A Case Study in Kenya
Introduction
Kenya has been dealing with refugees arriving in
large numbers from Somalia
(and other regions in the Horn of Africa) for about two decades. This influx proved too much for Kenya from the
beginning. Refugees have lost many of
the rights they were once accorded in Kenya, in the process being confined to overcrowded
camps. They are harassed by the Kenyan
authorities and discriminated against by the populace. As a result of their low social standing and the practically
hopeless situation in the camps, some refugees are now turning towards terrorism
and arms trafficking. The refugee
complex at Dadaab, the largest refugee complex in the world, has become a hub
for these activities. Currently the
government is doing nothing to improve the camp's conditions. As a result, the situation can only get
worse. Situations like this are going to
increase around the world as climate change progresses; instances of conflict
as a result of forced migration will become more common. In order to alleviate such tensions I
recommend there be concrete pathways to citizenship created and implemented. By allowing refugees a path towards
citizenship they, as a group, can work towards garnering more rights for
themselves and becoming legitimate members of their host society, lessening the
chance of violent conflict due to their inhumane treatment.
To
argue my proposal I will be using the last 20 years of Kenyan history as a case
study. I am going to review Kenyan
refugee policy prior to the arrival of the Somali refugees of the early ‘90s,
the turning over of refugee affairs to UNHCR, the poor conditions of the Dadaab
refugee camps, conditions for Kenyans in neighboring areas and cities, the
consequences of the current drought and famine in Somalia for refugees, the
population’s reaction to refugees, possible solutions to the refugee problem,
and what this could mean for refugees of environmental disasters in
general. Tying this theme into climate
change will be a priority for the final section of the paper. Currently, what provisions there are for the
protection of displaced persons do not take into consideration the special
circumstances climate change will pose.
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the
subsequent 1967 Protocol only refer to people fleeing from political
discrimination or violence (UNGA, 1951; UNGA, 1956).
As a result, new standards have to be created for environmental refugees;
standards that can be applicable for the entire world. I say new because extending the previous
rights from the 1951 Convention will not be enough. With the recent failure to reach binding
emissions cuts in the Durban Accord rising average global temperatures will
cause increased climate stresses. Refugees of climate disasters are more likely
to be permanently displaced, especially if there is a permanent climate
shift. As a result, more long-term
solutions than repatriation will have to be sought. Permanence of displacement will have to be
acknowledged and dealt with.
Kenyan Citizenship & the Rights of
Refugees
The
Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Act of 2011, Part III Section 15 does not
allow for stateless persons who have arrived in the country since December 12th,
1963 to apply for or be granted citizenship (Kenya, 2011). Many different groups who had arrived in Kenya prior to the last regime, such as former
Indian railway construction workers and “Kenyan Somali's who left Kenya over the
Shifta war period”, are now eligible for citizenship. Anyone who has arrived after 1963, such as
the Somali refugees of Dadaab, remains ineligible. Children of stateless persons may only be
registered as citizens if their parents are, or were in the case of their
death, eligible for citizenship under Section 13. This has left Somali refugees without their
basic rights despite Kenya’s
international obligations.
In
spite of its refusal to allow recent refugees a path to citizenship, Kenya has an
excellent record in supporting international efforts to protect human rights
and the rights of refugees. Kenya
is member to both of the primary international treaties dealing with the status
of refugees for its region, the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the
Status of Refugees and the 1969 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Convention
on the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. It is also a member to overarching human
rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights;
and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Verdirame, 1999). More specifically the 1951 UN Convention
defines a refugee as,
“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being
persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his
nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself
of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being
outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such
events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it…” (UNGA, 1951)
The
OAU has a broader definition of what a refugee is, defined as,
“…every person who, owing to external aggression,
occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in
either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled
to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another
place outside his country of origin or nationality.” (OAU, 1969)
The
definition by the OAU is broad enough to cover those displaced by environmental
disasters. As a result, refugees from
droughts in Somalia have
been able to seek shelter from their environmental problems in Kenya. However, the more
important definition, for world refugee problems, is the 1951 Convention whose
membership is not limited to the African Union.
More precise regional and Kenyan refugee policies will have to be understood
as well.
Since the conflicts in the Sudan
and Somalia have only
intensified, most of the refugees who originally arrived in Kenya in the
early nineties have stayed. To
deal with this problem the Kenyan government created the 2006 Refugee Act which established a Ministry of Refugee Affairs. The Ministry was supposed to work in
tandem with UNHCR managing Dadaab. This
has not been the case however.
