Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto said on April 11, 2015 that the United Nations has three months to remove hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees at camps in Dadaab and return them to their homeland. More than a half million Somali refugees reside in the United Nations-controlled camps in Dadaab, Kenya. Photo: hikrcn / Shutterstock.com

NYERI, Kenya, April 11 (UPI) -- Kenya's second most powerful official has effectively issued an ultimatum to the United Nations -- demanding that the world body move more than 600,000 Somali refugees out of his country, or else his government will do so.

Deputy President William Ruto made the demand Saturday to the U.N.'s refugee agency, giving it three months to move out every last refugee from the Dadaab camps -- the largest in the world.


More than 600,000 refugees reside in the camp, which is located just more than 50 miles from the Somalia-Kenya border in the Garissa District -- the same district where terrorists stormed a university last week and killed 147 people.

"The way America changed after 9/11 is the way Kenya will change after Garissa," Ruto said in a report by CNN. The deputy president said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee base must be relocated.

The Dadaab camps were first built in the Garissa District in 1991 and took in the first refugees from Somalia's civil war. In 2013, the foreign ministries of both nations reached an agreement to pave the way for voluntary repatriation of the refugees living in the camps.

The CNN report said part of the reason Kenyan officials want to move the camps is their belief that the al-Shabab terrorist organization, which was responsible for this month's school attack, has influence among refugees there.

"We have asked the UNHCR to relocate the refugees in three months, failure to which we shall relocate them ourselves," Ruto said.

However, the U.N. refugee agency that runs the camps said it has not received any official request from Kenyan officials.

Despite the 2013 repatriation agreement, most of the refugees in Dadaab have remained there -- perhaps believing that life in Kenya's camps, which includes schools, clinics and community centers, is still better than what they might face back home in Somalia, where the al-Shabab terror group is based and frequently launches attacks.

However, the radical Islamist group has recently begun to spread its wave of terror beyond Somalia's borders. In addition to the Garissa assault, al-Shabab was also responsible for the attack on Nairobi's Westgate Mall in September 2013 that killed 67 and wounded 175.

RELATED Kenyan lawmakers blame lapses in security for mall siege

"We must secure this country at whatever cost, even if we lose business with Somalia," Ruto said Saturday. "No politics, no games, no half-measures should apply, as the death of the 147 students must touch all Kenyans."

Officials say moving more than a half million refugees 60 miles across the Somali border would be no easy task. But the Kenyan government said it is necessary to state security, as is a 440-mile wall Nairobi is currently building along the Somali border to help keep terrorist elements out.

Monday, the Kenyan air force launched air strikes against al Shabab targets in Somalia, a country where it has been militarily engaged against the armed group for several years, Al Jazeera reported.