Concern as refugees flee Uganda to Kenya

Authorities in Busia District have raised concern over refugees fleeing Ugandan Refugee camps  to Kenya.
Mr Grace Kanuna, the deputy Busia Resident District Commissioner (RDC), told the Daily Monitor in an interview on Tuesday that over the past two months, there has been an influx of refugees fleeing Uganda to Kenya.  
He, however, did not provide us with the specific number of refugees fleeing the country.
Mr Kanuna said he was in touch with officials from the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), which had returned close to 100 refugees to their resettlement camps. 
The refugees are from the resettlement camps of Lwamanja, Nakivale and Kyaka II in south-western Uganda.
It is alleged that they are fleeing the deplorable conditions in the camps.  
Pastor Lawrence Lumu of God’s Property Church, which has been hosting some of the refugees, said:  “The first batch of refugees, who were about 25, were brought to my church by Police in early April, but since then, more have kept flocking in. Cumulatively, I have hosted close to 600 refugees - all seeking to cross the border to Kenya.” 
He said the refugees told him that Kenya was offering better services, compared to Uganda. 
Claude Nsengimana, who escaped from Kyaka II Refugee camp in Kyegegwa with his family, said his decision came after drought hit the district and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) decided to cut their allowances from Shs31,000 to Shs11,000.
He said due to the drought, he had no food to feed his family and the allowances were not enough to take care of all their basic needs. 
Ms Lovina Akumu, who operates a shop on Customs Road in Busia Town, said: “On a daily basis, I have seen several minibuses and Toyota Wish cars drop asylum seekers who are suspected to be from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.”
She added that the refugees are taken to Kenya through the porous border points by boda boda riders.
Ms Jackeline Nabwire, a resident at the border, said the refugees have been paying boda boda riders between Shs5,000 and Shs20,000 to smuggle them across the border. 
At Marachi ‘C’ Village in Eastern Division, which is the last Ugandan village before one reaches Kenya, authorities said they hosted several Congolese refugee families en route to Kenya.
Mr Michael Ocheng, a Local Council official, said: “We had close to 50 who arrived here, but as they crossed the border, they were intercepted by Kenya Police and returned to the Ugandan side.” 
Two weeks ago, the Kenyan government repatriated 300 asylum seekers, who were part of 1,607 Congolese refugees who fled various refugee camps in Uganda and crossed to Kenya. 
Concerns
There are concerns that the illegal refugee movement threatens to escalate the already bad refugee situation in the East African Community (EAC) region.
A security source at the border says they have started investigations to establish who is behind the racket(s) smuggling asylum seekers across the border to Kenya, adding that their influx points to “works of criminal cartels”. 
“What we have been witnessing points to some organised crime being committed by human smugglers; they hoodwink refugees and take them across with promises of better lives once in Kenya,” the source said. 
Unhcr responds
In an interview with Daily Monitor yesterday, Mr Frank Walusimbi, the associate communications officer at United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Uganda, said: “We have been told by UNHCR Kenya that 5,000 refugees had left the various settlements in Uganda and crossed to two refugee camps of Kakuma and Kalobeyei 1, 2, and 3 integrated settlement camps in Kenya.” 
He said UNHCR-Uganda is working with their Kenyan counterparts to have the refugees repatriated. 
He added that another 1,473 refugees were recently repatriated back to the country and taken back to their respective refugee settlement camps.
Mr Walusimbi, however, said refugees have a free policy to move from one refugee settlement camp to another and any country of their choice.
He added that funding to the refugees in the past three years has been declining which has seen a drastic reduction in food rations and subsistence allowances given to the refugees. 
He said UNHCR is coming up with an evaluation process that will only have the most vulnerable refugees continue to get food rations and other forms of support while those who are self-reliant will not be supported.
Efforts to get a comment from the government were futile by press time.
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