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Kenya: Fear of New Ethnic Hostility As State Hurriedly Resettles IDPs
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Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 16 May 2008
The ongoing government resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) is hurried and could set the stage for more ethnic violence in future, especially in the volatile Rift Valley Province.
Catholic officials and humanitarian workers in the region worst hit by the post-election ethnic violence said anxiety was growing as IDPs were being forcibly or hurriedly resettled by the government since last week.
Aid workers for the international medical humanitarian organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said they witnessed the forced return and resettlement of displaced people living in Endebess camp, western Kenya. Inhabitants of the camp were threatened and told to leave, although many of them feared returning to their places of origin or had nowhere to go.
In a statement issued Friday, MSF said its staff saw government officials and armed police going from tent to tent threatening people and pressuring them to leave. MSF staff also witnessed arrests and beatings in the camp.
The coordinator of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Eldoret said he could not confirm the MSF report, but the government was resettling the IDPs "very fast." The local communities wanted the process slowed down so that underlying issues could be addressed, Nixon Oira told CISA.
At the largest camp at the Eldoret show ground, people were not pushed out as such but were told the camp would be closed down shortly. "This approach is not the best," said Oira, adding that inter-ethnic harmony would be a big challenge in the coming days.
The MSF Head of Mission in Kenya Rémi Carrier said that while it is important that IDPs return and resettle, "we firmly believe that it has to be voluntary and done in an organised way. In Endebess this is clearly not the case".
Displaced people told MSF that they were pressured to leave the camp and are now waiting to receive assistance from the government. According to them, they have received limited support from the government, despite promises of a resettlement compensation package, and little has been done to address the root causes of their displacement.
In Kitale, the diocesan communications coordinator, Fr Protus Ondari, said "the government is not really forcing IDPs out but it wants them out of the camps as the only way of assessing the genuine refugees."
Many of the IDPs are not ready to leave because they are not sure that the perpetrators of the violence have really had a change of heart, the priest added.
At the Endebess camp, MSF said around 80 percent of the 9,000 refugees had left following government promises of security, shelter, seeds, food and money upon return, while others left under the threat of violence. Of the 1,200 remaining, most are either too traumatised or too terrified of what may happen to them when they return home, or have no home to return to.
The government has ruled out compensation for people who are still in camps.
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The resettlement program also kicked up another controversy after it emerged that the government was forcing civil servants to donate money to a special fund unveiled on Monday. The IDPs resettlement fund is chaired by retired Catholic archbishop of Nairobi Raphael Ndingi Mwana 'a Nzeki.
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