Ethiopia, somalia and somaliland

Despite aid theft, UN calls for more food aid to Somalia

2011-08-17T11:44:00.001+01:00

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations called for more international help for famine-struck Somalia on Monday — even as the organization's World Food Program admitted for the first time it has been investigating the theft of food aid for more than two months.
Thousands of sacks of stolen aid had popped up for sale in markets alongside refugee camps filled with starving people living in appallingly filthy conditions, according to an investigative report by The Associated Press.
But WFP warned that the 'scale and intensity' of the famine is such that countries need to continue to send aid — and failure to do so would lead to 'many unnecessary deaths.'
The wider UN call for more help Monday came from the UN Security Council, which gets involved in issues that are additionally considered to pose a threat to international peace.
Long considered to be a failed state, Somalia has since 2006 faced an insurgency led by al Shabab, a fearsome militant Islamist group that has been affiliated with al-Qaida since 2007.

Somalia has also had no effective government since the downfall of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, while pirate gangs have for more than five years been a major threat to international shipping off the country's coast.
But in its statement seeking increased international donations, the 15-member Security Council told Somalia's struggling transitional government that future support was conditional on its ability to boost security and services over the next year.

Somali political groups — excluding the insurgents — are to meet next month to establish a government 'roadmap' for the next 12 months that would set targets for improving the performance of the transitional federal institutions — or TSIs.
'The members of the Security Council noted that future support to the TSIs would be contingent upon the completion of the tasks of the roadmap,' said the council statement, read by Hardeep Singh Puri, UN ambassador of India, which presides over the council this month.

The UN's $2.4 billion famine appeal remains less than half funded as the world body warns 3.2 million people are on the brink of starvation. The already catastrophic situation is expected to worsen because of high levels of malnutrition, still rising cereal prices and a below-average rainy season harvest.
Expressing the 'serious concern' of Security Council members that the appeal is not fully funded, the body's statement 'urged members states to contribute.'
WFP said it had established 'strengthened and rigorous' monitoring and control of food distribution in Somalia after The Associated Press report.
While it disputed AP's claims about the scale of the thefts, program officials nevertheless admitted that humanitarian supply lines remained 'highly vulnerable to looting, attack and diversion by armed groups.'
More than 450,000 Somalis live in famine zones controlled by al Shabab, which the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said in a report Sunday had seized what stocks families had, and imposed taxes that made it almost impossible for them to survive.

The report added, however, all other parties in the country's armed conflict had also committed serious violations of the laws of war, including the Transitional Federal Government, the African Union peacekeeping forces known by the acronym AMISOM, and Somali militias backed by Kenya and Ethiopia.'All sides have used artillery in the capital, Mogadishu, in an unlawful manner that has caused civilian casualties,' the report said. 'Al Shabab has fired mortars indiscriminately from densely populated areas, and the TFG and AMISOM forces have often responded in kind with indiscriminate counterattacks. As a result, civilians have not known where to turn for protection.'

Source: The Gazette

Somali famine victims lose homes as torrential rain hits refugee camps

2011-08-01T11:15:00.001+01:00

Renewed appeals for aid made as wet weather adds to misery of thousands camped around Mogadishu

Tens of thousands of famine-stricken Somali refugees were left cold and drenched after torrential rains pounded their makeshift structures in the capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday, leading to renewed appeals for aid.

Rain is needed to alleviate the drought but it wrecked many of the makeshift homes made of sticks and scraps of cloth.

Suffering refugees said more aid was vital but agencies have limited reach in Somalia where Islamist militants, including the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, are waging an insurgency against the country's weak UN-backed government.

"We are living in plight, we left our homes, lost our animals and farms so we ask everyone to help us to survive," Abdi Muse Abshir said.

Lul Hussein, a mother of five, said her family had a sleepless night after their makeshift home crumbled.

"We are starved and we don't have enough help," she said. "Who's helping us? No one! So we are already between death and bad life."

Al-Shabab, the most dangerous group among the militants al-Shabab, has barred major relief organisations from operating in the territories it controls.

The UN said tens of thousands of people have died in Somalia in areas held by the Islamist rebels because food aid could not reach them.

The African Union peacekeeping force fears al-Shabab may try to attack the Mogadishu camps that house tens of thousands of famine refugees, disrupting even further the distribution of food aid. The AU force is attempting to push the militants' front line away from the camps.

The drought and the famine have affected more than 11.8 million people in the Horn of Africa and created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet.

The World Food Programme says it cannot reach 2.2 million Somalis who live in territory controlled by al-Shabab in south-central Somalia.

Horrific stories coming up the fleeing people from the Drought and Famine in Somalia

2011-07-25T10:42:00.004+01:00

Many stories coming up from the fleeing people from the drought and famine in the Southern Somalia, Thousands of Somalis reaching every day to Kenya and Ethiopia borders to find out humanitarian assistance, Aid workers discovered many horrific stories from the refugee camps in Kenya like Dhadab, Dhagahle and Bulo-adaw camps in Ethiopia. Aid workers found a small sun shelter hut with 4 children sitting around the dead body of their mother believing that she is alive. The family reached the camp before days but not get assistance, no one was aware the situation of the family. The Former refugee people in the camp were trying to help although they have nothing to provide newly coming refugees. The other sad story was that a mother fled from Somalia was on way to Kenya, one of her youngest child carrying with her back was become very sick and started to cry very loudly because of the hunger, later on the child stopped crying and movement, the mother tried to know how is her child, she saw the children stopped movement, she believed her child is passed away, and put the child near the road by covering some clothes and walked away to safe other remaining children. The Fleeing people found the child covered with clothes and saw the child still alive, provided water and food, the situation of the child get better and taken to the refugee camps in Kenya to trace, later the Aid workers and the refugee people traced and found later the mother of the child and given to her.

Yussuf
Forgotten Diaries Blogger

Food aid for Somalia could be flown into country within a week

2011-07-25T09:47:00.001+01:00

Food aid for starving Somalis living in Islamist-held territory could be flown into the country within “a week to 10 days”, the World Food Programme said.

The international effort to bring humanitarian relief to 3.7 million Somalis who need urgent help to beat drought and famine is being hampered by al-Shabaab's refusal to let most agencies into their territory.

The al-Qaeda-inspired insurgents backtracked on an earlier promise to allow access.

But the United Nations said it was planning to fly food into areas held by the Islamists despite the ban.

“There are 2.2 million people yet to be reached,” said Josette Sheeran, the head of the agency.

“It is the most dangerous environment we are working in in the world. But people are dying. It’s not about politics, it’s about saving lives now.”

WFP was one of the many organisations that al-Shabaab effectively forced out last year after imposing strict conditions of operation including no foreign female staff.

The group also taxed aid convoys.

Regis Chapman, the head of WFP's operations in Somalia, said that food deliveries would soon start into the limited parts of Mogadishu controlled by the internationally-backed government.

He added that “within a week to 10 days” WFP would be sending food into areas controlled by the Islamists.

The Red Cross on Sunday said that it had delivered 400 tonnes of food to 24,000 people in Gedo province, the first time it had taken supplies into al-Shabaab's territory since 2009. More than 2 million Somalis in the worst affected areas, including two famine zones, live in al-Shabaab territory and cannot be reached by international aid.

They are among more than 11.5 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia who need urgent help to keep them from starving after at least two years with no rain.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation will meet with the heads of most major charities in Rome to draw “the political attention of leaders of the world” to the crisis, Cristina Amaral, the FAO's head of emergency operations said

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/somalia/8658036/Food-aid-for-Somalia-could-be-flown-into-country-within-a-week.html

G20 and World Food Program to hold emergency meeting on Somali famine

2011-07-25T09:29:00.000+01:00

Amid a deteriorating humanitarian tragedy in drought and famine-hit Somalia, the UN is preparing to hold a special session to discuss the slow, complicated and dangerous nature of getting food aid deeper into the fractured country.

The UN’s food agency, the World Food Program, will hold emergency talks in Rome, Italy, in an effort to raise further funds and discuss the situation on the ground, which is immensely complicated due to the lack of a functioning government and the dominance of the al-Shabab militant group.

Somalia has been fractured by civil war for decades. It is only in recent years that an African Union military effort was able to win back the capital, Mogadishu, for the impotent interim government, which yields no authority beyond the city.

It is the innocent civilians who have suffered through the years of violence, but now a devastating drought has increased the suffering tenfold, causing death throughout the country and shocking famine in two vast regions of Somalia.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appealed to the international community for help. The UN needs around US $1.6 billion to see around 10 million people through the drought, expected to last until September.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross has been delivering food to around 25,000 people within one of the famine zones. A further 2.2 million in the country are in need of help.

The United Kingdom and France have led the international response to the crisis, with France calling the emergency meeting Monday in Rome. Delegates from the G20 countries will meet at the World Food Program headquarters to discuss the crisis.

The famine has been caused by the lack of a central government in Somalia, leaving the population with no protection or national leadership.

The country is under-developed due to a lack of investment, which has left farmers with no irrigation and other agriculture investment schemes that would have helped them through the worst of the drought.

http://story.albuquerqueexpress.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/c08dd24cec417021/id/815751/cs/1/ht/G20%20and%20World%20Food%20Program%20to%20hold%20emergency%20meeting%20on%20Somali%20famine/

Famine in Somalia is 'immoral': UN aid coordinator

2011-07-24T08:01:00.000+01:00

by Dario Thuburn
ROME, July 24, 2011 (AFP) - With the world scrambling to rescue 12 million people on the brink of starvation in the Horn of Africa, UN emergency official Cristina Amaral said the fact that children are dying of hunger is "immoral". As head of emergency operations in Africa for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Amaral has been warning about the crisis facing the drought-stricken region since November, after the rainy season failed.
Now she says it's not enough for donor countries to stump up some cash for immediate food aid -- there needs to be long-term investment to help farmers resist droughts and international mediation to bring peace to war-torn Somalia.
"When we have a declaration of famine in the 21st century, we should consider this immoral," Amaral told AFP in an interview as she prepared for emergency talks at FAO in Rome on Monday aimed at coordinating the aid effort.
Ministers, aid chiefs and charities are meeting to discuss ways of stepping up food supplies and delivering them to the epicentre of the famine in southern Somalia, much of which is under the control of Islamist militants.
"Without access to south Somalia, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg -- those refugees arriving in Kenya and Ethiopia," Amaral said. "There are many more -- we estimate 3.7 million -- that need emergency assistance," she added.
The Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab group has banned humanitarian aid agencies like the World Food Programme from working in the region, although FAO has been able to operate several small programmes to help farmers through local partners.
"We hope that the political negotiation will evolve and that the humanitarian situation prevailing will make the clans in Somalia negotiate in a way that will free the access to people in need," she said.
Amaral said the international community is now seeing the results of years of under-investment in solutions to the chronic drought problems of the region.
Projects to improve the management of pastures by herders, to improve animal health and to introduce more resilient crops would go a long way, she said.
"We know what to do but the funding only works when you have the media attention and that's the problem," she said. "War has become a normality there. You only hear about Somalia when there are pirates," she added.
"We need to look at this protracted crisis with a different kind of solution. Somalia has had a lot of humanitarian aid but not much long-term investment," she said, blaming misperceptions that any efforts are hopeless.
"People don't get out of the drought cycle in one or two years. Usually it takes five or six years. In this case we had a drought in 2008 and we're having another one in 2011. People have not yet recovered from the first one."
She said FAO needs $135 million dollars (94 million euros) for its projects.
Amaral's work has taken her to some of the most deprived countries and worst humanitarian crises in the world, with some of her most recent efforts concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and Zimbabwe.
She said that, bad as the current crisis is, it still does not compare with previous humanitarian disasters in Ethiopia and Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s.
"Overall we have more capacity to respond today," she said.
But she added: "We're afraid that things will get worse in the coming months if nothing is done now." UN agencies say tens of thousands of people have died due to the drought and warn half a million children are at risk of dying.
One aggravating factor in the drought crisis has been the sharp spike in food and fuel prices in countries like Djibouti and Somalia that are net importers of food -- a point expected to be raised at the FAO talks on Monday.
http://www.mysinchew.com/node/61084

UN to formally declare famine in drought-hit southern Somalia

2011-07-20T07:10:00.002+01:00

The United Nations is set to declare a famine in drought-ravaged southern Somalia, the first time such a declaration has been made since the early 1990s.
More than 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of emergency assistance due to drought and ongoing conflict, according to the UN
The famine announcement is expected Wednesday in Nairobi, and will be the first time the UN has declared a famine since 1992. It signals to donors the extreme need for more aid, and warns insurgents in Somalia that the population's suffering is taken seriously by the world community.
The formal conditions for famine are two adult deaths or four children deaths from hunger per 10,000 people a day, more than 30 per cent of children must be suffering from acute malnutrition and the population must have access to less than 2,100 kilocalories of food per day.
The drought, the worst seen in the region in 60 years, decimated the region's livestock and fields, both the only source of income and food for many people.
Thousands of people are arriving daily at large refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, raising fears of disease due to poor sanitation and overcrowding.
The population in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in Kenya, has swelled to more than 380,000 people.
On Tuesday, the UN said that it needs further safety guarantees from armed groups in Somalia if it is to help those in need.
Somalia's most dangerous militant group, al-Shabab, has promised aid groups limited access to areas under their control. The group banned foreign agencies two years ago.
Oxfam said on Tuesday night that only around $200 million in new money has been provided for relief efforts so far. An estimated $1 billion is needed to stave off a major humanitarian catastrophe.
Meanwhile, top Canadian charities have banded together to address the Somalia crisis.
A network of five Canadian NGOs, including CARE Canada, Oxfam Canada, Oxfam-Quebec, Plan Canada and Save the Children Canada, are uniting to tackle the relief efforts.
The Humanitarian Coalition aims to reduce unnecessary competition, better educate the public on humanitarian needs, increase the impact of Canadian humanitarian responses and reduce administrative costs.
Canada has contributed more than $11 million to the crisis.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20110719/un-security-access-somalia-relief-110719/

What The International Media Reported From the Hunger and Famine in Somalia

2011-07-17T14:18:00.003+01:00

The International media gave attention to the humaniterian crisis in Somalia which is the largest humaniterian crisis in the World at this time: visit the links below of the some International media and what the said about the hunger and famine in the Southern Somalia.

