Kenya’s Interior Minister Fred Matiang’i has banned exit and entry to one of the biggest refugee camps in the world due to the global COVID-19 health crisis. The restrictions apply to a complex called Dadaab, which houses around 217,500 migrants, as well the refugee camp Kakuma, where 196,000 people are currently staying, per data provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Earlier, due to the spread of the COVID-19 infection across the country, Kenya’s President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta prolonged the curfew (from 7 pm to 5 am) for another three weeks, as well as locked down four regions of Kenya, including the capital and economic hub Nairobi. After confirming the first corona case on 13 March, the authorities banned all public gatherings in the African country.
Meanwhile, not all of coronavirus-hit Europe has closed its borders to refugees, with EU agencies reportedly preparing to test the new science of predicting and monitoring population movements on refugees and migrants, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed.
Mass and partial migrant releases have been seen in Spain, one of the worst pandemic-hit countries, the Netherlands, Indonesia, France, Peru, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but many countries are still yet to act, Euronews wrote.
The clearest examples are Greece and Italy (which comes as a surprise given the huge COVID-19 death toll there) - two of the main destinations points for migrants crossing into Europe.
In particular, the Greek islands are known to house quite a few overcrowded centres where families live in fear and desperation, the news agency reported. No confirmed cases of the coronavirus have yet emerged from Moria, Europe’s largest refugee camp, but medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières has referred to it as a time bomb.
