Kiunga Celebrate Best Peaceful Model

By The COAST Reporter

Email, thecoastnewspaper@gmail.com

Kiunga community has celebrated a landmark milestone in refugee–host integration, honouring the unique interventions that enabled peaceful coexistence between Kenyan host communities and refugees from neighbouring Somalia for over three decades.

The homecoming event, led by global peace advocate Shee Kupi Shee—a product of cross‑border intermarriage—highlighted how Kiunga built one of the world’s most successful community-driven integration models without refugee camps, donor funding, or formal assistance.

Instead, Kiunga relied on compassion, fairness, and shared humanity.

During his tenure in various government roles, Shee Kupi championed several groundbreaking initiatives that ensured equality and dignity for both host and refugee families:

• Equal distribution of county relief food to both communities without discrimination.

• *Fair rationing of water supply, ensuring both refugees and hosts accessed water on equal days.

• Provision of subsidised maize seeds to both communities, enabling shared farming across the borderland.

• Allowing refugees to farm on Kenyan farmland, strengthening coexistence and food security.

• Permitting refugees to fish freely in Kenyan fishing grounds, supporting livelihoods and integration.

• Promoting equal access to land, water points, and social services based on community needs.

What made Kiunga exceptional is that refugees were hosted directly inside local homes. With no camps and no humanitarian organisations present in the early years, families opened their doors, shared their land, shared their food, and shared their destiny.

This spirit of generosity, Shee noted, is what transformed Kiunga into a global model of integration.

“Today we are celebrating the fruits of your sacrifice,” he said. “This peaceful coexistence was built by you—the mothers, fishermen, youth, elders, refugees, and host families—who chose unity over division.”

Shee emphasised that being a child of a cross-border marriage is his greatest motivation, as his identity symbolises the unity between Kenya and Somalia’s border communities.

He called upon the national Refugee Affairs Secretariat to benchmark in Kiunga as Kenya prepares to implement the Ushirika Plan, noting that Kiunga’s experience provides real lessons in community-led integration.

The event concluded with renewed optimism as communities reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening peace, unity, and the integration model that has made Kiunga a global reference point.