Al Jazeera:
UN makes first supply drops in Somalia
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/07/20117178716304210.html

Centre Daily Times:
Pope urges help for Somalia
http://www.centredaily.com/2011/07/17/2839701/pope-urges-help-for-somalis-fleeing.html

ABC News:
Somalia Drought 'One of the Largest Humanitarian Crises in Decades'
http://abcnews.go.com/International/somalia-drought-largest-humanitarian-crises-decades/story?id=14088488

Yass Tribune:
Suffer the children as hunger stalks the land
http://abcnews.go.com/International/somalia-famine/story?id=14088327

CNN International
U.N. flies aid to Somalia after Islamist rebels lift ban
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/07/17/somalia.un.aid/

Wikinews
Drought stricken Somalia nears famine
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Drought_stricken_Somalia_nears_famine

Straits Times
Survival struggle against Somalia's drought
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_690971.html

Ottawa Citizen
The forgotten people of Africa's deadly famine
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/forgotten+people+Africa+deadly+famine/5105962/story.html

Yussuf
Forgotten Diaries Blogger

Drought and Famine Hit Southern Somalia

2011-07-13T13:43:00.002+01:00

People started before months ago to walk hundreds of KM to Ethiopia and Kenya Borders to search food and other humaniterian assistance, many children were left behind on the way after stoped to walk, parents left them to safe other children to reach where they can get food and assistance, this was reported from the parents newly came in the Refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. the situation in the areas where this people fled mostly unknown what is going on there (southern regions of Somalia. The people reaching in the bonders of Kenya and Ethiopia are expected to be the people those who able to walk or have some food to eat while they are on the way to Kenya or Ethiopia or have some money to rent overloaded trucks.

As reported in this areas, the situation is very horrible, Media can not easly go to report what is going in the area where Al-shabaab controls. curently, most of the reports are comming from the refugee camps lined with the bondaries of Ethiopia and Kenya with Somalia as well as Mugdisho.

Yusuf
Forgotten Diaries Blogger

Ban 'extremely worried' by Horn of Africa drought

2011-07-13T13:40:00.000+01:00

Ban 'extremely worried' by Horn of Africa drought
(AFP) – 19 hours ago

UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he was "extremely worried" about the extreme drought threatening famine and death on a massive scale in the Horn of Africa.

"More than 11 millions people need urgent assistance to stay alive, as they face their worst drought in decades," the UN secretary general said. "This morning I called an urgent emergency meeting with the heads of UN agencies."

Ban said immediate action must be taken if millions in the Horn of Africa are to avoid starvation.

"We must do everything we can to prevent this crisis deepening. The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. We cannot afford to wait."

Thousands of Somalis have fled their country in recent months to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia to seek help from the devastation.

In Ethiopia, where conditions are also dire, agriculture officials said this week that some 4.5 million of its people will require humanitarian food through the end of the year.

The UN's World Food Programme said last week it expects 10 million people across the region to need food aid, revising upward an earlier estimate of six million.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h90sg_-fGbV22DEKEWHYBadlwcyg?docId=CNG.0ab2ac77281cfe1c695dd46990421301.511

Somalia drought to worsen, famine possible: US

2011-07-11T08:32:00.000+01:00

Somalia drought to worsen, famine possible: US
(AFP) – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON — The US government has warned that a drought in the Horn of Africa is likely to worsen by the end of the year, putting parts of war-ravaged Somalia at risk of famine.

"Our experts... expect the perilous situation in the Horn of Africa to worsen through the end of the year," Nancy Lindborg, a senior official at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said Thursday.

"Given limited labor opportunities, the dwindling food stocks, and sky-high cereal prices, many households cannot put food on the table right now," she said at a House of Representatives commission hearing.

Lindborg said an initial assessment found that this year's harvest will be a "failure" in the southern Lower Shabelle region and "well below normal" in the neighboring region of Bay.

She said in a normal season the two regions account for 71 percent of the total cereal production of southern Somalia.

"As unfortunate as it may be, we do expect the situation in Somalia to continue to decline," Lindborg said.

"Famine conditions are possible in the worst affected areas depending on the evolution of food prices, conflict, and humanitarian response," she added.

She added that the United States would continue to work with the international community to explore ways of providing aid to Somalia and to people fleeing the country, which has been mired in war for two decades.

The United States said Wednesday it is ready to test the word of Somali Islamist insurgents, who control much of the country and have appealed for foreign aid in the face of the drought.

For two years the Shebab insurgents, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, have curbed foreign aid groups from working in the region.

The United Nations last week warned that 10 million people in the Horn of Africa -- which includes Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea -- faced the worst drought in 60 years.

A poor rainy season and rising food prices have also led to severe food shortages in Kenya and Uganda.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jXiysHhkpaCoo39AdRFpXpBi5BlQ?docId=CNG.b25e50471bf7cd80f49ff0b9169e31d7.171

G8 'neglecting hunger fight pledge'

2011-07-11T08:13:00.001+01:00

G8 leaders have been accused of neglecting a pledge to fight hunger in poor countries. Anti-poverty group ONE said the drought crisis in east Africa is a "wake-up call" to Governments who pledged to help feed the hungry in Africa two years ago.

A spokeswoman from the group said leaders of the rich world meeting at the G8 summit in Italy in 2009 pledged 22 billion US dollars (£13.7 billion) to go towards agricultural projects designed to put Africa on the road towards food self-sufficiency, rather than on emergency aid during famines and disasters.

But a report published on Sunday found that since world leaders pledged the cash, only a fifth of the money has been donated. With just one year to go until the deadline for the donations, the report found that the UK has only pledged 30% of the 1.7 billion dollars (£1.1 billion) it pledged, a ONE spokeswoman said. She said that collectively the countries have raised 22% of the financial pledges.

ONE executive director Jamie Drummond said: "World leaders are guilty of letting slide their promises to fight the root causes of hunger, in particular very low agricultural productivity in regions like sub-Saharan Africa. We should not need a food crisis to wake us up to the need to not just give food aid now, but also deliver on the promised partnership with African leaders, citizens and the private sector to boost yields across the region.

"Fortunately with food security on the agenda of the G20 later this year there is a real opportunity for a new partnership to turn this around. With the right support, Africans can both feed themselves and export to the world, helping them fight hunger and poverty and helping us all with lower food prices."

A ONE spokeswoman said the Government deserves praise for pledging emergency food relief for 1.3 million people in Ethiopia for three months in response to the current crisis. The Department for International Development donated £38 million to the World Food Programme which will provide the food aid that the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) will be distributing.

The worst drought in over half a century has hit parts of East Africa, affecting more than 10 million people. Thousands of families have travelled for days across scorched scrubland from Somalia to Kenya, including barefoot children with no food or water, after their crops and livestock were destroyed by drought.

The DEC, the umbrella body representing the UK's 14 leading aid agencies, said acute malnutrition has reached 37% in some parts of north east Kenya and child refugees from Somalia are dying of causes related to malnutrition either during the journey or very shortly after arrival at aid camps.

British donations to a DEC appeal for support have now risen to £8 million, the committee said. But the situation is set to deteriorate over the next three to four months and campaigners say continued funding is vital.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/g8-neglecting-hunger-fight-pledge-16021724.html#ixzz1Ropetid4

Deaths 'extremely high' in famine camps

2011-07-11T08:03:00.002+01:00

Convoys of minibuses are making the trip back and forth from the Somali border to refugee camps in Ethiopia, as people flee the worst famine in years. UNHCR Head of Emergency Operations Jo Hegenauer said the death rates in the camps are 'extremely high and they worry everyone'.
Figures are as high as ten per day in some camps. 'If we don't respond quickly to this..I think we're going to have serious long term problems', he said.
The UN warned last week that almost 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are facing a humanitarian emergency as the region struggles to deal with its worst drought for 60 years.
The BBC's Mike Woolridge reports from Kobe camp in Ethiopia.

Drought-displaced “in tens of thousands”

2011-04-07T13:50:00.000+01:00

HARGEISA/NAIROBI — With drought spreading to almost all regions of Somalia, officials and aid workers have expressed concern for those affected, saying drought was now a major cause of displacement.

“Drought, not insecurity, is now the main reason for new displacement in Somalia,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA Somalia) said in a March update. “More than 52,000 people have been displaced due to drought since 1 December 2010, many of them moving to urban areas in search of assistance.”

In particular, the capital, Mogadishu, had experienced an increased influx of drought-affected pastoralists, said OCHA.

“Although migration of people and livestock is not unusual during the dry season, this appears to be the first time ever pastoralists and their livestock have migrated into the capital, a situation that portrays the severity of the drought situation in the country,” OCHA said.

See more about the below link

http://somalilandpress.com/drought-displaced-in-tens-of-thousands-21332

MSF calls for medical staff's freedom of movement to be respected

2011-01-10T17:30:00.001Z

GENEVA/NAIROBI. (Sh. M. Network) – On 5 January 2011, PRESS RELEASE, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supervisors at Dinsor hospital, in Somalia, were prevented from leaving the town by representatives of Al Shabaab. The MSF supervisors were due to attend a technical medical training workshop in Nairobi. As of today, the situation is unsolved.

MSF is extremely concerned about the present situation. Since 2002, MSF’s medical staff have been providing free medical care in the only functional hospital in Bay region. For its programs in Somalia, MSF relies solely on private donations from the general public around the world to carry out its work. Its funds are strictly dedicated to running health activities.

Despite many repeated requests addressed to the authorities, Al Shaabab has not allowed the presence of international staff of Medecins Sans Frontieres to provide direct technical support to the hospital for several months, which compromises the quality of the care provided to the population and questions the continuation of MSF support to the hospital.

“MSF urges all parties in Somalia to respect and protect all health structures and medical staff. And in particular, in those areas like Dinsor were the health structures are scarce.

The authorities should grant all available help for the performance of their duties. The freedom of movement of all medical humanitarian staff, international and Somali, is essential to exercise their functions.” says Monica Rull, MSF Program manager.

MSF calls upon the authorities to stop hindering medical humanitarian efforts. To secure lifesaving assistance, MSF remains committed to engage with the authorities to establish a meaningful medical access to the civilian populations caught up in the conflict in Somalia.

Despite the challenges, MSF remains the main provider of free medical services in all of central and southern Somalia. In Dinsor, MSF runs a 65-bed facility which offers both inpatient and outpatient care.

The inpatient department (IPD), which serves the population of the entire district’s approximately 110,000 people, provides paediatric and adult medical care, treatment for tuberculosis and kala azar; as well as therapeutic feeding for severely malnourished children with associated pathologies.

The outpatient department (OPD) provides curative and preventive care and it includes an ambulatory feeding centre for severely malnourished children without medical complications.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works in ten regions of Somalia, with more than 1,300 Somali staff providing medical care on the ground. Millions of people urgently require healthcare, yet the enormous gap between the needs of Somalis and the humanitarian response continues to widen.

UN calls for humanitarian access as drought hits Somalia

2011-01-10T17:21:00.000Z

NAIROBI (Sh. M. Network) – The United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mr.Mark Bowden, has expressed concern about the unfolding drought situation in Somalia and has called for humanitarian access to the most affected areas.

The 2010 short rains (Deyr season – October to December) failed in most parts of Somalia. Since Somalia ishighly rainfall dependent, a further deterioration in the humanitarian situation is expected in the comingmonths. Two million people already depend on humanitarian emergency assistance and with the current dry season, the number is likely to increase.

Mr. Bowden described the task facing the humanitarian community as enormous given current access constraints in many parts of south central Somalia.

'I am deeply concerned about the current drought situation in Somalia. Somalia is already in the grips of a chronic catastrophe, the prediction we made late last year about the below-normal rainfalls due La Niña weather conditions is now a reality. We need to act fast to put in place the mitigation measures that will help us to avert a possible disaster,' said Mr. Bowden.

The impact of the failed Deyr season is already evident. Water supplies have dwindled, cereal prices have increased, and livestock deaths are being reported in some areas. Malnutrition rates in south Somalia are already increasing. A recent survey in Juba indicates rates of 30% acute malnutrition which is double the threshold used to release emergency assistance. Although the drought situation has affected the majority of the country, some regions have been in crisis for the past three years. These include Hiraan, Sanaag,

Galgaduud, Mudug and Bakool regions while others such as Sool, Gedo and Juba regions are now emerging as areas of concern.

The priority sectors identified for immediate interventions are Livestock, Agriculture, Nutrition and Water/Sanitation. The Food Assistance sector is ready to scale up distributions but will face a pipeline break in food supplies in late March 2011.

'Initially US$4.5 million has been earmarked from the UN Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) for emergency drought response in most regions affected by the devastating dry spell,' said Mr Bowden.

Humanitarian access to Somalia’s most vulnerable populations remains critical, particularly to those in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection in the south central part of the country. Mr. Bowden urged all parties to Somalia’s conflicts to grant access to vulnerable communities.

'The increasing threat of hunger and disease caused by the drought calls for a collective effort by all parties in Somalia to increase and facilitate access for a broader range of humanitarian actions. I call upon all those who are in a position to improve access to lend their support at this critical time,' he said.

Source: Kuna News Agency

Refugees turn to State for help

2011-01-04T06:27:00.001Z

By ZAMZAM TATU
Daily Nation
December 27 2010

Refugees at Dadaab Camp have appealed to the government to improve their living conditions.

They accused the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of ignoring its mandate to provide basic amenities that will allow them lead decent lives.

The camp, designed to house 90,000 refugees, now holds over 300,000 families.

