Somali refugees in Kenya are free to choose whether to go home, a top U.N. official said on Tuesday, despite many families saying debts accumulated to feed their children after cuts in rations are forcing them to return to a war zone.
In October, a funding crisis forced the U.N. World Food Programme to cut basic food rations and cash in Dadaab camp in northern Kenya, housing nearly 240,000 refugees, by 50 percent.
The United Nations said Dadaab suffered because it has been receiving Somalis for more than 25 years. Donors are focused on new conflicts like Syria and South Sudan that are fuelling the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two.
“All the attention goes to new crises,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi said as he visited visiting Dadaab on Tuesday. He told refugees that repatriation is their decision.
“At any stage in the process they can change their mind,” he said. “We check and check and check.”
But two families interviewed by Reuters on Tuesday said the food cuts forced them into debt to feed their children. To clear those debts, they volunteered to go back to Somalia in return for $150 per person – cash meant to help them begin a new life.