The United Na­tions refugee chief has com­pleted a visit to Kenya and So­ma­lia where he held suc­cess­ful meet­ings with the Pres­i­dents of both coun­tries and dis­cussed is­sues re­lated to refugees and re­turnees, par­tic­u­larly re­gard­ing the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple in Dadaab camp.

We reached a com­mon un­der­stand­ing with the Pres­i­dents of Kenya and So­ma­lia on three things,” said UN High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees, An­tónio Guter­res in Nairobi. “Firstly, the need to en­sure re­turn from Dadaab is vol­un­tary and that it takes place in safety and dig­nity, and in ac­cor­dance with the Tri­par­tite Agree­ment; sec­ondly, on co­op­er­a­tion to boost se­cu­rity in Dadaab; and thirdly, the ex­pan­sion of ad­di­tional ar­eas for peo­ple to re­turn to in So­ma­lia.”

Mr. Guter­res ex­pressed deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion to Pres­i­dent of Kenya Uhuru Keny­atta for his “courage and wis­dom” in han­dling the refugee sit­u­a­tion, even as emo­tions in the coun­try run high fol­low­ing the at­tack on Garissa Uni­ver­sity.

Shortly af­ter that 2 April as­sault on the cam­pus, for which So­mali-based Al-Shabaab claimed re­spon­si­bil­ity and which re­port­edly left scores of peo­ple dead, the High Com­mis­sion­er’s Of­fice (UN­HCR) urged Kenyan au­thor­i­ties to re­con­sider their de­ci­sion to shut down within the next three months Dadaab refugee camp, which lies along Kenya’s bor­der with So­ma­lia.

Fol­low­ing the re­cent visit, which wrapped up on 9 May, UN­HCR said Mr. Keny­atta was com­mit­ted to the aim of mak­ing re­turn to So­ma­lia an at­trac­tive and sus­tain­able op­tion for those in Kenya, while Mr. Guter­res said he would mo­bi­lize the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to boost se­cu­rity in Dadaab, where nearly 350,000 peo­ple are liv­ing.

Mr. Guter­res also met So­ma­li­a’s Pres­i­dent, Has­san Sheikh Mo­hamud, as well as Prime Min­is­ter Shar­marke, in Mo­gadishu where the pos­si­ble fu­ture re­turn of So­mali refugees in Kenya was also dis­cussed.

He also trav­elled to Kismayo, in south cen­tral So­ma­lia, which is a key refugee re­turn des­ti­na­tion. There he met re­gional leader Ahmed Madobe and dis­cussed scal­ing up the cur­rent vol­un­tary re­turn pro­ject and en­sur­ing that re­turns are sus­tain­able.

To en­able peo­ple to re­turn, in­vest­ment needed to be scaled up to im­prove so­cio-eco­nomic con­di­tions for refugees, dis­placed peo­ple and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. Mr. Guter­res said he would mo­bi­lize the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to im­prove ac­cess to shel­ter, ed­u­ca­tion, health and other ba­sic ser­vices as cre­ate re­al­is­tic liveli­hood op­por­tu­ni­ties.

While in Kenya, the High Com­mis­sioner also vis­ited Dadaab, camp where he met with lo­cal of­fi­cials, refugees and host com­mu­ni­ties. He con­demned the Garissa at­tack not­ing that the en­tire re­gion has suf­fered the ef­fects of ter­ror­ism and re­it­er­ated com­mit­ment to strengthen se­cu­rity in Dadaab.

“It is in the in­ter­ests of the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment of Kenya to pro­tect its cit­i­zens and the refugees it has so gen­er­ously re­ceived,” he said. “I’ve seen ba­bies who have been born from par­ents who have been born in Dadaab. This is not how we want peo­ple to live.”

He noted that around 2,000 refugees had re­turned to Luuq, Baidoa and Kismayo in So­ma­lia with the sup­port of UN­HCR since the Tri­par­tite Agree­ment and he said im­prove­ments in ba­sic con­di­tions would help to boost those num­bers ex­po­nen­tially.

In the mean­time, Mr. Guter­res told refugees in Dadaab that he had re­ceived re­as­sur­ance from the Kenyan Gov­ern­ment that any fu­ture re­turns to So­ma­lia would be fully vol­un­tary and in line with the pro­vi­sions of the Tri­par­tite Agree­ment.

“UN­HCR and the Gov­ern­ments of Kenya and So­ma­lia will or­ga­nize an In­ter­na­tional Con­fer­ence of Sol­i­dar­ity, to raise the re­quired fund­ing to mul­ti­ply ar­eas in­side So­ma­lia where ca­pac­ity to re­ceive re­turnees will be boosted through a port­fo­lio of pro­jects,” he said.