Kenya will close world's biggest refugee camp this year

Kenya will close the world's largest refugee camp this year because the facility housing Somalis displaced by decades of war poses an "existential threat", Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto said on Monday.
The United Nations and Western states have warned against forcibly repatriating the 350,000 or so Somalis who still live in the sprawling Dadaab camp in northeast Kenya, saying it would violate international obligations.
But Ruto, speaking at a U.N. humanitarian summit in Istanbul, said the international community had failed Somalia, still struggling to recover from the anarchy of the 1990s.
"The refugee camp poses an existential security threat to Kenya," he said, arguing attacks including the Westgate mall rampage in 2013 and the Garissa University massacre in 2015, which claimed hundreds of lives, were planned at Dadaab.
Now those extremists pose a global risk, he said.
"There is radicalisation by extremist elements in the camp, especially of young people," he said. "Their recruitment into terror networks, including al Shabaab and al Qaeda, is a threat to the world . The route to (Islamic State) is established."
Ruto, who was due to meet U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the Istanbul summit, expressed frustration that other states have lagged on pledges to rebuild Somalia. He said Kenya has spent $7 billion on Dadaab over the past quarter century.
"We understand well our international obligations," he said. "We have unfortunately ... not seen a shared responsibility in Somalia. We not only risk leaving Somalia behind, we risk forgetting Somalia all together."
Kenya wants the international community to build schools and other infrastructure across the border to lure refugees back.
The government has previously threatened to eject refugees, but this time it will stick with a deadline expiring in six months that was agreed with Somalia and the U.N., Ruto said.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said in January it might miss a 2016 target to repatriate 50,000 refugees because the Somali government is battling the al Shabaab insurgency and provides few public services. Somalia is slowly rebuilding and is due to elect a new parliament in August.
Ruto said exiled communities were needed for the recovery: "It would not be possible to comprehensively work on peace, reconciliation and stability without the participation of the almost 1 million refugees who currently live in our country."

Nine men charged after protest clashes in Kenya

A Kenyan court charged nine men on Tuesday for their role in a protest against an electoral oversight body, a lawyer said, after the fourth flare-up on the streets in a month left three people dead and upset international donors.
One demonstrator in the western city of Kisumu died from an injury while fleeing the scene of a protest, while another two died in violence in Siaya County related to the demonstrations, also in the west, police said.
A government official earlier said only one person died.
Dozens have been arrested in protests that began on April 25 and have been held on virtually every Monday since then.
"We are deeply concerned by the escalation of violence during the demonstrations in Kenyan cities," ambassadors from the United States, Britain and other Western nations said.
In a statement, they called for an investigation into the use of "excessive force" by the east African country's security services and urged protesters to act peacefully.
After last week's demonstration, a senior police officer said there would be an investigation to see if there had been any violations in the conduct of the police.
The demonstrators want the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to be scrapped, saying it is not impartial and cannot oversee fair presidential and parliamentary elections due in August 2017.
The IEBC, which oversaw a vote the opposition disputed in 2013, denies being biased. The government says the opposition is taking to the streets as it cannot win a vote.
The nine people charged on Tuesday were accused of unlawful assembly, court documents showed. "My clients pleaded not guilty and were released on cash bail pending hearing of the matter," lawyer Harun Ndubi said.
Fifteen people faced similar charges last week.
The protests have extended beyond Nairobi to cities such as Kisumu, where there is strong support for opposition leader Raila Odinga. He is expected to run again against President Uhuru Kenyatta, now serving the first of a maximum two terms.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon at demonstrators in Nairobi on Monday. A week earlier, officers had fought running battles in the street with protesters, beating some of them with batons and kicking them. Some demonstrators had thrown stones.
Western envoys have previously urged the government and citizens to prepare carefully for the elections in a nation where the 2007 vote was followed by ethnic blood-letting that killed 1,200 people. The 2013 election result was unsuccessfully challenged in court by the opposition.

African Development Bank warns members over rising debt

African governments must take urgent steps to ensure they can finance their debt after borrowing heavily in recent years when interest rates were low, the head of the African Development Bank (AfDB) said on Tuesday.
"Increasingly many African countries, taking advantage of the low global interest rates, have rushed to international capital markets by issuing bonds," Akinwumi Adesina said in a statement.
He said they now faced a challenge with rising interest rates. Africa, which issued Eurobonds amounting to $12 billion last year alone, must leverage sovereign wealth funds, domestic tax revenue, private equity funds and pension funds.
"There is need for urgent measures to ensure macroeconomic stabilisation, fiscal consolidation, broadening the tax base and deepening of domestic capital markets," Adesina said.
"We must also end the illicit capital flows that deny Africa over $60 billion a year."
The AfDB said in a report on Monday that the continent's economy was likely to grow 3.7 percent this year as resilient private consumption and investment offset the effect of a slump in commodity prices and global headwinds