This has resulted in poor sanitation and put pressure on the waste disposal system.

People are forced to use ‘flying toilets’ at night, exposing them to the risk of cholera outbreak.

Chairman of the Dadaab Minority Camp, Mr Mohammed Abdi Odhowa, said the UN agency only provides them with food stamps.

Mr Mohammed said despite forwarding their grievances to the field officers, hundreds of families spend the days in the scorching sun and the nights in the cold for lack of shelter.

“Why do they have to take in more refugees when the existing masses are living like animals in the open air?” posed Mr Odhowa.

He appealed to the government to supply them with tents, mosquito nets and water.

At least 800 foreigners, mostly from Somalia, are registered every month at the Ifo, Dagahley and Hagardere refugee camps under the central supervision of UNHCR officers in Dadaab.

The refugees are fleeing the 21-year civil war that has claimed more than 400,000 lives and displaced over a million people.

Mr Odhowa said minorities like the Somali Bantu are discriminated against during distribution of food and other services — which are controlled by the ethnic Somalis.

“The Kenyan IDPs are treated equally in all fronts, what will you make of your life when you are discriminated against by your own community every day while you are grappling with cold, disease and all forms of neglect by the UNHCR?” he asked.

Confirming the housing crisis at the camps, UNHCR spokesman Emmanuel Nyabera told the Nation they were building new camps and the refugees will be relocated next year to ease congestion.

“New Ifo (II) camp is a measure to offset the overpopulation we’ve experienced in the set up, even so, we provide make shift tents but the population is really overwhelming,” said Mr Nyabera.

Source: Daily Nation

Copyright © 2010 WardheerNews.com

Part Five: Somalis are desperate for a new life, but refugees face a dangerous road

2010-12-28T18:02:00.001Z

Along the Djibouti border

Six days ago, Deka Mohamed Idou was in a different world. She had a house, a family. She had somehow survived 20 years of civil war in the capital.
Then, in a blur, her life fell apart. A clash between al-Shabab and the government forces erupted in her neighborhood. In the chaos, she was separated from her husband and three of their children. With their two other kids, she fled Mogadishu.
Along the way, she was robbed. She had to borrow $60, the cost of coming from Galkayo to this forlorn border. Two months pregnant, in a rattletrap minibus on a bumpy road, she constantly worried that she would lose her baby.
Now, on the edge of a foreign land, she worried as much about what she left behind as what lay ahead.
Idou looked down the road, at the Djiboutian border police, at the U.N. refugee workers preparing to register her, at the white gate that would open a new life for her family. Soon, they will be transported to Ali Addeh, a desert camp across the border in Djibouti.
"How will they treat us there?" Idou asked.
Ali Addeh camp, Djibouti

A bazooka shell struck Aisha Mohammed Abdi's house in Mogadishu, killing her uncle. She fled the capital with her husband and five children. Two died of hunger along the way. Days later, they arrived in Djibouti.
"I dreamed of a better life," she recalled.
That was 20 years ago.
She still lives in this camp, hundreds of miles from the capital, on a barren, oatmeal-colored landscape ringed by tan mountains. The Somalis call it "Tora Bora" because the region resembles Afghanistan. This is where Djibouti's government, worried that newcomers would take jobs away from its citizens, sends Somali and Ethiopian refugees The U.N. rations of wheat flour, oil, lentils and sugar are not enough to feed Abdi's family. There is also a shortage of water. Every day, Abdi walks six miles to fetch wood. She sells most of it; the rest is for cooking and heating their tent. There is no electricity.
Rapists are here, too. Two policemen guard the camp of 14,000 refugees. Darkness is the rapists' accomplice.
"Women can't identify their abusers," said Ayan Mohammed, a Djiboutian social worker. "Everyone is afraid."
Abdi once dreamed of being resettled to another country. No longer. Only 64 Somalis left for the United States and other Western countries this year, less than half of 1 percent of the Somali refugees living in Djibouti.
She once dreamed of returning home. No longer.
"It is worse in Mogadishu now than when I left," she said.
Today, she no longer dreams.
"I have been a refugee for 20 years," said Abdi. "Whether I stay longer here or leave for another place, only God knows. But I have lost all hope."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/25/AR2010122501610.html?sid=ST2010122501660

Part Fourth: Somalis are desperate for a new life, but refugees face a dangerous road

2010-12-28T18:00:00.001Z

Hargeisa

This is the capital of the Other Somalia, a place barely touched by war, where gunfire is seldom heard. Known as Somaliland, this region broke away from Somalia in 1991 and today has its own elected, functioning government. The streets are bustling; new construction rises from nearly every corner.
Fatima Ahmed Noor fled here from Mogadishu after al-Shabab tried to recruit two of her nine children, after the war drove her husband insane and he separated from the family.
She has found anything but peace. The clans that rule Somaliland look at her with suspicion and disdain because she is from southern Somalia, where al-Shabab rules. Somaliland considers itself an independent country; the world does not recognize it as such. Authorities treat Somalis like Noor as foreigners. She and her children live in a refugee settlement and have little access to health care, education or jobs. "They say, 'When we get recognition, we will also recognize you. You are displaced from another country, so you have to be treated as a foreigner,' " Noor said. "Everyone from Mogadishu is in the same condition."
She and her children earn $3 a day washing clothes, if they are fortunate.
As she spoke to this reporter, a community leader came over and glared at Noor. "I want to listen to what you are saying," she said harshly. She is among those who hurl verbal insults at Noor and her children. What makes Noor equal to the other women in the settlement is this: "Rape is very common here," Noor said. "There is no discrimination."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/25/AR2010122501610.html?sid=ST2010122501660

Part Three: Somalis are desperate for a new life, but refugees face a dangerous road

2010-12-28T17:58:00.000Z

Bossaso

They arrive in this coastal town, filled with pirates and smugglers, with dreams of sailing to Yemen.
A few months ago, as the war edged closer to his house, Ali Osman Ado took his pregnant wife and five children out of Mogadishu. A trader, he had saved enough money to move them to Bossaso - $135 from Mogadishu - and to pay smugglers to take him to Yemen, then Saudi Arabia.
"He told me when I get there, I will find a better life. I will come for you and the children," recalled Hassina Abubaker, 30, two months pregnant at the time.
He didn't know that Yemeni authorities, fearing that al-Shabab militants could infiltrate and join al-Qaeda's Yemen branch, were cracking down on Somali refugees, his wife said. He didn't know that Saudi Arabia had sent more than 9,000 Somalis back to Mogadishu. He didn't know the smugglers would be ruthless.
Three days after he left, his friends called her from Yemen.
"The ship was overcrowded. The crew started to throw people off the boat to make it more stable," said Abubaker, staring listlessly at the dirt floor of her tent. "My husband was one of them." Over the past three years, 1,066 migrants died or went missing - they were in boats that capsized or they were killed by smugglers, according to U.N. officials.
In another tent, Fatima Ali Omar held her baby. When he turns 1, she plans to go to Yemen because she heard they "treat refugees well." Eventually, she wants to be smuggled into Saudi Arabia to work as a maid. She knows that women have been raped along the way. She knows that many are forced into prostitution. She knows that if she complains, she will be deported.
"Nothing matters as long as I find a good life at the end of the journey," Omar said. "I will forget I was raped."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/25/AR2010122501610.html?sid=ST2010122501660

Part two: Somalis are desperate for a new life, but refugees face a dangerous road

2010-12-28T17:55:00.001Z

Galkayo:

Six miles north of Galkayo, in a place called Halabokhad, 473 families are stuck in a makeshift settlement. The landscape is hot, dusty, bleak as their lives. They live in round, cramped tents made from clothing and straw. They become isolated, unable to afford transportation to town.
Local officials are in charge of the settlement, which is supported by the United Nations. But there is only one borehole for water. Food and medical care are also scarce. Bone-thin children have yellowish skin, a sign of malnutrition in a country where one of every seven children dies before age 5. Women deliver babies inside their tents, sometimes without help.
This is where Amina Aden arrived three months ago with her exhausted children and nothing else. Her neighborhood was engulfed by war. Her husband was killed in crossfire a day before they fled their home carrying only what they could. A few miles outside Mogadishu, masked men stopped their minibus filled with refugees. The youngest women were ordered out. Aden heard them scream while they were gang-raped. The men returned, and Aden braced herself. Her eight children surrounded her, crying, tugging at her clothes. The men looked at them, then grabbed another woman. "My children saved me," Aden, 35, recalled with a feeble smile.
After the rapes, the men delivered one final blow: They robbed all the passengers of their meager possessions. "They even took our sandals," Aden said.
Her children, ages 3 to 15, do not attend school. For breakfast, they drink tea. For lunch, they eat a bland porridge. There is never any dinner. "I cannot even buy milk powder for my baby," said her neighbor, Kaltoom Abdi Ali, 37. She, too, fled Mogadishu with her seven children after mortar shells crashed into her house two months ago. In the mayhem, she was separated from her husband. "I don't know where he is," Ali said.
Her 14-year-old and 16-year-old sons work 14 hours a day, washing cars, cleaning houses or collecting garbage for local residents. On most days, they earn $1. "I want my children to have an education, but if we leave here, life could be worse," Ali said. "No one cares about us."

For the most part, help is limited. After two decades of conflict, famine and drought, the United Nations has had difficulty raising funds to assist Somalis, U.N. refugee officials say. There's donor fatigue and, in a post-9/11 world, nations are preoccupied with terrorism, security and other global crises. The United States, Somalia's main donor, has provided more than $185 million to Somalia's government and an African Union peacekeeping force, but withheld humanitarian funding this year, fearing that al-Shabab was siphoning off foreign aid.
More than 2 million Somalis have sought haven in U.N.-supported refugee camps in neighboring countries and in settlements in nearly every region of Somalia. The conflict has significantly blocked the ability of U.N. and humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to south and central Somalia, which are under al-Shabab's control.
Here, and in other settlements around Galkayo, women fear the night.
Two weeks ago, three masked gunmen entered Asha Muse's tent. In front of her four children, they beat her and her niece, Muna. The men tore the women's clothes off and took turns raping them for two hours. One attacker stabbed Muna in the thigh with a knife.
Another turned to Ali's son. "If you make a sound, we will kill you," Muse recalled him saying. Before they left, the men stole $85 and some clothes. "Everybody rapes women. The soldiers, the militias, everybody," said Hawa Aden Mohammed, an activist who runs a women's shelter in Galkayo where victims of rape and other gender-based violence seek shelter. Muse and her niece did not inform the police or aid workers. Muse has stopped collecting garbage, fearing her attackers will spot her. Her neighbors, who helplessly listened to their screams, look at her sympathetically. "We can't go back to Mogadishu. We can't afford to leave here. We know we will get raped again," said Muse, her tears filling her eyes. "But there's nothing we can do."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/25/AR2010122501610.html?sid=ST2010122501660

Part One: Somalis are desperate for a new life, but refugees face a dangerous road

2010-12-28T17:42:00.002Z

GALKAYO, SOMALIA Deka Mohamed Idou sat under a tree, exhausted after a grueling six-day journey. She touched her belly, yearning for her unborn child to kick.
This is why she took the long, bumpy road out of Mogadishu: War. A missing husband and three missing children. A shattered house. This is why she's here in this wind-swept no man's land between Somalia and Djibouti: Peace. Work. An education for her two other children. She can't see what awaits them. Perhaps sanctuary. Perhaps more suffering. But she's certain of one thing.
"I will deliver my baby in a place without gunfire," she said.
For Somalis, the road out of Mogadishu is a last resort. Those traveling on it have fled homes abruptly with terrified children, and crossed a wilderness of thieves, armed Islamists and marauding tribesmen. Many have been robbed, beaten, raped, even killed.
The situation in Mogadishu has become so bad that nearly 300,000 Somalis have made their way out this year, swelling the ranks of what is, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the third-largest refugee population from any country in the world. Most are women and children. The men who have survived have stayed behind to protect their homes, or they went ahead. Some have vanished in the chaos. Others are fighting.
The road, and the places along it, is the most visible evidence of a population still disintegrating, amid hopelessness and death, two decades after the collapse of Siad Barre's government plunged Somalia into an endless civil war.
Today, al-Shabab, a militia linked to al-Qaeda, controls large chunks of the Muslim country and seeks to overthrow the fragile U.S.-backed government. The militia's Taliban-like decrees and recruitment of children provide more reasons for Somalis to flee.
They travel north, often to places they have only imagined, arriving hungry and desperate. They join the hundreds of thousands who have fled since 1991, leaving behind a city that once had 2.5 million people.
Many remain too poor to flee. The ones with some means head for camps in Somali towns like Galkayo, Bossaso and Hargeisa, searching for peace and support. The ones with a few dollars more head for foreign lands - Djibouti, Yemen, Saudi Arabia - searching for a new life.
Those who succeed enter a world where they can be deported at any moment, where they are increasingly viewed as a security threat. Those who fail, and most do, are trapped in a humanitarian limbo, resigned to hardship, dependency and a broken life or they die.
They travel from one hell to another hell," said Ahmed Abdullahi, a U.N. refugee protection officer in Galkayo, 470 miles northwest of Mogadishu and often the first stop on the journey toward Djibouti and Yemen. These are the stories of women who have taken this road, from the places they end up.

