NAIROBI (AlertNet) - Kenya will expand Africa's biggest refugee settlement to accommodate an additional 80,000 people, relieving severe overcrowding, a top U.S. official said.
Dadaab, a settlement of three camps in northern Kenya, was designed to house 90,000 refugees but now hosts 270,000 people - one of the world's largest concentrations of refugees.
The camps - Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera - consist of mainly flimsy huts and tents on sandy scrubland and receive on average 5,000 refugees, most of them Somalis, every month, according to the United Nations.
"(We) welcome and indeed praise the decision by local authorities in Dadaab to provide for the expansion of Ifo camp," Reuben Brigety, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, told journalists in Nairobi this week after visiting the settlement.
Aid agencies and rights groups have been calling on Kenya for years to improve living conditions in Dadaab. Human Rights Watch said last year that the camps were likely to become fertile recruiting grounds for Somalia's Islamic rebels as refugees grew more frustrated.
Kenya's media and some aid agencies have said in recent months that Somalia's pro-al Qaeda group al Shabaab, which has been battling the government since 2007, are drafting fighters into their ranks in Dadaab.
"We are very concerned, as is the government of Kenya, about reports that the camps are being used as recruitment by combatants inside Somalia, and we continue to reiterate our firm conviction that not only Dadaab but all refugee camps must be respected neutral," Brigety said.
He added that the U.S. government would help Kenya screen the Somalis entering the country to separate suspected militants from eligible refugees.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
