Through a lively hood intervention programme, the American Refugee Committee (ARC) is providing increased livelihood opportunity to 140 returnee and conflict-affected IDP households in Kismayo through the development of maritime market value chains.

The UN refugee agency said on Wednes­day it has so far repa­tri­ated 2,048 refugees from Kenya to So­ma­lia un­der the cur­rent vol­un­tary re­turn pi­lot pro­ject which kicked off in De­cem­ber 2014. The UN High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees (UN­HCR) said in its bi­weekly up­date re­ceived in Nairobi that more refugees have ex­pressed their in­ter­est to re­turn home. The UN­HCR said ma­jor­ity of the refugees re­turned to south­ern So­ma­li­a’s port city of Kismayo and with hopes of greater sta­bil­ity in So­ma­lia, some IDPs and refugees from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries are spon­ta­neously re­turn­ing to their ar­eas of ori­gin.

“2,048 in­di­vid­u­als (442 house­holds) vol­un­tar­ily re­turned to So­ma­lia be­tween the be­gin­ning of the re­turn pi­lot pro­ject in De­cem­ber 2014 and March 31. The ma­jor­ity re­turned to Kismayo,” UN­HCR said in the up­date. Ac­cord­ing to refugee agency, a to­tal of 25 cases com­pris­ing of 87 in­di­vid­u­als were sub­mit­ted to Branch Of­fice Nairobi for on­ward re­set­tle­ment to the US, Den­mark and New Zealand in mid March.
“21 new born ba­bies and five spouses were added on to cases al­ready in the US re­set­tle­ment pro­cess­ing pipeline. 27 in­di­vid­u­als de­parted Dadaab for on­ward re­set­tle­ment to Swe­den, US , Nor­way, France and Britain.

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“The Swedish re­set­tle­ment ex­perts ar­rived in Dadaab on March 30 and con­ducted Cul­tural Ori­en­ta­tion for refugees who will be re­set­tled to Swe­den,” it said. The move came af­ter the Ger­man gov­ern­ment last month pro­vided 5. 5 mil­lion US dol­lars to sup­port vol­un­tary repa­tri­a­tion of refugees to So­ma­lia.

The money was chan­neled to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für In­ter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) to im­ple­ment the pro­ject which will help to im­prove the liveli­hoods of re­turn­ing refugees, IDPs and the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion in se­lected host com­mu­ni­ties. She said the pro­ject also sym­bol­izes the re­turn of Ger­man De­vel­op­ment Co­op­er­a­tion to South and Cen­tral So­ma­lia where the GIZ had been ac­tive un­til 2011 pro­vid­ing de­vel­op­ment-ori­ented tran­si­tional aid.
UN­HCR has formed the Re­turn Con­sor­tium, con­sist­ing of UN agen­cies and in­ter­na­tional NGOs in So­ma­lia which pro­motes a stan­dard­ized ap­proach to as­sist re­turnees and seeks syn­er­gies to fa­cil­i­tate vol­un­tary re­turn, with the aim of safe and sus­tain­able rein­te­gra­tion of re­turnees in So­ma­lia.

Ac­cord­ing to UN­HCR, the re­turnees re­ceived a re­turn sup­port pack­age com­pris­ing of an un­con­di­tional cash grant, es­sen­tial travel and hy­giene kits for use dur­ing the jour­ney home, tools, food and other ba­sic needs as­sis­tance to sup­port the sus­tain­abil­ity of re­turn and rein­te­gra­tion in So­ma­lia.
So­mali refugees in Kenya are es­ti­mated at 500,000 and the num­ber has in­creased due to tur­moil and re­cur­rent droughts in the Horn of African na­tion which has been torn asun­der by fac­tional fight­ing since 1991 but has re­cently made progress to­wards sta­bil­ity.

The con­flict has left some 1.1 mil­lion in­ter­nally dis­placed per­sons (IDPs) and over 1 mil­lion more liv­ing in ex­ile in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, mostly in Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen.
But with parts of So­ma­lia show­ing signs of in­creas­ing sta­bil­ity, coun­tries host­ing So­mali refugees are con­sid­er­ing the po­ten­tial to en­cour­age them to re­turn, while some So­ma­lis have spon­ta­neously de­cided to move back to ar­eas un­der gov­ern­ment con­trol.
The Tri­par­tite Agree­ment which was signed by Kenya, So­ma­lia and UN­HCR in No­vem­ber 2013 es­tab­lishes a le­gal frame­work and other sup­port for So­mali refugees in Kenya who might even­tu­ally wish to re­turn to their home­land.