[JURIST] The Kenyan government announced on Sunday that it asked the UN Refugee Agency [official website] to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees by July. The request comes in the wake of the Garissa University massacre, an attack [JURIST report] by Shebab insurgents that left nearly 150 dead. A statement released by the Kenyan government included statements by Vice President William Ruto [official website]. “We have asked the UNHCR to relocate the refugees in three months, failure to which we shall relocate them ourselves,” he said [Agence France-Presse report]. He also compared the attacks to the September 11th attacks, stating [CNN report], “The way America changed after 9/11 is the way Kenya will change after Garissa.” When asked about the request, the agency stated that it has not yet received the request, but noted that the refugees cannot be involuntarily repatriated.

Somalia has struggled to stabilize after the collapse of its government in 1991. In the words of JURIST Guest Columnist Stoyan Panov, Somalia had been ravaged by an endemic, wide-spread internal conflict [JURIST op-ed] for more than 20 years. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in April 2014 urged Somali authorities to place a moratorium on the death penalty [JURIST report] after the execution of a man nine days after he allegedly murdered a town elder. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees released a report in March detailing the asylum trends in industrialized countries in 2013 indicating that Somalia was a top ten refugee origination zone [JURIST report]. Human Rights Watch released a report entitled “Here, Rape is Normal” in February 2014 urging the Somali government to adopt reforms [JURIST report] to help prevent sexual violence against women and provide support for victims.