The recruitment taking place in the Somali refugee camps in Dadaab, Northeastern Kenya has stirred some controversial outbursts by many in and outside the region. However what I am particularly bewildered with is the stand-point of the Kenyan government. I did an investigative report on this issue earlier on at work where the defense minister of Kenya firmly claimed Kenya had not given permission for this recruitment to take place.Meanwhile witnesses and human rights activists are recording and documenting evidence of these youngsters being put in Kenyan military trucks and driven to Kenyan military training bases.
Many of these youngsters are taken under false pretence and the promise of regular salary and a stable job with a UN/EU/AU backed military project.In reality they are being recruited to go and fight in the very war they fled from and had turned them into refugees. Many of these young refugees are reported to be underage and taken without their parents' consent. It also violated their international human right as refugees according to the recently released Human Rights Watch press release, because refugees are meant to be kept in civilian conditions.It seems that the stance of the Kenyan government is an elusive one to temporarily shed light away from the recruitment process itself and onto them and then follow it up when recruitment rush is finished with a stance indicating that they have indeed solved that problem and everything is back to normal and thus the region can go back to supporting Somalia in its rebuilding mission.
What I fear however is that the gross human rights violations taking place will not be addressed and if the history of the 2007 Kenyan elections teaches a lesson, these could be violations Kenya will take a greusome long time to address.
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