Instead of being a problem solving institution, the Ministry acts as an enforcement mechanism, applying standard Kenyan policy instead of
researching ways to better integrate refugees into the society. What’s surprising though (or not surprising
at all) is that integration of refugees does not seem to be a priority for the
Kenyan Government.
As of 2010 Kenya
has a new constitution and in 2011 their National Assembly passed the Kenya
Citizenship and Immigration Bill.
According to Part V Section 33, “a prohibited immigrant is a person who
is-…(s) a person who knowingly or for profit aids, encourages or procures other
persons who are not citizens to enter Kenya illegally, (t) a person who is a
stowaway or seeks to enter illegally” (Kenya, 2011). This could be applied against asylum seekers
if the government wished. It would be illegal though. According to international law sending someone back to an area from which they are fleeing political persecution breaches one’s right to non-refoulement.
The new constitution also lays out the rights of Kenyan
citizens in Section 22. The section
grants,
“(a) the right
to enter, leave, remain in and reside anywhere in Kenya;
(b) the right to be registered as a voter without
unreasonable restriction;
(c) the right to free, fair and regular elections
based on universal suffrage and to vote and vie for-;
(i) any elective body or office established under the
Constitution;
(ii) any office of any political party of which the
citizen is a member;
(iii) vote in any referendum;
(d) the right to own land and other property in any
part of the country;
(e) the right to vie for election or be appointed to a
state office;
(f) if a citizen by birth the right to seek
appointment and to be appointed to a state office;
(g) the right, if the person is a citizen by birth, to
vie and be elected as the President or the Deputy President” (Kenya, 2011).
None
of these rights are applicable to Kenyan refugees. Refugees have no political rights in Kenya and no
pathway to citizenship. This makes it
hard for anyone to understand what sort of future refugees in Kenya actually
have. There is a syndrome many refugees
living in Nairobi
have, called buufis (Horst, 2006). Its
symptoms are an increased yearning for resettlement and fervent dreams of the
possibility of a better future. The
reason for this syndrome is the lack of opportunity afforded refugees. The path to this dearth of hope stems from
the retreat of the Kenyan Government from the facilitation and management of
refugee law and care. Instead of taking
a more active role when refugees streamed through their borders they gave up
and turned responsibility over to the UN High Commissioner of Refugees. This has led to an extreme disconnect between
the needs of Somali refugees and the objectives of Kenya’s policy-makers.
The Arrival of the UNHCR
Prior
to 1990-1991 refugees within Kenya
had many rights. They had the freedom to
go where they pleased within the country, they could work legally, and they had
the right to an education. Asylum
seekers applying for refugee status would be seen by an Eligibility Committee
made up of representatives from the Kenyan Ministry of Home Affairs and the
Immigration Department (Verdirame, 1999).
Applicants were rarely denied their requests. However, with the influx of refugees that
came in ’90-'91 from Somalia,
Ethiopia, and the Sudan, rights
for refugees were discarded and the handling of refugee issues was given to the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The arrival of UNHCR instituted a new way of
processing refugees. When the inflow of
applicants was low individual sessions were still the preferred method of
assessment. When there was an influx of
people individual interviews were set aside in favor of mass validation.
Camps
were built to house the refugees and their freedom of movement was limited to
the camps for the most part. The camps
were established in a desert where dust storms are common and it is impossible
to grow food on a subsistence scale. The
government had “feared that the refugees might become settled in valuable areas
of the country, especially in the highlands” (Perouse de Montclos, 2000). Many of the services provided by the camps
were contracted out to various NGOs. Gesellschaft
für Technische Zusammenarbeit, a German NGO, led an effort to introduce greater
vegetal cover to the camps to keep down dust that would inevitably blow through
(Perouse de Montclos, 2000). The refugees
would also use what was grown in the gardens as feed for their goats and
poultry, though they could not feed cattle off it. Most of the refugees were traditionally
pastoralists used to living off the flesh and milk of their cattle. The new foods that were provided to them
through the World Food Programme would disgust many of them, not being used to
corn-soy blends. The impersonality and
disconnect that has come with the standardization and consolidation approach of
the UNHCR has led to a weakening of the refugee system in Kenya.
Dadaab: The World’s Largest Refugee
Complex
Dadaab
is the world’s largest refugee complex to date.
