History, overview, trends and issues in major Somali refugee displacements in the near region

This paper1 is prepared for the High Level Panel on Somali Refugees convened by the High Commissioner for Refugees to take place in Geneva on 13 and 14 November 2013. The Panel is part of a Global Initiative the High Commissioner has launched to rally international support for creative, meaningful and transformative solutions for Somali refugees.

Intended to provide context and lay the ground for in-depth discussion by the Panel, the paper overviews the nature, trends and issues in Somali refugee displacement in the near region while also touching on the pertinent aspects of Somali refugee displacement in other parts of Africa, the Gulf and further afield. It provides a brief overview of the history and evolution of the estimated 500,000 Somali refugees in Kenya, 250,000 in Ethiopia, 260,000 in Yemen, 20,000 in Djibouti and 20, 500 in Uganda while including pertinent information on internal displacement. The numbers are large but should not mask the heterogeneity within each host country’s refugee population. Some refugees have been displaced for three generations; others are recent arrivals. Past actions in managing displacement and return in the region are reviewed and the conditions facing the Somali refugees examined. It becomes clear that varying solutions may have to be pursued for different groups and some situations may have more or fewer options than others. It is however not the purpose of the paper itself to reveal the new solutions. Its principal objective is rather to extract lessons from recent history and, in that context, begin an account of the challenges in thinking about durable solutions in the contemporary context.