This archive report was first published on 12 December 2019.
On December 12, 2019, the Kenyan government announced an extension of the vetting process for Kenyans whose fingerprints are in the UNHCR database, citing a need to reach those who had not been vetted yet.
Speaking at Garissa primary school playgrounds during the 56th Jamhuri day celebrations, Meru Mwangi, the area county commissioner, stated that slightly over 9,000 victims had been vetted and their fingerprints successfully removed from the database.
Meru Mwangi urged those who had not been vetted to take advantage of the extension and avail themselves for vetting, as there would be no further extensions.
The county commissioner asked the chiefs, their assistants, and the Imams in charge of various mosques in the six sub-counties across the county to ensure that the information reaches those who had not been vetted.
Thousands of Kenyans registered themselves as refugees in the early 1990s to benefit from goodies offered by UNHCR and the third-party repatriation exercise.
However, over the years, the goodies have diminished, and plans to close down the vast refugees' camps in Dadaab, which housed over 600,000 refugees, mostly from war-torn Somalia, have been put in place.
According to UNHCR, at least 40,000 Kenyans are in their database.
The exercise, which also gave an opportunity to refugees who illegally acquired Kenyan ID cards to surrender them, was launched mid-last month by internal security CAA Patrick Ole Ntutu at Garissa primary playgrounds.
Garissa governor Ali Korane, who was present, asked officials from the LAPSSET to stop surveying land within the county, citing that land in Garissa is held in trust by the county government and no one had consulted the county over the matter.
