Dadaab is the massive Somali refugee camp in Kenya run by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and it is growing daily as radical Islamists continue to throw Somalia into chaos—-their goal is for strict fundamentalist Islam to reign supreme in the Horn of Africa.
The US began taking Somali refugees in a serious way in the early 1980’s and since then we have resettled over 80,000 Somalis. The numbers have varied over the years but more than half of the 80,000 plus came since 9/11 (see data here). In FY2008 we resettled 2,523 Somalis in the entire year, most of those must have been “free cases” because fraud had shut down the larger P-3 “family reunification” portion of refugee resettlement half way into the fiscal year.
Although family reunification is still suspended, in FY 2009 we have already resettled 2,232 Somalis. Now comes this news about the UNHCR:
The resettlement of the 270,000 Somali refugees in third countries is the most viable alternative to repatriation and local integration. Although it is fraught with difficulties, it remains the dream of most of the refugees. UNHCR, which runs the camp, is hoping to resettle around 8,600 refugees in 2009. Even it if resettles that many and reaches the 2010 target of 20,000 people, the arrival of new refugees means that the population at Dadaab is unlikely to decline.
The US takes the lions share of refugees worldwide. I couldn’t find the percentage off hand but we top the other resettlement countries including various European countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand by a wide margin. So, if the UNHCR gets its way, I guess that means we will be ‘welcoming’ the lions share of 20,000 Somalis in 2010!