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Executive Summary for June 1st

We review the most recent issues related to refugees including France’s plan to open a center for migrants, a wealthy Swiss village preferring to pay a hefty fine instead of housing 10 refugees and Kenya’s announcement of a closing date for its largest migrant camp.

Published on June 1, 2016 Read time Approx. 3 minutes

Paris to Create New Center for New Migrant Arrivals

Hundreds of migrants arriving in northern Paris may soon have a designated center to welcome them, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Tuesday.

She told reporters that officials were still “assessing different sites” but said the location would soon be announced. Hidalgo said she was confident that “the Paris population will be at our side,” according to Agence-France Presse (AFP.)

Without any official centers, the 800 migrants who have arrived in France in the last few days have set up a makeshift camp in the nation’s capital.

Hidalgo said this situation could no longer be maintained, and repeatedly emphasized her hope that state authorities would be a “partner” in the city’s project.

She said she had alerted state authorities to the city’s situation several times, but sufficient resources to deal with the increasing number of migrant arrivals had not been granted.

Migrants and refugees deserve “a fitting welcome,” Hidalgo said. “We are going to take things in hand.”

Wealthy Swiss Village Agrees to Pay Hefty Fine for Rejecting Refugees

A wealthy village in Switzerland has voted to pay a fine in the region of $300,000, instead of accepting 10 refugees.

A majority of residents of Oberwil-Lieli, one of the wealthiest villages in Europe, voted to reject the taking in of their government-mandated quota of refugees in a referendum earlier this week. The Swiss government announced a plan to meet its original goal of resettling 50,000 refugees across the country. Each of the country’s 26 counties must accept the quota assigned to them by the government or pay a significant fine.

“We do not want them here, it is as simple as that,” one resident, who asked to remain anonymous, told the MailOnline. “We have worked hard all our lives and have a lovely village that we do not want spoiled. We are not suited to take in refugees; they would not fit in here.”

Now, the 2,200 residents of Oberwil-Lieli, which includes 300 millionaires, must pay a heavy penalty for closing their doors to the refugees.

Oberwil-Lieli Mayor Andreas Glarner told the Telegraph that residents voted no because they were not informed whether the refugees were Syrians fleeing war and violence or “economic migrants from other countries.”

Kenya Will Close Largest Migrant Camp Within Six Months

The Kenyan government announced on Tuesday that it would close the Dadaab refugee camp by November.

Earlier this month, the Kenyan government said that it would close down the refugee camp, the largest in the world, in an effort to protect the country’s “national security interests.” Kenyan officials did not set an official date for the closures until this week, after a team of experts explored the best options to shut down the camp.

“I want to inform the world that the decision to close Dadaab camp is final,” interior minister Joseph Ole Nkaissery said after he received the final report, according to the AFP. “We hope to close the camp latest by November this year.”

Dadaab camp, on the Kenya-Somalia border, was established in 1991, and is home to 300,000 Somali refugees.There are 463,000 Somali refugees in the East African country, all fleeing violence in Somalia, where extremist militant group al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida affiliate, has been fighting the government.

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