UN calls on Saudi Arabia to stop deporting Somalis

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency called on Saudi Arabia on Friday to halt expulsions of Somalis to Mogadishu, rebuking the kingdom for deporting 1,000 a month by aircraft to the violent capital.

Somali government soldiers patrol in the Hodon district of Mogadishu July 28, 2010. (REUTERS/Omar Faruk)

Neighbouring countries should offer legal residence to Somali workers and asylum-seekers until it is safe to return to Mogadishu, where civilians are often targeted in the fighting between Somali forces and Islamist al Shabaab rebels, it said.

"Given the deadly violence in Mogadishu, UNHCR is urging the Saudi authorities to refrain from future deportations on humanitarian grounds," Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a news briefing.

Saudi authorities have told the UNHCR that they are deporting Somalis who have been staying in the country illegally, according to U.N. sources.

UNHCR said a week ago that Somali refugees were also being harassed and rounded up in Kenya and the semi-autonomous enclave of Puntland following deadly bombings by Al Shabaab in Uganda. Authorities in Puntland have also been deporting Somalis, but so far Kenya has not, it said.

Al Shabaab, which is linked to al Qaeda, controls much of southern Somalia bordering Kenya and is fighting to topple the Western-backed government in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.

Saudi Arabia deported 1,000 Somalis in June and nearly 1,000 so far in July, Fleming said. The majority have been women who said they had worked in Saudi Arabia for some time. The deportations to Mogadishu had been going on for at least a year.

Most deportees say they fled Somalia due to conflict, violence and human rights abuses, according to reports received from its local NGOs.

"Prior to their deportation, they report being held in detention facilities for several weeks under conditions which many described as appalling," Fleming said.

Saudi Arabia, the top OPEC oil producer, is not among 144 countries that have signed the 1951 Refugee Convention obliging states to protect civilians fleeing conflict or persecution.

But by deporting Somalis, it has flouted UNHCR's guidelines issued last May urging all countries to return Somalis to central and southern Somalia only on a strictly voluntary basis until it is safe to return, according to the agency.

"As we all know, this has not been the case in Somalia for almost 20 years," Fleming said.

Dozens of civilians have been killed and scores wounded in fighting this week in Mogadishu, she said.

The death toll has been driven up in the first seven months of this year by increased shelling and fighting in the central region, a human rights group said on Thursday.

After Afghanistan and Iraq, Somalia is the country generating the highest number of refugees, fleeing the conflict, economic collapse and drought, according to the UNHCR.

There are now 600,484 Somali refugees, mainly in Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Tanzania and Uganda, plus 1.4 million Somalis displaced within the country, it says.

(Editing by David Stamp)

(For more news on Reuters India, click http://in.reuters.com)

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