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Africa Horn
Kenya to soon discuss re-opening border with Somalia
2008-06-20
(SomaliNet) A minister said on Wednesday that Kenya will soon discuss re-opening its border with Somalia to exercise better control over the influx of refugees who have continued to cross the frontier despite an 18-month close.

"The closure of the border has not in effect achieved what we intended," Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang told reporters during a visit to Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. "What the government intended was that inflow would be reduced and combatants would not come in with their weapons."
So you'll open the border instead. Brilliant, Minister, brilliant ...
The minister, who accompanied UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres on a tour in the refugees camp, said 3 500 refugees crossed the border in June alone. "We are going to discuss this as a cabinet and come up with a decision as to to whether this closure of the border is in any way beneficial to Kenya," he added.

Guterres said: "I don't believe in the possibility of closing borders in this world. Probably, there are better ways of controlling flows."

Kenya is home to 237,000 refugees, many of them from Somalia which has seen an exodus since January last year when Ethiopia-backed forces swept aside Islamist militants who had ruled part of the country for six months, touching off an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency.
Posted by:Steve White

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