The Washingtonpost.com

Kenya endangering lives of Somali refugees, says rights group

2010-12-24T18:01:00.000Z

MICHAEL LOGAN NAIROBI, KENYA Sapa -dpa Dec 08 2010

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Kenya of endangering the lives of thousands of Somali refugees who are being deported back to their war-torn country in violation of international law.
Kenya hosts almost 300 000 Somalis in its Dadaab refugee complex, near the Kenya-Somalia border, which is at bursting point as thousands continue to flee a bloody Islamist insurgency.However, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said many thousands of those who make into Kenya are being returned to South and Central Somalia."Continued fighting and horrendous abuses in Somalia pose a very real threat to the lives of tens of thousands of children, women and men," said Michelle Kagari, Africa programme deputy director at Amnesty International. "No Somali should be forcibly returned to southern and central Somalia."Amnesty International said Kenyan authorities forcibly returned 8 000 refugees last month, who had fled fighting, while HRW cited cases of hundreds of Somalis being driven back to the border in pick-up trucks."Kenyan officials are flagrantly violating Somalis' right not to be returned to a place where their lives are at grave risk," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher for HRW. "The Kenyan government needs to send a clear message to provincial and local authorities that Somalis must not be deported to their war-torn country."Discussions have been ongoing between Kenya and the United Nations refugee agency UNCHR for years over the allocation of more land at the Dadaab complex, but no deal has been struck.
Bearing the brunt
Kenya feels it is bearing the brunt of the exodus from its neighbour, a point acknowledged by Amnesty International."Kenya disproportionately shoulders the responsibility for massive refugee flows from Somalia and needs more support from the international community, including European Union countries to provide durable solutions for these people," said Kagaria.
Somalia has been embroiled in chaos since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.The latest insurgency, which pits al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab against the weak Western-backed government, kicked off in early 2007. Tens of thousands have been killed in fighting, while over a million people have fled their homes.
Source: Sapa -dpa
Copyright © 2010 WardheerNews.com

Amnesty International - Somali refugees in Kenya need protection not abuse

2010-12-24T17:52:00.000Z

Kenya’s violations of the human rights of Somali refugees and asylum-seekers are putting thousands of lives at risk, Amnesty International said in a report released today.From life without peace to peace without life describes how thousands fleeing violence in Somalia are unable to find refuge, protection and lasting solutions in Kenya, due to the closure of the border between the two countries almost four years ago amid security concerns. “Continued fighting and horrendous abuses in Somalia pose a very real threat to the lives of tens of thousands of children, women and men. No Somali should be forcibly returned to southern and central Somalia,” said Michelle Kagari, Africa Programme Deputy Director at Amnesty International. According to media reports as yet unverified by Amnesty International, hundreds of Somalis were recently detained in a mass police operation targeting foreigners across Nairobi.Last month around 8000 Somali refugees who had fled across the border into Kenya from the Somali town of Belet Hawo following intense fighting there, were ordered to return to Somalia by the Kenyan authorities. Moreover, Kenyan police then forced about 3,000 of them further into Somalia, where they continue to be at risk of grave human rights abuses.
Read the complete story at Amnesty International

Women of the Year 2010: Dr. Hawa Abdi & Her Daughters

2010-11-08T15:49:00.002Z

A Family Affair: From left: Dr. Amina Mohamed, Dr. Hawa Abdi and Dr. Deqo Mohamed, photographed during a business trip to Geneva, Switzerland, on September 18, 2010.

They are Women of the Year because: “They are fearless. Their life’s purpose is to be of service to Somali refugees, and their unwavering fortitude in the face of insurmountable obstacles is a testament to the warrior spirit of women.”
On a still, hot morning last May, hundreds of Islamist militants invaded the massive displaced-persons camp that Dr. Hawa Abdi runs near Mogadishu, Somalia. They surrounded the 63-year-old ob-gyn’s office, holding her hostage and taking control of the camp. “Women can’t do things like this,” they threatened.
Dr. Abdi, who is equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo, was unfazed. Every day in Somalia brings new violence as bands of rebels rove ungoverned. Today Somalia remains what the U.N. calls one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. On that morning in May, Dr. Abdi challenged her captors: “What have you done for society?” The thugs stayed a week, leaving only after the U.N. and others advocated on her behalf. Dr. Abdi then, of course, got back to work.
Her lifesaving efforts started in 1983, when she opened a one-room clinic on her family farm. As the government collapsed, refugees flocked to her, seeking food and care. Today she runs a camp housing approximately 90,000 people, mostly women and children because, as she says, “the men are dead, fighting, or have left Somalia to find work.” While Dr. Abdi has gotten some help, many charities refuse to enter Somalia. “It’s the most dangerous country,” says Kati Marton, a board member of Human Rights Watch. “Dr. Abdi is just about the only one doing anything.” Her greatest support: two of her daughters, Deqo, 35, and Amina, 30, also doctors, who often work with her. Despite the bleak conditions, Dr. Abdi sees a glimmer of hope. “Women can build stability,” she says. “We can make peace.”
Source: Glamour

SOMALIA: Children facing the worst, says UN

2010-11-08T15:45:00.001Z

Armed groups in Somalia have continued recruiting children to fight and engage in piracy, and girls have found themselves facing increasing risk of sexual violence, a senior UN official says.
“In some areas, Al-Shabab leaders are asking parents to give [them] a child. I heard of people hiding their children to escape recruitment,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) for Children and Armed Conflict, told a news conference on 3 November following a mission to Somalia and the semi-autonomous regions of Puntland and Somaliland.
“Children are expressing the difficulty of living in Mogadishu,” she added. “As they walk past checkpoints they are told your ankles are showing, wear something long. Then later they cross the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] checkpoints and are told they are Al-Shabab due to their [clothing]. It is the reason they are going to Puntland.”

Sexual- and gender-based violence, Coomaraswamy said, was on the increase, according to child protection partners, with fast, quick marriages, killing and maiming of concern. “These young boys [fighters] are marrying young girls, and then moving on to others – forced marriages are making a comeback,” she said.
A nine-year-old girl told Coomaraswamy: "My greatest fear, besides thieves, is that men will come and do violence to women and girls in the night."
Coomaraswamy said she had not had access to the Al-Shabab and Hisbul Islam militia, but urged states with an influence on the parties to call for the release of children in their ranks. She expressed concern over the use of radio and schools to recruit children in militia-controlled regions.
The Special Representative also said children were held alongside adults as pirates in Bosasso Central Prison. "The adults are not separated from the children and there are complaints of abuse," she said. "The frontline [pirate] troops now are increasingly children and youth. The big pirates do not go out, they have become businessmen; it is the young children [15-17-year-olds] who are sent out."
Armed groups, she added, were "exploiting [the fact] that children have a less developed concept of death and tend to be fearless fighters. Children are susceptible due to notions of romantic death.”
She said the new Somali Prime Minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, had pledged to stop the recruitment of child soldiers.
"The government will work with the TFG and allies towards a UN action plan for the release and verification of the release of child soldiers," Coomaraswamy said, adding that some released children were already in the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) camp in Mogadishu.
She said there were two schools of thought regarding TFG recruitment of child solders - one that the TFG-proper was not doing the recruiting but its allies were, while "others say that even the checkpoints are run by the TFG itself.
“In 2008, I said the African child suffers the most but I think the Somali child suffers even more,” she said.
Source: IRIN

Life and death on the streets of Somalia -

2010-08-29T09:28:00.000+01:00

Saturday, August 28, 2010

In a city where so much time and energy is spent on killing, few people have saved more lives this year than Hassan Mohamoud Mohamed, a driver who traded his taxi for an ambulance in war-torn Mogadishu. When the muffled blast of a mortar round echoes in the distance or the thunder of artillery fire erupts, Hassan gulps his cup of tea and stares at his mobile phone. He knows a call is minutes away. "The days I would wait for western tourists at Mogadishu airport are long gone," said the 51-year-old, propped against his beat-up Toyota minivan. Three years of fighting between Islamist insurgents and pro-government forces have turned central Mogadishu into a death trap where civilians are wounded or killed almost daily. "Now I pick up my clients from pools of blood in shattered homes," he said. "Needless to say, they don't pay the fare." His pay is three dollars a day, barely enough to feed him and his family.
"It's not an ordinary job but I'm like everyone else in this city when I fear for my life every day," he said. "But there is nothing else to take in Mogadishu, so I figured this place needs people who help just for the sake of helping." Typical was one recent morning in the Hamarweyn district. Hassan's phone rang; he quickly answered. "Oh, my God! Where and how many victims?" He flapped his hand at the loud crowd in the nearby tea shop as he struggled to make out the crackly directions given by the caller. Within seconds, Hassan and his yellow-and-white-striped ambulance hurtled through Mogadishu's ruined streets, siren blaring. "Most of the time, I have a really tough time getting to the scene of the incident without getting killed myself," he said, tugging the wheel to steer the speeding van past a rut. He's only half joking. The two previous drivers of his ambulance were killed doing their job.
Militia manning rogue checkpoints, artillery fire, trenches and cement boulders are just some of the obstacles he has to contend with. "The roads are rough, sometimes they're blocked, so you need to know all the shortcuts. You have to keep in mind that you are not driving healthy passengers. Their survival depends on how clever you are," he said. For Hassan, who has no medical training, the hard part begins when he reaches the wounded and has to identify who has a chance of surviving and needs his services the most.
"This is voluntary ambulance service," he said. "Can you imagine driving this vehicle and having to choose the most urgent cases without any medical assistance? "Sometimes people die in my van on the way to hospital and nobody will know the reason. They get their first treatment only when I reach the hospital." After Mogadishu sank into chaos following the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre, pushcarts and wheelbarrows became the main medical emergency transport.
In 2008, volunteers set up the ambulance service with the help of Mogadishu-based telecommunications company Nation Link.
There are six other drivers like Hassan in Mogadishu, ready to bring the wounded to the city's three hospitals.
Ali Muse Sheikh Mohamoud, the head of Mogadishu ambulance services, said his drivers brought more than 700 wounded to Medina Hospital in July alone and appealed for more help.

"We want to have medical staff on board the ambulances in order to give more attention to the victims before they reach hospital," he said.
"But all this is done on a voluntary basis, there is not much more we can do. Yet fighting has become the norm, there are clashes every day." There are no reliable casualty figures for the fighting in Mogadishu but thousands die each year, caught in the crossfire of the never-ending battle for control of the capital.
Hassan moved his wife and eight children out of their home as the fighting got more intense in northern Mogadishu a few months ago; the last thing he wants is to be called to rush a relative to hospital. Dealing with strangers is tough enough.
"For months now, this ambulance has been my home," he said. "Waiting for bad news is my life."

Source: AFP

Peaceful region of Somaliland votes for president

2010-07-01T13:09:00.002+01:00

HARGEISA, Somalia; Voters in Somaliland queued for hours and thronged polling stations Saturday for the second presidential election held in the self-declared republic, in a peaceful exercise in governance not seen for decades in the country's anarchic south.
Voters and candidates said they hope this vote will award Somaliland the international recognition it seeks. The three men vying to become president of the region have all promised to seek international recognition for the autonomous region.
"The election is very crucial for the future of Somaliland," said President Dahir Riyale Kahin as he voted Saturday morning. "It a bridge to a long-awaited international recognition."
Saturday's election also coincides with the 50-year anniversary of independence for Somaliland, a former British protectorate. The province was only independent for five days before joining Somalia on July 1, 1960.
Somaliland declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 and has been a haven of relative peace in northwest Somalia as southern Somalia has degenerated into chaos and anarchy. The region has its own security and police forces, justice system and currency, but is not recognized by any other state.
All three candidates, who include Kahin, Ahmed Mohamud Silanyo and Feysal Ali Warabe, have also promised to maintain the region's security and economic development.
Warabe said that while he believes his party deserves to win, he will accept the results given by the national election board.
"I am now ready endorse if any one of us wins by one vote," he said.
Residents also said they hope the vote will win more respect for the region and maintain the peace that has eluded southern Somalia since the 1991 ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre by warlords.
Business student Sarah Jama said she was concerned about unemployment levels, but that she based her vote on a desire for peace.
"Inasmuch as we need change, we must maintain the peace we enjoy," she said. "We are very scared of what has happened in countries around us, like southern Somalia."
Omar Ali, 32, an electrician and father of seven, traveled from Libya to vote for the first time.
"I think the election is very beautiful and I support the Somaliland elections so that they can be peaceful and fair," he said.
He added, "I believe at the rate things are going in Somaliland, the future will be bright for my children, where they will be more interested in their country and not go abroad."
Officials said polls were orderly on Saturday, but that the masses of voters kept polls open a few minutes after closing time. Results are expected in a week.
"The process has ended peacefully, and the polling stations were supposed to close at 7 p.m. (1600GMT), but they extended for fifteen more minutes because people were in queues and we had serve them," said Issa Ahmed Hamari, chairman of the National Electoral Commission of Somaliland.
The vote was closely watched by dozens of international observers.
One observer, Steve Kibble of the British organization Progressio, said the campaign "has generally been peaceful and good-natured."
The candidates agreed to hold campaign rallies on different days in order to avoid bouts of violence between supporters. More than 1.6 million people have registered to vote at more than 1,000 polling sites.
Kahin, leader of the Democratic United National party, or Udub, was elected president in 2003 with 42.08 percent of ballots cast in an election won by 80 votes.
Somaliland's second presidential election has been frequently delayed. It was first scheduled for 2008, and then for 2009.
___
Associated Press Writer Samson Haileyesus contributed to this report.

