The Kenyan government has postponed its closure of the Dadaab refugee camp by six months, but the reprieve does not reverse its ultimate decision to send home 261,000 Somali refugees, despite the loud protest by human rights groups.

The international community appears to have given up on a search for an alternative to closing Dadaab, even though the mass returns promised by Kenya, starting in just four months’ time, are likely to generate a humanitarian crisis.

The donors have also been slow to provide promised funding to Somalia to help improve conditions in a country that is already struggling to cope with 1.1 million internally displaced people.

Joseph Nkaissery, cabinet secretary for the interior, told a media briefing on Wednesday that insecurity in Somalia and the country’s ongoing elections, were creating a “delicate situation”, which required an extension of the government’s end of November deadline.

“However, ongoing voluntary repatriation will continue uninterrupted,” he said, referring to an existing programme facilitated by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, and its NGO partners.

Over the next six months, the government plans to verify the refugee population in Dadaab and relocate all non-Somalis to other camps in the country. In the fourth and fifth month of the extension period, it will complete the repatriation of all Somali refugees to Somalia, “in a humane, safe and dignified manner”, a government statement said.

“This doesn’t really change anything,” Human Rights Watch researcher Laetitia Bader told IRIN.

“As long as Kenya denies Somali refugees secure legal status and threatens to close camps and deport them, refugees will feel they have no choice but to go home with UN return support cash instead of being forced out with nothing,” she noted.

“Extending the Dadaab camp closure deadline is better than deporting refugees in two weeks’ time. But with the new 31 May deadline hanging over them, Somali refugees will continue to feel that they have to leave.”

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