It was built to house 90,000 people. In 2011 however, with the drought and subsequent conflict in Somalia, the
complex was home to nearly 400,000. There
are 3 camps within the complex, Ifo 2; Dagahaley; and Hagadera. Ifo 2, built in 2007 in place of Ifo as a
result of flooding, is the largest of the camps. The complex is located in a desert in a
northeastern section of Kenya. The
land is no good for cattle and the refugees are almost completely reliant on
the World Food Programme (WFP) for all of their food.
Overcrowding
has made conditions in the camps even worse.
Recently the camps have been inundated with new arrivals. The most recent arrivals have been crowding
around the edge of the camp (UN, 2011b).
Many of the new arrivals settled on the outskirts of Dadaab which are
prone to flooding and increased instances of gender based violence. UNHCR has worked to move 85,000 of these
refugees into the new camp extensions Ifo East, Ifo West, and Kambioos. Overcrowding contributes to the danger of the
camps. Police abuse is prevalent within
the camps and complaints from refugees are not normally taken up for
investigation. Women are especially
vulnerable in the camps. Firewood is
required for cooking and cleaning every day.
Retrieving firewood is normally a woman’s job but to get to the areas
where the wood is located they must trek a good distance, out of
sight of the camp. This makes them
targets for rape and molestation, common occurrences on such trips. There is little to prevent this since law
enforcement has little sympathy for the refugees.
The Authorities: Police Brutality on the
Border and in the Camps
There
are two main problems with interactions between the refugees and law
enforcement. Firstly, law enforcement
regularly takes advantage of Somali refugees inside and outside the camps. Refugees are regularly subjected to abuse and
extortion making their lives tenuous.
This is especially true outside the camps. Secondly, the refugee camps have become
centers for arms trafficking, drug trafficking, and terrorism. The tension between law enforcement and
refugees has only made the problems Kenyans must deal with that much worse.
When
crossing the border from Somalia
to Kenya
refugees often encounter the authorities.
People smugglers will be stopped along the road and asked for a bribe to
continue on. Normally the smuggler will
turn to the fifteen or twenty people he is escorting into the country and ask
them to give the officers whatever they have.
There is never very much but the refugees usually are informed they will
need a little money for bribery once they get across the border, so it is
rarely a problem. Another, more
sinister, regular occurrence when crossing the border is the systematic physical
abuse of the refugees. The officers will
ask the refugees to step out of the vehicle they are traveling in and then
divide the passengers between the men, women, and children. Sometimes the children are left with the women
but often they are simply left with their mothers or kept near the vehicles. In extreme cases children may be held until a
ransom is paid for them. The women are
inevitably treated worse than the men.
Once the women are separated from the group the guards will take turns
raping and molesting them. Sometimes the
mothers are left with their children, sparing them the abuse the other women
have to endure. In addition to the women
being raped the men may be taken away and beaten. They are normally accused of being members of
al Shabbab, a Somali terrorist organization which is currently at war with Kenya. If a bribe was not initially paid, they are
often taken to the prison at Garissa where it is hoped they can contact friends
or relatives who will pay for them.
Conditions
in Garissa are reportedly deplorable. Human
Rights Watch (HRW) released a report in 2010 detailing the conditions there
through interviews conducted with previously released refugees (Simpson, 2010). Refugees are normally packed 20 to 50 people
to a cell with dimension between 2m x 4m or 3m x 5m. Little food is provided to the refugees and
instead having toilets available there may be buckets or nothing at all. According to one interview, a 32 year old
pregnant woman was slapped and forced into one of the cells. Apparently, as a result of the harsh
treatment, she had a still birth. Detainees
are normally held for a period of three days before they appear before a
magistrate to have their case heard.
They are regularly asked for a bribe from the clerk so that the
magistrate will view their case favorably.
The fact that they were arrested in the first place is problematic
though.
The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Kenya is a Party
to, prohibits the state from subjecting anyone “to arbitrary arrest or
detention [or] (to) be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in
accordance with such procedures as are established by law” (Simpson, 2010). As a result, UNHCR has stopped transporting
refugees back and forth between Garissa and the camps, leaving the job to the
police. Whether this actually has an
impact on the amount or quality of the detentions remains to be seen. The result of the hardships many of the
asylum seekers face in reaching the camps and inside of the camps leads to
predictable consequences.
A
joint report between the United States and Kenya “found connections between the
camps and the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi as well as the suicide
bombings within Mombassa in 2002” (Sipus, 2011).
