Djibouti Repatriates Somali Asylum
Seekers
Djibouti
has repatriated 40 asylum seekers from Somalia back to Mogadishu.
The United Nations refugee agency said a Dutch naval ship, the Evertsen, on
anti-piracy patrols in the Red Sea, rescued the migrants crammed on a boat en
route to Yemen late last month.
Yemeni authorities refused to accept them and Djibouti first agreed to take them
in then sent them back to Somalia.
According to a spokeswoman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Kathryn
Mahoney, ’’UNHCR expresses regret regarding the forced repatriation of 40 Somali
nationals to Mogadishu,’’ she said in a telephone interview.
The migrants, including six women and seven children, were among thousands of
people to have braved the 30-hour journey to Yemen with little food or water,
often on rickety vessels.
Two years of Islamist insurgency have created one of the world's worst
humanitarian crises, with 1 million internally displaced people in the Horn of
Africa country and others fleeing to Yemen, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.
UNHCR said Djibouti authorities forced the 40 asylum seekers on to a plane which
flew them back to the Somali capital on Tuesday.
Islamist rebels are battling to overthrow a fragile transitional government in
Mogadishu and the agency said deportation of the migrants to the Somali capital
contravened the 1951 Geneva Convention that protects refugees.
Eighteen years of civil conflict in Somalia show no sign of abating, with
foreign militants joining Islamist rebels seeking to topple the new government
which is the 15th attempt to restore central rule since 1991.
REUTERS/Yinka