Children Carry Guns for a U.S. Ally, Somalia

2010-06-14T16:59:00.000+01:00

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Awil Salah Osman prowls the streets of this shattered city, looking like so many other boys, with ripped-up clothes, thin limbs and eyes eager for attention and affection. But Awil is different in two notable ways: he is shouldering a fully automatic, fully loaded Kalashnikov assault rifle; and he is working for a military that is substantially armed and financed by the United States “You!” he shouts at a driver trying to sneak past his checkpoint, his cherubic face turning violently angry.
“You know what I’m doing here!” He shakes his gun menacingly. “Stop your car!”
The driver halts immediately. In Somalia, lives are lost quickly, and few want to take their chances with a moody 12-year-old. It is well known that Somalia’s radical Islamist insurgents are plucking children off soccer fields and turning them into fighters. But Awil is not a rebel. He is working for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, a critical piece of the American counterterrorism strategy in the Horn of Africa. According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9. Child soldiers are deployed across the globe, but according to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war, finding itself on a list with notorious rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army. Somali government officials concede that they have not done the proper vetting. Officials also revealed that the United States government was helping pay their soldiers, an arrangement American officials confirmed, raising the possibility that the wages for some of these child combatants may have come from American taxpayers.
United Nations officials say they have offered the Somali government specific plans to demobilize the children. But Somalia’s leaders, struggling for years to withstand the insurgents’ advances, have been paralyzed by bitter infighting and are so far unresponsive.
Several American officials also said that they were concerned about the use of child soldiers and that they were pushing their Somali counterparts to be more careful. But when asked how the American government could guarantee that American money was not being used to arm children, one of the officials said, “I don’t have a good answer for that.”
According to Unicef, only two countries have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of soldiers younger than 15: the United States and Somalia.
Many human rights groups find this unacceptable, and President Obama himself, when this issue was raised during his campaign, did not disagree. “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land,” he said. All across this lawless land, smooth, hairless faces peek out from behind enormous guns. In blown-out buildings, children chamber bullets twice the size of their fingers. In neighborhoods by the sea, they run checkpoints and face down four-by-four trucks, though they can barely see over the hood.
Somali government officials admit that in the rush to build a standing army, they did not discriminate. “I’ll be honest,” said a Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, “we were trying to find anyone who could carry a gun.” Awil struggles to carry his. It weighs about 10 pounds. The strap digs into his bony shoulders, and he is constantly shifting it from one side to the other with a grimace. Sometimes he gets a helping hand from his comrade Ahmed Hassan, who is 15. Ahmed said he was sent to Uganda more than two years ago for army training, when he was 12, though his claim could not be independently verified. American military advisers have been helping oversee the training of Somali government soldiers in Uganda.
“One of the things I learned,” Ahmed explained eagerly, “is how to kill with a knife.”
Children do not have many options in Somalia. After the government collapsed in 1991, an entire generation was let loose on the streets. Most children have never sat in a classroom or played in a park. Their bones have been stunted by conflict-induced famines, their psyches damaged by all the killings they have witnessed.
“What do I enjoy?” Awil asked. “I enjoy the gun.” go full story into this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/africa/14somalia.html?pagewanted=2

UN agency urges bolstered protection for Somali refugees

2010-05-12T10:28:00.000+01:00

The United Nations refugee agency issued new guidelines today, calling on governments to enhance their protection of people escaping the “unfolding international tragedy” in Somalia.
The guidelines seek to ensure that the protection needs of Somalis are dealt with consistently. They also encourage nations to assess applications for refugee status for people from the war-torn country in the broadest way and to extend other forms of international protection when refugee status is not granted.

Melissa Fleming, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said that that the agency believes that asylum-seekers from central and southern Somalia are in need of international protection.

Those who do not meet the criteria to be granted refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1969 Refugee Convention of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), she said, should still be protected, as applicable in situations of generalized violence or armed conflict.
The Horn of Africa nation continues to be plagued by fighting between Government forces and its supporters and Islamist rebels. It remains the scene of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), some 575,000 refugees and nearly 3 million people dependent on aid, out of a total population of nearly 8 million.
“In view of the nature of the conflict and the dramatic humanitarian situation, UNHCR does not believe that Somalia refugees can find an internal relocation alternative in central of southern Somalia,” Ms. Fleming stressed.
Further, she said, there is no possibility for Somalis not originally from the self-declared autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland to take shelter there.
Although most countries look into refugee claims on an individual basis, UNHCR is calling on countries facing large numbers of arrivals to grant protection to people from Somalia on a group basis.
“It is our view that involuntary returns to central and southern Somalia under today’s circumstances would place individuals at risk,” the agency’s spokesperson said.
Last week, Deputy High Commissioner Alexander Aleinikoff said that thousands of Somalis fleeing the violence in their homeland are expected to cross into neighbouring countries this year, adding to already overcrowded and under-resourced conditions in camps.
“The burden for these countries is enormous,” he said after a two-week visit to camps in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia for refugees and IDPs.
“If there was one resounding call from the refugees we met with it was this: please find me a new home,” Mr. Aleinikoff added.

Some of the camps have housed Somalis since the Somali Government collapsed in 1991, casting the country into chaos between political factions, armed groups and clans.

Recently the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), strengthened by the African Union (AU) and with logistical support mandated by the Security Council, has fought Islamic militant rebel groups in the political arena, and on Somali streets.

Half of Somali women, children suffer from anaemia: study

2010-05-10T14:16:00.000+01:00

NAIROBI, May 7 (Xinhua) -- A national study has shown that Somali women and children are suffering from shocking levels of anaemia and Vitamin A deficiencies.

According to the study published on Friday by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis of Somalia (FSNAU), about 50 percent of all women, 30 percent of all school aged children and 60 percent of children fewer than five were classified as anaemic. "Anaemia in Somalia is caused by a range of factors including frequent exposure to diseases which are often untreated, and the consumption of predominantly cereal based diets, which are missing key vitamins and minerals," Grainne Moloney, interim Chief Technical Adviser of the FSNAU.
The results also show that one third of all children and half of adult women have Vitamin A deficiency.
Although children may seem healthy as they are not very thin, these underlying deficiencies mean these children are still malnourished.
The required nutrient rich foods, such as meat, eggs, fish, vegetables and fruits foods are often too expensive for poor households to buy and the problem is further exacerbated by inadequate health care and sanitation, disease and a lack of appropriate infant and young child feeding," Moloney said, adding that the levels of anaemia in Somalia are amongst the highest in Africa."
In conflict situations such as Somalia, the report says, the collapse of the health system and frequent displacement also contributes to micronutrient deficiencies. "Anaemia in children can delay both physical and intellectual growth; lead to increased risk of infectious diseases and an increased risk of death," it says. "In women, anaemia can lead to poor foetal development and birth complications during pregnancy, as well as an increased risk of infectious diseases and death."
Anaemia can be easily treated with a combined package of good nutrition and good health including: early treatment of childhood illness, consumption of foods high in iron such as red meat, iron supplementation, de-worming, food fortification and reducing intake of foods such as tea, which can inhibit absorption of iron.
Vitamin A deficiency is well known to cause night blindness, but more importantly, can increase the risk of mortality from childhood diseases such as measles.
However research has shown that where a population is at risk of Vitamin A deficiency, such as Somalia, supplementation reduces mortality in children 6 month to 5 years of age by up to 23 percent.
Unexpectedly, the report also shows that levels of iodine deficiency were not of concern, in fact high levels were reported across both school aged and adult women populations.
The study was conducted in Somalia between March and August 2009 led by the FSNAU and Food and Agriculture Organization.

Source: Xinhua

SOMALILAND: Human trafficking on the increase

2010-04-04T12:33:00.001+01:00

HARGEISA, 2 April 2010 (IRIN) – Officials in Somaliland are concerned over a rise in human trafficking in the region. Children are mainly trafficked from south-central Somalia, because of the lack of government there, says a senior government official.
“Human trafficking is increasing in Somaliland. Before, no one believed that human/child trafficking existed in Somaliland but such kinds of crimes occur here…” Fadumo Sudi, the Minister for Family and Social Affairs, said during a recent ceremony to reunite a girl with her family. She had been trafficked to Hargeisa in February from Qardho, in the autonomous northeast region of Puntland.
“One day, my sister went to school as usual, but she disappeared. We searched for her everywhere but we didn’t find her. Finally, we heard from the media that she had been trafficked to Somaliland and by Allah’s mercy she was saved. We are happy to have her back,” Najib Jama Abdi, the girl’s brother, said.
In January, the Somaliland immigration office in the area of Loyada, along the border with Djibouti, sent home more than 60 minors in the company of about 200 illegal immigrants who were hoping to proceed on to Europe via Eritrea, Sudan and Libya.
Ethiopian Oromian children also travel to Somaliland without their parents in search of work; most end up in petty trade or as street children. Older people, claiming to be the children’s parents, use them to beg.
“The children are used in different ways … and are exploited for child labour in Somaliland,” Lul Hassan Matan, the director of child protection in Somaliland’s National Human Rights Commission, told IRIN. “Whenever you see a child in the street crying and ask him or her why, they respond they are not with their parents, but have been brought in to work.” (Since speaking to IRIN, Matan has left this position).
Raising awareness
According to Khadar Qorane Yusuf, the victim referral mechanism lead person in the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, the children are initially enticed with false promises and told not to share the information with anyone, only to be later violated.
“With the collaboration of the International Office for Migration (IOM), we are raising awareness by holding forums to discuss the issue of trafficking, as well as debates and seminars,” added Qorane. Information posters have been strategically placed along the borders and airports.
IOM defines trafficking in persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
Exploitation includes the exploitation or the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
Forced into sex work
According to Mayumi Ueno, the counter-trafficking project manager at IOM’s Somalia Support Office, the scale of human trafficking in Somalia is not known. “But [a] rapid assessment conducted by IOM indicated [the] existence of international trafficking of Somali women to Djibouti, Kenya, and the Gulf States, mainly the United Arab Emirates, for sexual and labour exploitation. Moreover, further investigations confirmed the widespread practice of domestic human trafficking of Somali women and children [who are] lured into forced prostitution in some areas of Somalia [Somaliland and Puntland],” Ueno told IRIN.
In 2009, IOM launched a Counter Trafficking Project for Somalia, in Somaliland and Puntland, whose activities include awareness-raising campaigns targeting the local population to inform them of the dangers and risks of being trafficked. It has also supported Somaliland and Puntland in setting up National Counter Trafficking Taskforces.
Challenges remain, however, with the public and authorities not familiar with the concept of human trafficking and the best ways to respond, Mayumi said. “Furthermore, the general lack of social services and issues of culture and social stigma make victims’ reintegration extremely difficult.”
Theme(s): (IRIN) Children, (IRIN) Human Rights
[ENDS]

Thousands flee Somalia fighting, says UN refugee agency

2010-02-14T05:39:00.000Z

"Many people recognize that Somalia is moving from being a failed state in conflict to a fragile state with major development and Insurgents already control much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia Thousands of people have fled Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, since Wednesday, the UN refugee agency has said."Since the beginning of February, over 8,000 people have left the city to escape the fighting.

" spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said. "We are stepping up our preparedness to intervene and deliver emergency relief to the affected population as soon as the security situation permits." For months now, fighting has been an almost daily occurrence in Mogadishu. Some 24 people have been killed and another 40 injured since Wednesday, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Ms Fleming warned of the difficulties posed by working in a war zone: "As with other humanitarian actors, our own access is affected by conflict." 'Fragile state'Despite reports of violent clashes between government troops and the Islamist group al-Shabab, the UN Special Representative for Somalia congratulated the transitional government on its work over the past 12 months and urged it to continue its efforts to restore peace and stability to the country. "Unfortunately, they have had to spend time and resources trying to stop the violent attacks by extremists who oppose all their attempts to bring normality back to the country," said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah. "Many people recognize that Somalia is moving from being a failed state in conflict to a fragile state with major development and reconstruction needs," he added.

Gabileynews

Appeal For Urgent Humanitarian Assistance and Livelihood Support For Humanitarian Crises Prevention in Somaliland

2010-02-08T08:17:00.003Z

Hargeisa, 6 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – Predictions were made that food security and nutrition situation may worsen in most parts of Somaliland by Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) of FAO in its early warning briefs .Some of the reasons cited included:
i. Poor “deyr” rains that preceded by dry “Hagaa” season which negatively affected pastural livelihoods.
ii. Very critical nutrition situation reported in agro-pastoral population, based on a data for rapid assessment.
iii. High numbers of children, identified as acutely malnourished, that require rehabilitation. For Togdheer pastoral population, the situation was classified as serious.
iv. Insufficient water and pasture for livestock herds through the “jilaal” dry season (January to March 2010), which will cause early water trucking in Sool, Haud and Haud of Hargeisa.
v. Very low Livestock production and re-production due to poor conception rate during the post “jilaal” and “Gu 2009” as well as livestock diseases during, “Hagaa 09”, that resulted in death and abortion of camels and goats. In Awdal region, cattle and sheep had weak body conditions.
Recent assessment carried out by National Environment Risk and Disaster (NERAD) also confirmed the gravity of the drought faced by the people.
The facts are:
 The ”Gu” rains were below normal
 The “Karan” rains were below normal
 The “ Deyr” was also below normal
 The “Heis “rains in Guban areas didn’t also rain normally
 In certain areas in Sool, Sanag and Togdheer, there were no rains

As a result of above facts, poor pasture, scarcity of water, food and weakend human and animal health has been experienced. Recent Reports received from all regions confirmed (Viz: Togdheer, Sool, Sanag, Awdal,Maroodijeex,and Selel) that both pastoralists and agro- pastoralists are facing serious, but devastating drought. The affected population is estimated to be 40% of the total population of Somaliland of 3.5 million which equals to 1.4 million people.
A serious humanitarian catastrophe seems to be imminent, which is beyond the capacity of national authority, that requires to be prevented.
The government of Somaliland, therefore, appeals to international community (i.e. Governments, UN Agencies and other humanitarian organizations as well as the business communities and other benevolent institutions for urgent humanitarian assistance and livelihood support to avert worsening of the humanitarian crises.
In addition, assistance and support to urgent water trucking, construction and rehabilitation of boreholes as well as rehabilitation and desilting of “Berkads” and ‘Dams’ and the supplies of necessary medications for affected human and livestock populations will be needed to avert break-out of epidemics. Nutritional support to the weak and sick will also be necessary.
The situation is critical and may continue to worsen in the coming months. It requires rapid and fast responses from the international community, the business community, humanitarian and benevolent institutions to deliver needed humanitarian assistance and livelihood support.