While terrorists are not as noticeable in camps as Somali pirates, their
presence is well-known with many refugees knowing at least one family that has a
member of a terrorist organization.
Al Qaeda and al Shabbab members are therefore regulars in the camps.
Recently,
there has been unprecedented violence within the camps. On November 5, 2011 a police vehicle
escorting a UN convoy struck a landmine in Hagadera Camp (Ombati, 2010). The landmine failed to detonate, sparing the
six officers inside their lives, but left an eerie foreshadowing of more recent
events. That was the first landmine to
be discovered in the entire Dadaab complex. Aid workers are also in
increased danger. Two Spanish members of
Medecins Sans Frontiers were kidnapped in October in Dagahaley Camp (Medecins, 2011).
The
decreased security in the camps is leading to fear of the refugees outside the
camps. Somali refugees have always been
second-class citizens in Kenya
but they normally have not been harassed as they are now. Kenya had a decently large native
Somali population in the eastern half of the state before the influx of
refugees in the 1980s. As a result, it
was hard to distinguish between who was a citizen and who was a refugee. Now ethnic hatred is becoming more
common. Beliefs that al Shabaab has
infiltrated the camps and is using them as a base for terrorist attacks and
arms trafficking are fueling greater ethnic tension in the region (Warah, 2011). With increased environmental issues the
problem can only get worse if nothing changes.
Urban Refugees: Life outside the Camps
One
major complaint about the refugees is they are an economic threat. Kenyans are worried that the Somalis are
taking jobs from the Kenyans who need them.
In a survey by Elizabeth Campbell, a Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University-State University of New York who has worked with UNHCR and in
refugee neighborhoods in Kenya, “48 out of 50 non-Somali Kenyans living and
working in Eastleigh stated that all refugees should live in the camp or go
home. The remaining two said refugees
should be able to live in Nairobi until there is
peace in their country and then return home” (Campbell, 2006).
Despite
the fact that it is illegal to settle outside of the camps many refugees try
their hand at it anyways. They tend to
keep a low profile simply because being found would mean they would be
deported, sent back to the camps, or have to deal with the police. (As mentioned before, law enforcement is not
a friend to the refugees.) Outside of the
camps the two main places of settlement are the Eastleigh district of Nairobi, Kenya’s
capital, and Garissa. While both Garissa
and Eastleigh are located in Kenya
there are notable differences between the two.
First, Garissa is relatively close to the Dadaab complex and located in
the eastern half of the country, where the majority of the Somali population
native to Kenya
lives. If a Somali decides he or she
would like to settle down in Garissa it is likely he or she has family there
that can help to support him or her (Horst, 2006).
Refugees that settle in Garissa normally stay there, integrate well, and
end up making a life for themselves. Eastleigh,
in contrast, is an area where refugees can go to try to get out of Kenya. Nairobi
is a town made for making money. Men
will leave their families in the camps and try to find a way to get them
resettled outside of Kenya. The climate of Nairobi is better, people can keep in touch
with relatives outside of the country who have promised to sponsor their
resettlement easier, wages are higher, and the security situation is better
(Horst, 2006).
Refugees
in urban centers, since they are living in Kenya illegally, must find a way to
support themselves. They do not live off
of government or United Nations provided aid.
Most of them “run businesses, engage in small scale trade, live off remittances,
or earn money through casual labor in order to survive” (Campbell, 2006). While urban refugees technically do not exist
according to the Government of Kenya their neighborhoods are well known. This leaves them out in the open in a legal
limbo that makes them particularly good targets for extortion. For poor refugees this means that their hard
earned money often ends up in the hands of law enforcement (Campbell, 2006). Politicians regularly address the fact that
refugees in Nairobi
are their illegally and warn that they should report to the camps or if found
they will be treated like any other illegal immigrant. When sweeps of refugee neighborhoods have
been made it is normally in reaction to a national security problem such as the
1998 Embassy bombings. After the attack
over 600 Somalis and Ethiopians were rounded up and at the beginning of 2002,
after the attack in Mombasa, more than 1,000
illegals were detained (Campbell, 2006). One can imagine how some odd
thousand refugees would feel about arbitrary arrest, for crimes that obviously
could not have been committed by as many people as were arrested. How would 1,000 Americans feel about being
arrested in a foreign country because a few other Americans bombed the
countries embassy? And it’s not like
they have anywhere to return to. The
constant conflict and regular drought is taking an enormous toll on Somalia.
