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IRIN Web Special on Separated Somali Children
Chapter 2: Hambaar: The Smugglers' Network
| Table III: Nationalities of unaccompanied child asylum applicants in selected European countries (2000) |
| Country |
Number of applicants |
| Angola |
1191 |
| China |
1059 |
| Sierra Leone |
973 |
| Yugoslavia |
956 |
| Guinea |
896 |
| Afghanistan |
854 |
| Somalia |
762 |
| Iraq |
523 |
| Sri Lanka |
287 |
| Source: UNHCR/Separated Children in Europe Programme Countries of asylum: Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, UK |
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Immigration rackets
Somali smugglers would not be able to operate so effectively without facilitation by international criminal gangs and internal immigration fraud. Corruption within immigration departments in neighbouring countries is a critical link in the chain.4 Both Kenya and Ethiopia have significant populations of ethnic Somalis, so those fleeing Somali territories can hide among legitimate citizens, obtain national identity papers, and use clan connections with officials. Young Somali adults now living in Europe, who were smuggled out when they were children, told IRIN almost without exception that they were first taken to a Nairobi suburb, Eastleigh, or were dealt with by agents in Addis Ababa.
A British official told IRIN that immigration fraud associated with the Somali exodus to Ethiopia became "more organized" around 1995. As a result, a new policy of DNA testing was introduced by the British embassy in Addis Ababa, specifically for Somali claims. (Prior to that, DNA testing was used voluntarily by an applicant to prove a relationship, but the British government decided to use it in the case of Somalis as a blanket policy to disprove identity claims associated with reunification.) According to the official, this was because there was "a massive problem of identification" with people returning to the embassies with different identities - and the British government was convinced that the cost involved was justified. In the mid 1990s, the British Foreign Office had issued authority to the British embassy to grant visas to Somalis for reunification purposes, based on specific applications by those who had a legitimate status in Great Britain. While it proved extremely difficult to track down the real relatives - as many were dead or missing in the panic exodus - many others presented false identities and documentation in the hope they could secure a way out.
According to the official, this included "a lot of dishonesty over children". There were some genuine cases where a separated child - picked up in Mogadishu or during the exodus - had been brought up by others as their own child, but many cases concerning children were opportunistic and fraudulent. "You could say there was good reason for the lying, there was desperation, and visa officers had some compassion…[but] there were some Somali groups abusing the system, taking money, and becoming organized," the official told IRIN.
Those "working the system" were not only Somalis, however. Former British immigration officials called "immigration consultants" offered advice for a price to those desperate to get out of the region. With their knowledge of immigration procedures, these people could "run rings round lawyers and make a lot money - some even came to Addis Ababa", an official source told IRIN. The source said some of these "consultants" lacked moral scruples and use their specialist knowledge to assist drug and child traffickers. They tend to work on 50 percent immediate payment, and 50 percent on completion. These former officials were particularly successful, said an official source, as "immigration in general is a matter of balance of probabilities rather than proving beyond reasonable doubt." Another group that benefited from the panic exodus were some British Somalis who had turned the plight of their people into a profitable business by the mid 1990s, official sources said.
Deportation practices - using agents
The Somali agent network also exploits the movement of people back to the homelands - sometimes with the complicity of those who condemn the outward traffic. Agents have worked as 'middlemen' for Western governments deporting rejected asylum seekers back to Somali territories, in the absence of recognised authority or official structures. How to return rejected asylum seekers to Somali territories is a contentious and shadowy issue, as deportations and repatriations must, according to international law, follow recognized legal procedures with recognized governments and structures. In practical terms it appears to be left to the Western governments to decide how - if at all - to approach deportations. For example, in the self-declared state of Somaliland - which has been accorded a sort of informal recognition in that international
| Ethiopia and Kenya shouldered a massive influx of refugees during the collapse of the Somali state, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the peak of the influx in late 1991, Kenya hosted some 300,000 Somalis in refugee camps in its North Eastern and Coastal provinces, while others moved into the capital Nairobi and other urban centres. Ethiopia received and hosted the exodus from northern Somalia - now known as Somaliland - when an estimated 300,000 crossed the border in 1988. Many of those forced to flee tried, at all costs, to avoid getting trapped in the harsh, impoverished environment of the official refugee camps. Getting overseas was pursued with indefatigable determination. |
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agencies operate through the official structures set up there - there have been recent approaches to the authorities by the British government to start receiving repatriated Somalis from abroad. In the case of Mogadishu, where the partially-recognised Transitional National Government was established in the capital in October 2002, there were reports in British and US newspapers that a group of about 30 Somalis with American citizenship (or who were in the process of applying for it) were deported to Mogadishu after the events of 11 September.
Local Somali officials and individuals complained to IRIN during the course of its research on the child smuggling phenomenon that embassy staff from neighbouring countries employed local agents for deportation cases. According to local authorities in Somaliland, initial deportations by European governments were no more than a dumping exercise from light aircraft on the long runway in the northern port of Berbera.5 In some cases, embassy staff have hired agents operating in Djibouti to receive the deported person, who then arrange the return to Somali territories by air or land. Somali officials also claimed to IRIN that the embassies made deals with local airlines, and arranged the tickets through a third country - like Dubai - to get the deportees brought in like any other passenger. "These cases are arranged informally through the agents [smugglers] without involving transit countries on an official level," complained one Somali official. As a result, some deportees were brought back to the wrong territories, or arrived in a traumatized state, convinced they will be killed at the airport.
"The way they do it contravenes all proper procedures and laws regarding deportation - the deportee finds himself on the way back, in the hands of agents, and asking: Am I safe? What clan is controlling the airport? Am I going to die?" said one Somali official. "Western governments refuse to recognize Somaliland, or the government in Mogadishu, but are happy to deal with any authority - or none at all - in order to send Somalis back."
[Somali boy, on traveling with agents]
4 For example, Kenyan newspapers carried numerous articles in 2002 on corruption scandals in the immigration department. See Daily Nation, 30 August 2002 "Travellers detained over forged papers" and Nation expose of immigration rackets in a series of articles in February 2002.
5 Such cases took place around 1996-8, according to sources in Berbera and Hargeysa
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