Hon. Ali Ibrahim Mohamed
Minister of National planning, coordination and Relations with International Organizations

On behalf of Chairperson of the National Disaster Management Committee and Vice President of the Republic of Somaliland

http://www.somalilandpress.com/

Up to 240,000 Somali under fives malnourished - report

2010-02-03T11:51:00.001Z

NAIROBI, 2 February 2010 (IRIN) - Somalia has one of the highest levels of malnutrition in the world, with up to 240,000 children under five affected, according to an early warning report published on 1 February by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FAO/FSNAU) and FEWSNET. The report comes as Mogadishu residents say the humanitarian situation has deteriorated. "I honestly cannot remember when things have been so bad; it is as if all the negative things are coming together at one time," civil society activist Asha Sha'ur said. "If the situation - both security and humanitarian - does not improve soon, we will be looking at a far worse situation than Somalia has ever faced." Ali Sheikh Yassin, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organization (EHRO), said many business people had fled the city due to increasing insecurity. "These were the people who used to create jobs," he said. "It was not much but it allowed many displaced poor people to supplement what little aid they got. Now that is not possible." More than two-thirds of malnourished children were in south-central Somalia, the report said. "Although we are seeing some positive indicators in terms of the lifting of the livestock export ban and improved crop and livestock production in southern parts... the food security and nutrition situation in central regions remains in crisis, where 70 percent of the population require assistance," said Grainne Moloney, FSNAU's interim chief technical adviser for Somalia.

Severely malnourished One in six children was acutely malnourished and in need of specialist care. "One in 22 is severely malnourished and at a nine times increased risk of death compared to well nourished children," the report said. In south-central Somalia, which has seen significant clashes between Islamist insurgents and government forces, one in five children were acutely malnourished, it said. Civil society activist Sha'ur told IRIN that high food prices, lack of employment opportunities and reduced humanitarian aid had contributed to the crisis. A 50kg bag of maize which was selling for the equivalent of US$12 two months ago was now going for $30, she said. EHRO’s Yassin said the situation in the city had deteriorated in the last two weeks. "We had a few weeks when some people actually returned to their homes from the camps, but that has now been reversed by fighting in the past week." Up to 45 people had been killed and at least 152 injured in fighting between government forces and insurgents in the last week, he said. ah/cb

Theme(s): (IRIN) Children, (IRIN) Food Security, (IRIN) Health & Nutrition

Somalia violence claims 258 lives, displaces 80,000: UNHCR

2010-02-03T09:15:00.000Z

NAIROBI, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- At least 258 people have been killed and 80,000 others displaced this year by violence in Somalia which sharply escalated in January resulting widespread destruction, a UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.
The UNHCR said in a statement issued here that some 29,000 people have been uprooted by heavy fighting in Dhusamareebb in Galgaduud region, over 25,000 have fled their homes to escape renewed clashes in Beledweyne in Hiraan region, while another 18, 000 are known to have been displaced in the on-going conflict in the capital, Mogadishu.
"According to local sources, intense clashes between government forces and militia groups fighting for control of the conflict- torn central regions have left at least 258 civilians dead and another 253 wounded, which makes January the deadliest month since last August," it said.
"We estimate that more than 80,000 Somalis have been displaced since the beginning of the year. Thousands were also forced to leave their homes in other parts of Somalia."
The UN agency said the deteriorating security conditions have so far made it hard for humanitarian workers to access the needy population.
UNHCR plans to distribute emergency relief items and shelter material to over 18,000 people in 27 locations where the displaced are temporarily settled around Dhusamareebb and Belet-Weyn as soon as the security situation will permit.
UNCHR said the internally displaced people (IDPs) in Galgaduud region face difficult conditions. Fearful of returning to their homes, many are reported to be sleeping in the open with dwindling shelter and little water.
There are also growing concerns about the health conditions of particularly vulnerable groups - such as children, women and elderly.
More than 1.4 million people are internally displaced in Somalia and some 560,000 Somalis live as refugees in the neighboring countries. In 2009, over 120,000 Somalis sought refuge mainly in Kenya, Yemen and Ethiopia.
Source: Xinhua

UN rights expert warns of human rights violations in Somalia

2010-02-01T06:15:00.000Z

The UN independent expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia, Dr. Shamsul Bari, has issued a strong warning on the security, human rights and humanitarian situation in the country, including Somaliland and Puntland.Bari described as "extremely serious" the situation in South and Central Somalia, where civilians continue to bear the brunt of the fighting between forces of the transitional government forces (TFG) and Islamist armed groups."The Islamist Forces fighting to topple the TFG are reported to have carried out extrajudicial executions, planted mines, bombs and other explosive devices in civilian areas, and used civilians as human shields," said Bari in a statement received here on Friday."Fighters from both sides are reported to have fired mortars indiscriminately into areas populated or frequented by civilians."At the end of his fourth monitoring mission to the Horn of Africa, the UN expert reported grave violations of women and children's rights, including the recruitment and use of children by several parties to the conflict.He added that "corporal punishment in the name of Sharia Law by such groups, including floggings and amputations following summary if any proceedings, arbitrary detention, death threats and intimidation are reportedly taking place."The UN expert stressed that "journalists and human rights defenders in all parts of Somalia continue to face severe restrictions, increasing death threats and are often victims of targeted killings for their work"."The suspension of the humanitarian assistance and the discontinuation of the food distribution with continuing restrictions by armed groups to humanitarian access by targeting aid workers violate rights to protection, adequate food, medical care and shelter," he said.In particular, he noted that piracy, human trafficking and mixed migrations remain the most serious challenges to the Puntland government."Piracy and the huge money it generates may pose a security threat not only to Somalia and the region, but to the whole world, " Bari stated, warning that "the recent killings targeting senior politicians in Puntland raise legitimate security concerns regarding the spread and the attempt of terrorist groups to destabilize Puntland and Somaliland."Bari was unable to visit the capital, Mogadishu, and southern and central Somalia due to security constraints."The stabilization of Somaliland and Puntland could have a positive impact on South and Central Somalia," the UN human rights expert stressed.He urged the international community and the UN to strengthen international engagement and support to Somalia, including Puntland and Somaliland."This increased support is required particularly for the implementation of the three pillars of the Djibouti process -- political, security and recovery -- which all include cross- cutting human rights issues," Bari said.The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates that more than 117,000 residents of Mogadishu have been displaced in the past month due to heavy exchanges of fire between government troops and Islamist insurgents.It says that the latest round of fighting has caused 200 deaths among civilians and wounded 700 others.
Source: Xinhua

A California Reckoning in a Case of Abuses Abroad

2010-01-31T12:15:00.002Z

SAN FRANCISCO— The three refugees from Somalia came to the Bay Area several years ago to escape the violence of their homeland, to put the terror behind them. But they were shocked to learn in 2002 that a former Somali official they believed responsible for brutality against their family was living freely in the United States.
To Bashe and Omar Yousuf, who are brothers, and their cousin Amina Jireh, that did not seem right.“I was really mad,” said Omar, a Caltrans engineer who now lives in Hercules. “The person who destroyed the country and killed thousands and thousands of people was in the United States, and we couldn’t do anything about it.” In fact, they could. They met in a friend’s living room in Oakland with lawyers from the Center for Justice and Accountability, a small San Francisco nonprofit. Since 1998, the little-known center, based on Market Street, has been filing suit on behalf of human rights victims seeking to hold their tormentors accountable. With the center’s assistance, Bashe and four other Somalis filed suit against the official, a former Somali prime minister living on the East Coast. Now the case is before the United States Supreme Court, a legal contest that is a test of whether former officials of foreign governments who are accused of committing war crimes before they moved to the United States have immunity from civil lawsuits. Oral arguments are scheduled for March.
“The issue is whether government officials who come to the United States and seek safe haven are above the law,” said Pamela Merchant, the center’s executive director. “The court will decide whether foreign government officials who use their powers to cause torture and rape and the killing of innocent civilians can be held responsible for their actions.”
The Center for Justice and Accountability was founded by Gerald Gray, a San Francisco psychotherapist who began treating victims of torture in 1985 and soon made it his exclusive practice.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Gray received an urgent call from San Francisco General Hospital seeking help for a newly arrived Bosnian refugee. When he got to the hospital, he found that the refugee was distraught because he had discovered that his torturer was living in San Francisco.
Mr. Gray feared that the man might kill his tormenter, but instead the traumatized refugee fled to the East Coast. His torturer was never held accountable.
After that experience, Mr. Gray resolved to find a way to help victims bring their abusers to justice. With the assistance of Amnesty International, he established the center.
“The law gives us a chance to do something in a civilized way,” said Mr. Gray, who serves on the center’s board and has founded other groups to aid torture victims. “If we didn’t have the law, or if it didn’t work, we would be stuck back in that primitive place of flight or fight.”
With a staff of 10, the center has carved out a niche among human rights groups by suing alleged human rights violators for damages. Since 1998 it has filed suits on behalf of human rights victims from five continents, winning every one of them that has gone to trial.
The center is unusual among rights organizations because it is based in San Francisco, rather than New York or Washington, where most have their headquarters. It typically recruits law firms around the country to work on cases without charge.
“They’ve been amazingly effective, especially given their small size and limited resources,” said Vienna Colucci, the managing director of Amnesty International USA.
William Aceves, an associate dean at the California Western School of Law in San Diego, said the lawsuits give victims a forum to confront their abuser.
“It’s never about money,” said Mr. Aceves, who sits on the center’s board. “It’s about an opportunity to present a case before a judge and jury, to be able to point a finger at the perpetrator and say, ‘What you did was wrong.’ ”
About 500,000 torture victims live in the United States, Ms. Merchant said. Amnesty International estimates that 1,000 people who committed human rights abuses also live here, sometimes in the same communities as their victims.
The Somali suit was filed in 2004 against Mohamed Ali Samantar, a defense minister and prime minister during the 1980s. Bashe Yousuf, who had been tortured and imprisoned in Somalia, became the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, which says Mr. Samantar is responsible for the killings, torture, rape and unlawful detention carried out by military forces under his control.
For the center, the question is whether torture victims should have the chance to confront their abusers in court.
“Samantar should not be above the law,” said Ms. Merchant, the center director. “The United States should not be a safe haven for war criminals.”
Mr. Samantar, who came to the United States in 1997 and lives in Fairfax, Va., argues that he is protected from lawsuits by a federal law that grants immunity to foreign nations. He disputes the charges against him but declined to be interviewed.
“Mr. Samantar vigorously denies the particular allegations in the suit, none of which have ever been determined to be true by any court of law,” said one of his lawyers, Shay Dvoretzky.
Ms. Jireh and Omar Yousuf are members of the Bay Area’s small Somali community, which numbers about 1,500, mainly in San Jose and the East Bay. Bashe Yousuf now lives near Atlanta.
Unlike Somali refugees in other parts of the country, most in the Bay Area came from the northwestern part of Somalia, now known as Somaliland, which suffered some of the harshest abuses in the 1980s under the government of Maj. Mohammed Siad Barre, who seized power in a 1969 military coup.
The Barre government was notorious as one of the most brutal in Africa, and used summary execution, rape, torture and imprisonment without trial to control the population, particularly in Somaliland.
The government collapsed in 1991, and the country descended into chaos. Today, Somalia is a base for pirates who attack commercial vessels and for Al Qaeda, which recruits fighters and suicide bombers there.
Mr. Samantar served under Barre as defense minister and first vice president from 1980 to 1986 and then as prime minister until 1990. He fled to Italy before coming to the United States.
Mr. Samantar’s lawyers argue that any actions he took were in his official capacity. Some refugees, particularly those from southern Somalia, view Mr. Samantar as a leader who fought to keep the country united.
Bashe Yousuf was a successful businessman in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s largest city. He was arrested in 1981 after leading an effort to clean up a hospital and obtain medical supplies from foreign charities.
The government falsely accused him and his colleagues of fomenting rebellion and conspiring with foreign agents. Mr. Yousuf was subjected to electric shocks, water boarded and held in solitary confinement for six years. He received political asylum and is now a United States citizen.
Four other Somalis joined the lawsuit: a man who survived execution by firing squad and hid under dead bodies until he could escape; a woman who was arrested, repeatedly raped and held for years in solitary confinement; a man whose two brothers were arrested and executed, and a man whose father and brother were killed when the military attacked civilians.
A district judge ruled in 2007 that Mr. Samantar had immunity and dismissed the suit. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned the decision, ruling that the law applies to foreign states, not individuals. Mr. Samantar then appealed to the Supreme Court.
“This case will set a precedent for a lot of countries that are ruled at gunpoint,” said Ms. Jireh, an insurance sales representative who lives in Brentwood. “He’s a war criminal who is living like you and me. That shouldn’t be O.K.”
By RICHARD C. PADDOCK
Source: Los Angeles Times, 30 January 2010

Focus on Human Rights Consequences of Conflicts

2010-01-26T12:11:00.000Z

Mogadishu Saturday 23 January 2010 SMC

The African Union (AU) should improve its strategies for civilian protection and accountability in its efforts to end ongoing crises on the continent, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to AU heads of states. The AU will hold a Summit meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from January 25 to February 4, 2010.
"African heads of state declared 2010 the 'Year of Peace and Security in Africa' for compelling reasons," said Aloys Habimana, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "Now they need to act, by coming up with long-term solutions for armed conflicts and stronger measures to protect civilians and ensure justice for victims of atrocities."
Human Rights Watch highlighted the worsening human rights crises in Sudan and Somalia and urged African leaders to take concrete steps to advance both civilian protection and accountability for victims of serious human rights violations throughout Africa.
In Sudan, with general elections scheduled for April, the situation is volatile. As Human Rights Watch has extensively documented, the government in Khartoum has maintained a climate of fear and oppression. In Southern Sudan, increasing violence has heightened the risk of attacks on civilians in the absence of adequate protection from the southern government or the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). Under the circumstances, Human Rights Watch said, it is unlikely the elections will be free, fair, and transparent, as required by the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.
"The African Union should promptly deploy a robust election observer team across Sudan, including in Darfur, and ensure that regional standards for observing and reporting on the elections are strictly met," Habimana said. "African leaders should also press the two peacekeeping forces in Sudan to give top priority to protecting civilians, a crucial aspect of their mandates."
Human Rights Watch said that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is running for re-election, should instead be in The Hague facing trial before the International Criminal Court, where he is wanted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In Somalia, the situation continues to worsen, despite important efforts by the African Union to tackle massive security problems. Thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded since fighting between a weak interim government and insurgent forces trying to control the country began in 2007. Mogadishu remains a war zone, with an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis throughout the country. In parts of southern Somalia controlled by the militant group Al Shabaab, women routinely endure human rights violations linked to its harsh enforcement of Shari'a.
Human Rights Watch also called on African leaders to ensure that all allegations of indiscriminate bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods of Mogadishu - including by troops from the AU Mission in Somalia - are promptly, transparently, and impartially investigated by independent experts operating under the mandate of the AU's Peace and Security Council. The AU should take the first step in requesting a UN Commission of Inquiry, which could contribute to accountability for abuses and stability in the region.
"The African Union has an important role to play in improving the situation in Somalia," Habimana said. "But as impunity is a key catalyst for the abuses committed there, it's crucial that African leaders focus more on accountability and the human rights consequences of the conflict."
Human Rights Watch called on African leaders to increase their attention to justice for victims of serious crimes, referring in particular to African Union discussion of a proposal to extend the power of the UN Security Council to suspend International Criminal Court activities under article 16 of the Rome Statute to the UN General Assembly. This should be avoided because it would substantially increase the risks of political interference in the court's work, Human Rights Watch said. The AU should also focus on making the African Court on Human and People's Rights a more robust institution.
"The AU has a tremendous opportunity to further the cause of justice on the African continent," Habimana said. "Only by taking steps to ensure accountability for human rights violations can African states contribute effectively to justice, lasting peace, and long-term stability."