The 2011 Horn of Africa
Drought
In
addition to social hardships that Somali refugees generally face in Kenya
an enormous amount of refugees have arrived in the country within the last six
months putting an even greater strain on the refugees resources. The drought has affected the entire Horn of
Africa, including Kenya; the
Sudan; Djibouti; Ethiopia;
and Somalia. Somalia has been the hardest hit
though as a result of continuous civil war in the country and the theocratic
control of aid by al Shabaab.
On
July 20, 2011 the Famine Early Warning Detection System declared an ongoing
famine for two portions of “Somalia:
the Bakool agropastoral livelihood zones and all areas of Lower
Shabelle” (FSNAU, 2011). The
famine is the result of a mixture of environmental and political problems. The October-December ‘Deyr’ rains for the area
failed while the April-June Gu rains were not much of an improvement. Failure of the rains has resulted in
widespread crop failure and as a result there is low cereal availability. Ongoing trade restrictions in the area have
only made the situation worse. Famine,
based on the International Phase Classification scale, “exists when at least 20
percent of the population has extremely limited access to basic food
requirements, global acute malnutrition exceeds 30 percent, and the death rate
exceeds 2/10,000/day for the entire population” (FSNAU, 2011). It was expected that such conditions would
expand across Southern Somalia.
As
for the future of the area, relief was not expected until recently when delayed
October-December rains would show up.
The harvest for this year is over though so the rains can only cause
flooding until the end of next June. For
Kenya,
the drought is the beginning of declining yields per capita. Though total yields of staple crops like
maize are going up the population is growing too fast. This will inevitably result in even greater
strain between the refugees and Kenyan nationals. That is not necessary if Kenyan farmers would
use improved farming practices (US, 2010a).
Problem Solving: Environmental Disasters
& Refugees
The
current drought in the Horn of Africa provides an excellent case study for the
future of how environmental refugees will be treated. As climate shifts, long-term changes in
weather patterns will be slow. There
will be minor shocks along the way for many of the regions that will eventually
experience wholesale shifts. The
neighbors of these areas will have to deal with the problems of migration
before the greatest damage is done. The
refugees that initially arrive will probably not be able to return since the
climate is shifting permanently.
Displaced persons need the ability to make a place for themselves within
society. Sending them back would be a
death sentence, so hopefully refoulement is out of the question. However, if Kenya were to be the example the
world followed refoulement would probably be commonplace (Simpson, 2010).
Kenya’s situation with the Somali
refugees is blueprint for the possibilities of an ignored refugee problem. 20 years ago the refugees arrived and because
of ongoing political strife they have not been able to return. As time has gone by even more refugees have
arrived because of worsening conditions in Somalia. Various droughts throughout the past 2
decades have put increasing strain on the camp's resources. Currently, seeing a good opportunity and
taking it, the Kenyan government has launched a war against al Shabaab. Caught in the middle refugees are often
treated (mockingly it seems) as if they are al Shabaab themselves when they are
most likely fleeing from their harsh rule.
Asylum seekers face systemic refoulement when crossing the border into Kenya and are
regularly arrested and subjected to unsanitary conditions within Kenyan
prisons. It was not believed the refugee
problem would advance this way, that should be an omen for anyone optimistic
about disregarding the rights of refugees.
Refugee
camps are intended to be temporary housing not permanent settlements. The length of stay, slim chance of any hope
for a better life, problem of overcrowding, and abuse by authorities leads many
refugees to hate Kenya. They become attracted to terrorism either as
a means for revenge or a way to find purpose in life. Now Kenya is in a catch-22. They have signed numerous international
agreements requiring them to house the refugees that are flowing across their
border. They must treat the refugees humanely. However, because of poor planning, past
policy, and social exclusion, they have created an enemy within their country. This may seem like a drastic conclusion to
come to but the influx of refugees into Kenya
within the last 6 months has made the outcome of Kenya’s prior policy decisions
clear. The increase in violence within
the refugee camps directed towards government employees and aid workers bears
this fact out.
