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New Zealand's Somali community has taken offence at a comment by a visiting United Nations official implying that no more Somali refugees will be accepted here because they have not integrated well with other Kiwis.
An Auckland-based group, Somali Concern, has called a community meeting in Mt Roskill to discuss the comments by Vincent Cochetel, the new director of resettlement for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva.
Somali Concern spokeswoman Amina Daud Timayare said Mr Cochetel told a national refugee forum in Christchurch last week that "Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not going to take any more Somalis into their countries because the Somalis have not integrated with the local people".
Other people who attended the meeting had differing interpretations of what Mr Cochetel said and the Weekend Herald was not able to contact him yesterday.
But a Wellington Somali leader, Mohamed Abdulaziz Mohamed, said Somalis were "brainstorming all across New Zealand" about how to respond to his comments. "He said Somalis are not integrating with the local people in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. We want to address that because that is far from the truth."
Mrs Daud said about 3000 Somalis lived here. But the number of Somalis accepted under the annual UN refugee quota have fallen steadily from 207 in 1999-2000 to just 13 in the latest year to June.
The quota of 750 for 2006-07 has been allocated mainly to Burma and Afghanistan.