Source: Human Rights Watch (HRW)

Somaliweyn Media Center

My experience at the deadly Hotel Shamo bombing

2010-01-25T05:59:00.003Z

Mohamed Olad Hassan, (look the Photo) a reporter for the BBC and The Associated Press, and chairman of the Somali Foreign Correspondents Association, recounts his experience covering a deadly ceremony in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Olad narrowly escaped death after a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people on December 3 at the graduation ceremony at Hotel Shamo. Three journalists were killed in the attack...
It was a Thursday morning, December 3. As usual, I got ready for my work as a journalist. I had an invitation that was given to me by Mohamed Zobe, one of the organizers of what was supposed to be a joyful graduation ceremony.
I and my colleague Ayaanle Husein Abdi, a reporter for the BBC Somali service, drove from my office toward the hotel, which is about 550 yards (500 meters) from my office. We were welcomed by jubilant students, whom we knew by face at the main gate of Hotel Shamo, where their Benadir University graduation ceremony was due to start.
There were dozens of armed body guards outside the hotel; they were apparently accompanying government ministers invited to the ceremony. Nobody checked us. There were only two men sitting in front of the hotel’s meeting hall. They looked at our invitation and allowed us to pass. Everyone assumed this would be a peaceful ceremony.
We sat in two empty seats in the second row of seats where ministers, doctors, and other dignitaries were sitting. There were hundreds of people in the meeting hall. The students were all dressed in colorful uniforms for their graduation. The hall had been brightly decorated, and there was a feeling of excitement—such ceremonies rarely happen in Mogadishu. With the conflict raging throughout the capital, the chance to attain academic credentials are limited. This ceremony, perhaps, symbolized a trace of hope: People’s lives could continue despite the shelling.
Proud parents beamed at their graduating loved ones, who were also sitting in the hall. Journalists, particularly the cameramen, were right in the front for a good view. People were making speeches, and we were taking notes, as usual.
Then all this brightness turned to darkness.
All I remember is being covered in dust. Some debris apparently from the roof of the hall hit me and there was no light anywhere. I looked across and the young guy sitting next to me was dead. The seat he had been sitting on was mine. We had changed positions for one moment, when I had left momentarily to move my recorder nearer to the speakers. That’s when the explosion occurred. It was my luck not to be sitting in that chair.

I recalled later that the dead man was a journalist, Mohamed Amin, at right, a reporter for Radio Shabelle, a local FM Station in Mogadishu. I had to jump over him to get out. I tried to get over the table where the ministers had been sitting. There were dead bodies right in front of my eyes. I had to step over their bodies too.
People were screaming the same question over and over: "Is it a bomb? Is it a bomb?" I went through the door that the ministers had come through when they entered the hall and I hid in a small room. It was a very dirty, unused toilet but already three other people, including a Reuters reporter, Abdi Guled, were there with me.

The survivors who could move immediately ran out of the hall because people thought a mortar had hit and that there could be another one. We had no idea what had happened. But I didn’t hear any more explosions and I had to go back into the hall to get out.
It was a shocking, terrible scene. There was blood splattered everywhere. I was really in disbelief, in shock. I have never seen so many people killed at the same time. All these bodies were there, right in front of my eyes, including two journalists.
I looked at the roof to see if there had been some kind of rocket attack but the roof was intact. So I knew something had exploded in the hall—either a suicide attack or a bomb or a mine. I went outside and the street was filled with people trying to rescue their friends and family.
No one knew who had been killed and who had survived.
I could see my colleagues—journalists I had been talking to just moments before—lying on the ground covered in blood. Hassan Zubeyr, at left, a cameraman for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV and Abdulkhafar Abdulkadir, a freelance photographer who had only arrived five minutes before the explosion, were lying on their stomachs in a pool of blood. Abdulkadir died of his injuries in the afternoon.
One other colleague, Omar Faruq, a Reuters photographer, was right in front of me on his stomach. I couldn't tell whether he was alive or dead, but later noticed he had his cheek bone broken. Another colleague, Abdulkadir Omar, a reporter for Universal TV was being carried out as locals began to arrive and help out. He had his hand on his bleeding forehead.
It was a terrible few minutes. It's still impossible to understand how everything turned from a colorful celebration to grief within seconds.
During the rescue operation at the hotel, people concentrated on the dignitaries while injured journalists were left bleeding for some time. It helped us realize that we needed to create our own support, so we started the Somali Foreign Correspondents Association. We formed this union to establish a permanent office that will help journalists in times of emergencies. Our dream is to have at least one ambulance at our disposal to transport wounded colleagues to hospitals and to arrange evacuations if needed.
(Reporting from Mogadishu)

SOMALIA: Hospital desperate for specialists

2010-01-24T13:52:00.000Z

MOGADISHU, 21 January 2010 (IRIN) - As conflict continues in Somalia, the main hospital in Mogadishu, the capital, lacks orthopedic specialists to handle the increasing number of patients with broken limbs, a doctor has said.

"Currently, the patients with the most serious injuries are mostly young; 30 of them require specialized treatment that is not available in the country," Mohamed Yusuf, the director-general of Madina Hospital, told IRIN. "Since 2009, we have seen hundreds of patients requiring orthopedic treatment but very few of them can afford specialized treatment; 98 percent of the patients are too poor."

Mogadishu has borne the brunt of the fighting in Somalia, which pits an opposition Islamist group against government troops. The country has been conflict-ridden since 1991 when President Siad Barre was ousted. Although a transitional government is in place, fighting continues in Mogadishu as well as in southern and central parts of the country.

Yusuf said 95 percent of the patients treated in Madina were victims of gunshots and artillery shelling. Of these, he said, 45 percent have limb injuries; 9 percent have chest wounds, 8 percent head injuries and 8 percent stomach injuries.

"We treat and sometimes operate on those with stomach wounds but injuries of the legs are problematic to treat here because we don't have an experienced orthopedic doctor to reconstruct broken bones," Yusuf said. "The most difficult cases involve injuries where a bullet hit the bone, causing fragmentation. Reconstruction using special metal is required but at the moment we do not have a doctor specializing in this sector in the country."

Yusuf said the International Committee of the Red Cross was the main agency supporting Madina and supplying medicine but the availability of specialist doctors remained a challenge: "The only foreign doctors here are from Qatar, working in the maternity sector."

At the same time, Yusuf said the number of injured children was increasing. Most of them, he said, were victims of mortar shelling and since there was no orthopedic expertise available locally, many ended up becoming disabled.

Habiba Ahmed, 41, mother of a nine-year-old boy with spinal injuries, told IRIN: "My child has been suffering for almost four months now, parts of his bones are missing; he was injured when a mortar hit our home. I have come to Madina Hospital for him to be treated but I am told he requires treatment outside the country, which I cannot afford. My child remains disabled."

A report released by Amnesty International on 21 January says indiscriminate attacks in 2009 by all parties to the armed conflict resulted in thousands of civilians killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

The UN estimates that at least 1.5 million Somalis are internally displaced while 3.7 million require humanitarian aid.

Source: IRIN

Stop supplying Somalia with arms: Amnesty

2010-01-24T13:49:00.002Z

International donors should end weapons and other military supplies to Somalia's embattled government as lack of safeguards risks worsening the violence and human suffering, Amnesty International said.

The London-based rights group voiced concern that war-wracked Somalia's government was receiving weapons while “issues of vetting, accountability, arms management and respect for human rights by Somalia's police and armed forces remain largely unresolved,” according to its report.

“Without adequate safeguards, arms transfers may threaten the human rights and worsen the humanitarian situation of Somali civilians,” said the report: "Somalia: International Military and Policing Should be Reviewed."

The watchdog said until safeguards are in place “the international community should end all supplies of weapons, military and security equipment and financial assistance” to the transitional federal government.

It also called for the proper enforcement of a 1992 arms embargo on the Horn of Africa state.

Despite international backing, the Somali government has largely remained ineffective in the face of relentless attacks by Islamist rebels who have pared its control of the capital Mogadishu to just a few streets.

It also has no control of large swathes of the country, much of which is in the hands of the radical Islamist Shebab fighters, who together with the more political Hezb al-Islam militants have vowed to topple it.

Alliance-shifting fighters also pose the risk of arms ending up in the hands of the extremists, exacerbating Somalia's conflict which erupted in 1991 with the ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre.

“Unless effectively regulated and monitored, such material assistance could be used in committing serious violations of international humanitarian law,” warned the rights group.

Source: AFP

UNHCR: already 63,000 Somalis displaced in 2010

2010-01-20T06:59:00.000Z

GENEVA -- The U.N. refugee agency says an estimated 63,000 Somalis have been chased from their homes since Jan 1. because of intense fighting in the country.
UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming says "fighting in central areas of Somalia rages on," continuing to uproot communities and leave people living in deplorable conditions outside of cities.
Fleming said Wednesday that 14,000 people were displaced over the last two weeks in the capital, Mogadishu.
She said fresh battles in central Somalia's Belet Weyne and Galgaduud areas have left thousands more homeless.
Somalia has one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with 1.5 people displaced inside the country and 560,000 registered as refugees in neighboring countries.

Source AP

Forgotten Diaries small grant final Report for peace brigade SMALL GRANT project.

2009-09-21T15:45:00.001+01:00

Last week was the final week to undertake the remaining components of the FD small grant community action project entitled “Teenage peace brigade” to promote peace building, non violence conflict resolution and tolerance in local schools and the community.

The whole activities were carried out effectively with the full commitment of project team, partner organizations and newly recruited activist.

Three discussion forums in three schools and two public debates in the city administration HALL were held here in bahir dar city where we have recruited and trained children at schools to mobilize their peers and the community for peace building and non violence conflict resolution initiatives.

Those public debates were attended by students, parents and more of local residents consisted from all walks of life and the main objective of organizing these events was to introduce Forgotten Diaries project, promote teenage peace brigade community action project and to mobilize the community for the implantation of the newly introduced techniques and tools of the Forgotten diary small grant project.

Both discussion forums and public debate were co-chaired by club leaders and school administrators

Most participants of the public debate supported and appreciated the introduction of non violence conflict resolution and peace building techniques in the community at large and in schools in specific but some of attendants argued that it was not the right time to introduce these techniques to the schools or to the community because our priority issue isn’t conflict but are gender based violence, poverty and school drop. The debates continued for about 90 minutes and the outcomes of the panel discussion were similar to that of the events organized two weeks ago in the rest three schools while the outcomes of the public debates were the following

Establishment of student-teachers- parents committee (STPC) to undertake activities in the future
Prepared plan of action to arrange periodical meetings and gatherings in schools and our of schools.

Even after the completion of the project club leaders will mobilize their peers in their respective Schools and will organizes awareness raising campaigns and outreach programs.

The final report will be sent to you soon with relevant receipts of expenses made to undertake activities of the project, photos captured at events and stories of participants.

Prepared by Amare Abebaw
Project coordinator bahir-dar, Ethiopia

Progress report three on “Teenage peace brigade” project

2009-09-14T07:27:00.001+01:00

By Amare Abebew project coordinator

Having received the second installment of the project from project coordinators other components of the project were arranged according to the pre determined schedule.

After the successful completion of our training on peace building, conflict resolution and leadership t selected students, the trainees were expected to mobilize their peer and the school community to introduce on peace building and conflict resolution techniques in their community, among the effective strategies we wanted to use to introduce these techniques were undertaking discussion forums and public debates in schools to initiate discussion in the school community about the issues.

Among the selected six schools Three schools were the first to start this outreach program in the project area, recruiting students in schools was started earlier this month and some of newly recruited students attended our discussion forums in their schools.

Speech of the principals of the schools were the opening of each discussion forums, the maximum capacity each discussion forum can host is predetermined to be 30 and invitation to participants of these forums was made according to that and to make sure more diverse community members attended the forums we invited some families of students, government officials, teachers and students of the schools, the three discussion forums were held in three schools at the same time and our club leaders showed their commitment by effectively coordinating these discussion forums.

