| Disputes - international | Kenya served as an important mediator in brokering Sudan's north-south separation in February 2005; as of March 2019, Kenya provides shelter to nearly 475,000 refugees and asylum seekers, including Ugandans who flee across the border periodically to seek protection from Lord's Resistance Army rebels; Kenya works hard to prevent the clan and militia fighting in Somalia from spreading across the border, which has long been open to nomadic pastoralists; the boundary that separates Kenya's and Sudan's sovereignty is unclear in the "Ilemi Triangle," which Kenya has administered since colonial times; in 2018, Kenya signed an MoU with Uganda and South Sudan to help demarcate their borders |
| Illicit drugs | widespread harvesting of small plots of marijuana; transit country for South Asian heroin destined for Europe and North America; Indian methaqualone also transits on way to South Africa; significant potential for money-laundering activity given the country's status as a regional financial center; massive corruption, and relatively high levels of narcotics-associated activities |
| Refugees and internally displaced persons | refugees (country of origin): 269,870 (Somalia), 133,320 (South Sudan) (refugees and asylum seekers), 30,081 (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (refugees and asylum seekers), 20,560 (Ethiopia), 7,081 (Burundi) (2021) IDPs: 190,000 (election-related violence, intercommunal violence, resource conflicts, al-Shabaab attacks in 2017 and 2018) (2020) stateless persons: 16,820 (2020); note - the stateless population consists of Nubians, Kenyan Somalis, and coastal Arabs; the Nubians are descendants of Sudanese soldiers recruited by the British to fight for them in East Africa more than a century ago; Nubians did not receive Kenyan citizenship when the country became independent in 1963; only recently have Nubians become a formally recognized tribe and had less trouble obtaining national IDs; Galjeel and other Somalis who have lived in Kenya for decades are included with more recent Somali refugees and denied ID cards |
Source: CIA World Factbook
This page was last updated on September 18, 2021