This
scenario will continue to play out around the world if something is not done to
prevent countries from making rash decisions such as cordoning an entire
population to camps and preventing them from leaving. Problems such as decreased food supply in Kenya can only
exacerbate tensions between the refugees and Kenyan citizens if nothing changes. Kenyan stereotypes of Somali refugees as
inexorable drains on the economic system can inevitably be transferred to views
on the food system as well. However, the
problem with Kenyan food supply is that the farmers are not employing best
practices. A report from the United
Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur of the Right to Food explains
how farmers in Eastern Africa were able to
increase their yields by 72% despite having to contend with decreased rainfall. With the decreased precipitation expected for
Kenya,
agroecological farming methods would be perfect for the region. The agroecological methods the report
supports “can be labor-intensive during their launching period, due to the
complexity of the tasks of managing different plants and animals on the farm,
and recycling the waste” (UN, 2010).
Since agroecology is necessarily a labor intensive practice and yields
can expand from 72-125% it would make sense to allow Somali citizens a pathway
to citizenship to help institute a revolutionary agricultural policy. Most of the Somali refugees have a
pastoralist background. Therefore some
type of agriculture is what they specialize in if not the cultivation of
plants. At the least, refugees who
demonstrate an ability to understand agroecology and a willingness to apply its
techniques consistently should be allowed the possibility of citizenship. With citizenship refugees would have freedom
of movement, the right to work, and the right to an education. They could actively begin building lives for
themselves while doing an important service for their home country and
mitigating whatever perceived burden they had been deemed to be in the camp.
By
giving the refugees a way out of their situation we are providing a relief
valve on the security crisis that is forming in Kenya. While it may be inevitable that the refugee
populace within Kenya
will be radicalized against the state; the suggested measures to mitigate the problem are
necessary. What Kenya has done
through its abuse by law enforcement and deprivation of civil and political
rights is create a large population of second-class citizens. Once they are inside the country they are
basically indistinguishable from native Somali-Kenyans except for legal documentation. Many refugees are able to blend in with the
rest of the population in areas like Garissa and Nairobi.
With arms dealing and terrorist connections on the rise in the area ways
of solving the refugee problem without the use of violence is going to become
increasingly important. Deciding when
people can legitimately be considered refugees during a pending environmental
crisis poses a problem however.
Beyond the Case Study
One
of the possible problems an environmental refugee regime will run into is
determining when a crisis has actually become sufficient to deem an individual
a refugee. The weakness of the case
study lies in the fact that the buildup of refugees in Kenya mostly
came from conflicts in the region prior to the various droughts that have
happened since 1990. Precautionary migration
may be the choice of well informed asylum seekers who understand the situation
the climate forecast for their region (Bardsley, 2010). In this case, should they be granted entry? A problem severe enough to force their
displacement has not occurred yet, or perhaps it is occurring on such a small
scale that they are the first ones to be affected. This is a difficult question to answer. The best possible option would be having the
World Meteorological Organization conduct ongoing studies of regional climate
and then to determine where it is acceptable groups climate refugees. In this way there can be a basis for the determination in science instead of politics.
Conclusion
With
increased incidents of extreme weather events due to climate change becoming
more likely, ways of addressing the inevitable influx of displaced persons will
be necessary. When climate changes it is
often for long periods of time and having a large group of disenfranchised
individuals in a country is a recipe for civil unrest. Kenya is dealing with this problem
right now. The populace believes that
the Somali refugees who have come into the country are a burden on the nation,
drawing needed jobs away from deserving Kenyans. If policy is crafted effectively though, the
Somalis could be moved from being the permanent charges of UNHCR to
contributing members of society. Their
labor could allow for a shift in the way agriculture is practiced, increasing
average yields between 73-125%. In
order for this proposal to be successful though the refugees need a pathway to
citizenship.
With
citizenship comes freedom of movement and the ability to be legally employed. These rights are necessary to ensure that the
former refugees can effectively cultivate their land and market their produce. Since there will inevitably be a xenophobic
backlash against the proposal there should be an initial stipulation on what
constitutes eligibility for applying for citizenship. Primarily, the refugees must take a course
provided by the camp proving that they understand agroecology and it various
applications. With
this allowance Somali refugees can make a life for themselves in Kenya.
What
is more important though is that we understand what is at stake for the people
who will be affected by climate change.
Climate change does not know the borders we draw for ourselves. It will not care who it harms along the way. Every possible measure needs to be taken
beforehand to ensure that people are not stuck in an untenable situation. Ensuring a pathway to citizenship for climate
refugees is essential then. They will
often not be able to go home and will be truly stateless persons. By planning ahead we can ensure this isn’t
too disastrous for the civilizations we have built.
References
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