Kenya repatriated 33,800 refugees to Somalia in 2016, according to a UNHCR report released on Tuesday to commemorate the World Refugee Day.
The report went ahead to state that the number of countries to which the refugees returned globally increased from 39 in 2015, to 40 in 2016.
According to the report, the population of asylum seekers in Kenya declined from 553,900 to 451,100 in 2016, accounting for nearly 20 per cent.
It added that the number of Somali refugees decreased from 417,900 to 324,400 during the year.
At the end of 2015, there were 1.1 million Somali refugees, a number that decreased to 1.0 million by the end of 2016.
In addition to Somalis, significant numbers of refugees from South Sudan (87,100), Ethiopia (19,100), and the DRC (13,300) remained in Kenya at the end of 2016.
Even so, the report ranked Kenya among top-10 refugee-hosting countries globally.
“The country continued to host the largest Somali refugee population, with 324,400,” the report says. This was followed by Yemen, where the population increased to 255,100.
Kenya last year said it would shut down the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab, citing infiltration by terror groups as the reason for the closure. Even though international players criticized the plans to shut Dadaab, the Kenyan government said it would go ahead with the closure.
