• The refugees were repatriated from Dadaab and were received by Somali government and UNHCR officials in Baidoa on August 29
Image: FILE
A Facebook post claiming that 45 Somali refugees have been repatriated to Baidoa in Somalia by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is TRUE.
The post further adds that the refugees who were repatriated from Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya were received by officials of the Somali government and the UNHCR Somalia office.
A tweet posted by UNHCR Somalia confirms that 45 Somali refugees from Dadaab arrived in Baidoa on August 29.
The repatriation was conducted as part of the 2014 Voluntary Repatriation Program Tripartite Agreement signed by the governments of Kenya, Somali and the UNHCR. The agreement laid out the process for voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees.
Since then, UNHCR has assisted 83,938 refugees of Somali origin to voluntarily return home between December 2014 and April 2019 from both the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps.
According to a 2019 UNHCR report, Kenya currently hosts 476,695 refugees with 54.5 percent (250,000) being of Somali origin.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that 45 refugees of Somali origin returned to Somalia from the Daadab refugee camp in Kenya on August 29 and finds it to be TRUE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Researcher James Okong’o, was edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Ann Ngengere and was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
