the region, particularly in the South. In addition to this, experts fear that the displacement of hundreds of thousands vulnerable, desperate and disillusioned refugees will be recruited into extremist activities.
