NAIROBI (Reuters) – Djibouti has forcibly sent 40 asylum seekers from Somalia back to the Somali capital Mogadishu, the United Nations refugee agency said on Wednesday.
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 the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR).
“UNHCR expresses regret regarding the forced repatriation of 40 Somali nationals to Mogadishu,” spokeswoman Kathryn Mahoney said by telephone from Djibouti.
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.
“Our security assessment show that Mogadishu and southern Somalia in general are not safe … for civilians and we urge states not to force Somali asylum seekers back to these places,” Mahoney said.
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.
