Somalis Begin Returning to Rebuild their Homeland

{{Hundreds of Somali refugees are now returning to their war-torn homeland, saying they’re running away from insecurity, police harassment and public hostility towards them in Kenya.}}

Some are simply saying they felt homesick, especially after the election of a new, wildly popular president who many Somalis believe would haul their Horn of Africa nation out of more than two decades of lawlessness.

“They’re returning because of the good news in their country,” said Somalia’s Ambassador to Kenya Mohamed Ali Nur, who last week touted his country as a new front for investment.

The UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said in April alone, about 2,100 Somali refugees returned to Somalia, and in total about 16,000 people left Kenya in the first four months of this year.

But the number of refugees exiting voluntarily via Jomo Kenyatta International Airport points to a high figure.

The current exodus first started just days after Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs late last year asked urban refugees and asylum seekers to quit towns and go to UN camps in the northern parts of the country.

Security forces have intensified operations in neighbourhoods mainly populated by Somalis, pulling up trucks and pickups along the main streets to arrest people who were also up in arms against officers they consider as extortionists and bribe-seekers.

{NMG}