Topics of the discussion forums were

Cause of conflicts in our schools

Consequences of conflicts in our schools

How can we work together to resolve these conflicts peacefully

How to prevent conflicts from being occurred

And the duration of the discussion forums was around 2 hours

The conclusion and consensuses reached at the end of the forums were valuable to work more consistently in schools and by this week the rest three schools will organize their discussion forums in their schools.

Somaliland: Street children "becoming the new gangsters"

2009-09-11T15:44:00.001+01:00

The number of street children in Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland, is on the rise as more Ethiopian children cross the border in search of a better life.The immigrant children are adding to the burden of local street children, most of whom have been forced on to the streets by drought and insecurity within Somaliland and further south, in Somalia.“You can see old women accompanying about 20 children, of different ages, crossing the border into Somaliland from Ethiopia. These women may be their grandmothers, aunts or mothers,” Khadar Nour, chairman of the Hargeisa Child Protection Network (HCPN), told IRIN. "The children, who are mainly from the Oromo [region of Ethiopia], beg in the streets of Hargeisa with their mothers," Nour said. Some work as shoe shiners, sending their earnings to relatives in Ethiopia.Hargeisa is also a popular transit point for those seeking to travel further. “About 100 to 200 immigrant children cross the border from Ethiopia into Somaliland [annually] on their way to [the self-declared autonomous region of] Puntland, or to Yemen,” he said.Poverty and family break-ups have also fuelled the rise in numbers. There are about 3,000 children, most of them boys between five and 18, living on Hargeisa's streets.Crime threatWith the rising numbers, officials are concerned about an upsurge in crime. “They [the street children] are becoming a threat to the town's stability,” said Nour.“When they grow up, they still find themselves living in difficult conditions; it is for this reason that they grab mobile phones."Consequently, a number of the children are now in conflict with the law. In August, Nour said, a 16-year-old was sentenced to death in a Berbera regional court after being found guilty of murder. "The grown-up street children have become the new gangsters," Mohamed Ismail Hirsi, Hargeisa's Central Police Station commander, told IRIN."In the last 72 hours, we have arrested more than 30 street children who have committed crimes such as stealing mobile phones in different parts of the town."

In the past two years, some 5,000 knives and other weapons, which are commonly used in robberies, have been recovered from the street children, prompting calls for more focused interventions."People say good words in workshops, but few interventions for street children have been [implemented]," said Nour of HCPN, which recently started providing food and education support for the children.Once arrested, the children are charged as adults because a 2008 juvenile justice law has yet to be implemented.Glue sniffingThe children living rough are turning to drugs. "I use glue because when first I came to the streets I saw my friends sniffing it," Ahmed Omar, 12, told IRIN. "Whenever I use it, I am able to survive a difficult situation."The lack of a family support system also means more children may end up on the streets, as Abdi-Qani Ahmed’s experience illustrates. "When my mother and father divorced, there was no one left to take care of me," Ahmed, 11, said. "I used to get my food from restaurants in Hargeisa where I fed on leftovers.”During Ramadan, however, few if any restaurants are open. "I have to wait to see if someone gives me something to eat or not," he said.Living on the streets puts the children at risk of abuse from other street children as well as strangers. For protection, the children often seek refuge outside the police station at night.

Training on peace building, conflict resolution and club management was given to forgotten dairies peace brigade leaders in Ethiopia

2009-08-15T16:39:00.000+01:00

Last week we have successfully delivered training on peace building, conflict resolution and club management to forgotten diaries peace brigade leaders here in bahir dar city, Ethiopia located on 560 far from our capital city Addis Ababa thanks to the small grant we I have been awarded from forgotten diaries.

The training was given by expert who has experience in providing training and event organizing more over volunteers of youth association and Green Ethiopia took important part to make sure that we delivered the training successfully.

30 selected students from 6 elementary and junior schools attended this Training and 40 % of the participants were girls, to minimize cost we used the meeting hall of one school to undertake the training, and it was given for 6 days from august 2-8, 2009.

At the program’s conclusion, participants were able to

Ø Identify factors that create conflicts

Ø Understand four basic behavioral styles and know how to adjust to each for conflict prevention

Ø Appreciate how cultural and background diversity affect interpretations of situations.

Ø Exercise listening skills taught in the program to improve the chances for open communication.

Ø Evaluate conflicts to determine if they can be resolved.

Ø Implement a procedure to resolve problems that have viable solutions.

Ø Seek third-party facilitators when solutions are not readily available.

Ø Identify possible negotiation outcomes.

Ø List the eight steps of the negotiation process.

Ø Understand and identify different behavioral styles and adapt as necessary.

Ø Apply techniques for successful negotiation by successfully answering case studies and participating in practice cases.

Ø Recognize dirty tricks and tactics.

Ø Demonstrate the use of successful concession making.

Ø Develop key management skills, including change management, time management, critical thinking, delegation, problem solving, presentation strategies, communications, strategic planning, and feedback techniques.

Ø Build trust with their peers

Photo: Trainees during group work

The methods of the training were lectures, group discussions, exercises and plenary session and much time was given to participants to allow them share their taught and fillings.

At the end of the training participants were grouped according to their schools where they come from and they scheduled programs to undertake public debates and discussion forums in their respective schools in addition to establishing peace brigade club in their compounds.

each school has 5 delegates and the delegates were gathered to select their chair person, vice chair person, treasurer and 2 school peace brigades out of 6 are going to be led by girls for the for a period of one year from now on, the selection of leaders was made in democratic and transparent way this is one of the means we have to show trainees that when they want to do something it should be democratic and the did it well.

We interviewed some of the participants at the end of the training whether their expectation about the training were met and they responded that they were able to know tools and techniques of peace building, club management and leadership and they hope that they will get technical and financial supports needed to launch those proposed initiative in their schools.

the next step of this project is organizing public debates and discussion forums in these schools in addition to recruiting members in the school and out of school communities for this purpose two important things will be done soon to properly manage these events the first thing is getting the next payment from Forgotten diaries since we utilized the payment of the project according to the plan and allocating volunteers of youth association and Green Ethiopia to assist the newly appointed peace brigade leaders in arranging the events.

Your comments are well come

Prepared by Amare Abebaw

Clinton threatens Eritrea action

2009-08-06T20:01:00.002+01:00

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the US will "take action" against Eritrea if it does not stop supporting militants in Somalia.

She said after talks with Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that Eritrea's actions were "unacceptable".
She also said the US would expand support for Somalia's unity government.
Eritrea denies supporting Somalia's al-Shabab militants, who are trying to overthrow Somalia's government.
Al-Shabab is growing in strength and 250,000 Somalis have fled their homes in fighting between militants and government forces over the past three months.

Wreath-laying

Mrs Clinton was holding the talks with the UN-backed Somali leader, a moderate Islamist, on the second day of her African tour.
At a joint news conference with him after the meeting, she said: "It is long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support of al-Shabab and to start being a productive rather than a destabilising neighbour.
"We are making it very clear that their actions are unacceptable. We intend to take action if they do not cease."
She added: "There is also no doubt that al-Shabab wants to obtain control of Somalia to use it as a base from which to influence and even infiltrate surrounding countries and launch attacks against countries far and near."
Mrs Clinton said if al-Shabab obtained a haven in Somalia "it would be a threat to the United States".
The US has ruled out sending its forces to fight insurgents in Somalia.
But the AFP news agency quoted a state department official as saying on Thursday that the US supply of arms and ammunition to Somalia would be doubled from 40 tonnes to 80.
Eritrean officials have repeatedly denied supporting al-Shabab, calling the allegations a "fabrication" of US intelligence.
Several Somali Islamist groups operated from Eritrea after being ousted from the capital, Mogadishu, when Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in 2006.
Before the talks on Thursday, Mrs Clinton honoured the victims of the August 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in a wreath-laying ceremony in Nairobi.
More than 220 people were killed and 5,000 injured in the first major attack by al-Qaeda on US targets.
AP news agency quoted her as saying that the embassy site was a reminder of "the continuing threat of terrorism, which respects no boundaries, no race, ethnicity or religion, but is aimed at disrupting and denying the opportunity of people to make their own decisions and to lead their own lives".
There are reports that al-Shabab - the Somali Islamist group which favours strict Islamic law and is accused of links to al-Qaeda - is gaining support from militants around the world.
Earlier this week, police in Australia arrested several men, charging them with planning suicide attacks on a base in Sydney and saying they were linked to al-Shabab.
The BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says President Ahmed needs all the support he can get. Pro-government forces are only in control of a small section of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Our correspondent points out it is far too dangerous for the American secretary of state to venture into Somalia, as the fighting continues.
Kenya violence
Somalia's foreign minister told the BBC's Network Africa programme that Washington's support for his government was a "golden opportunity".
"It is absolutely clear that the people of Somalia are tired... sick and tired of war, sick and tired of chaos," he said.
The US admits it has supplied pro-government forces in Somalia with over 40 tonnes of weapons and ammunition this year, and another delivery of weapons is predicted, says our correspondent.
But there are growing fears that the Horn of Africa country - which has been without an effective central government since 1991 - risks becoming a haven for terrorists.
On Wednesday, Mrs Clinton held talks in Nairobi with Kenya's president and prime minister.
America's top diplomat described as "disappointing" Kenya's failure to investigate a bout of violence that left at least 1,300 people dead after the disputed December 2007 presidential election.
Addressing African leaders at Wednesday's economic summit, Mrs Clinton said the continent had "enormous potential for progress".
But she stressed that harnessing that potential would require democracy and good governance.
During her 11-day trip Mrs Clinton will also visit South Africa, Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cape Verde.

Australia detains terror suspects

2009-08-05T18:22:00.001+01:00

Australian police have arrested four people in the city of Melbourne after uncovering what they say was a plot to launch a suicide attack.

The group was planning to carry out the attack on an army base, police said.
More than 400 officers were involved in searching 19 properties across the city before dawn on Tuesday.
The suspects are Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese descent; one man, aged 25, has been charged with conspiring to plan a terrorist act.
Nayaf El Sayed, from the Glenroy district of Melbourne, was remanded in custody until 26 October.
He did not enter a plea or apply for bail, and refused to stand for the magistrate in court.
His lawyer told the hearing: "He believes he should not stand for any man except God."
Police were granted extra time to question three others - Saney Aweys, Yacqub Khayre and Abdirahman Ahmed.
A fifth man, who had been detained earlier, was also being questioned about the alleged plot.
'Sobering'
"Police believe members of a Melbourne-based group have been undertaking planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia and [are] allegedly involved in hostilities in Somalia," a police statement said.
"The men's intention was to actually go into the army barracks and to kill as many soldiers as they could before they themselves were killed," said Tony Negus, acting chief commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.
Holsworthy Barracks on the outskirts of Sydney was one of the planned targets, according to police.
The attack would have been the most serious terrorist attack on Australian soil, Mr Negus added.
"Members of the group have been actively seeking a fatwa or religious ruling to justify a terror attack on Australia," he said.
Prosecutors told the court they had evidence some of the men had taken part in training and fighting in Somalia.
They also said there were phone conversations, text messages and surveillance footage, including footage of one of the suspects outside the Holsworthy army base, linking the suspects to an alleged attack.
The court heard the men planned to seek a fatwa, or religious ruling, to support an attack on the Holsworthy army base.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: "The sobering element of today's development is the reminder to all Australians that the threat of terrorism is alive and well, and this requires continued vigilance on the part of our security authorities."
The country's security level is unchanged at medium, where it has been since 2003.
The police said the raids followed a seven-month operation involving several state and federal agencies.
Police believe those arrested are linked to the Somali-based al-Shabab group, which seeks to overthrow the weak UN-backed Somali government and is believed to have links to al-Qaeda.

Hillary Clinton to pledge US support for Somalia again al-Shabaab terrorists

2009-08-05T18:11:00.002+01:00

The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has arrived in east Africa to pledge America's help in confronting the growing international threat posed by Islamist terrorists in Somalia

Her visit to Kenya, where she is due to meet Somalia's embattled president, began as Australia was still reeling from the arrest of four men who had allegedly plotted a Mumbai-style assault on an army barracks in Sydney and have links to the al-Shabaab terrorist group based in Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab, which is inspired by al-Qaeda, has long threatened to export its jihadist campaign outside the borders of the failed state. Western intelligence officials have been growing increasingly concerned about its potential to strike beyond the Horn of Africa.
The Daily Telegraph also reported this week that the US Secret Service had investigated a plot linked to al-Shabaab that had targeted President Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony in Washington in January.
Mrs Clinton is expected to offer Somalia increased US support to boost the efforts of its president, Sheikh Sharif, to crush the widening al-Shabaab insurgency which, like the president, is based in Mogadishu.
In June, Washington shipped 40 tons of weapons and ammunition to Mr Sharif's government.
The US state department considers his fledgling government as a key ally in combating the group, which now controls most of Somalia.
"People have always been somewhat leery about making al-Shabaab out to be an organisation capable of international terrorism," said EJ Hogendoorn, the Horn of Africa specialist at the International Crisis Group in Nairobi.
"But they've made pretty provocative statements about their willingness to take jihad to other countries, and what we have seen in Australia is clearly a very worrying development."
This makes Mrs Clinton's meeting on Thursday with Mr Sharif - the highest level contact by a US official with Somalia's moderate Islamist government - all the more important.
Just three years ago, Mr Sharif was co-chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group which brought brief stability to Somalia but was suspected by Washington of harbouring al-Qaeda members.
Now, in the face of the al-Shabaab onslaught, the president offers "the best possible chance for restoring stability to southern Somalia", said Johnnie Carson, Washington's assistant secretary of state for African affairs, ahead of Mrs Clinton's visit.
"We think that the problems in southern Somalia have started to bleed regionally and internationally," he said, as he flagged US readiness to provide "additional assistance" to Mr Sharif's administration.
"We think that the support for Sheikh Sharif and his government offers an opportunity to be able to restore some stability, fight against the Somali Islamic extremists of al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the two groups that are working against them."
It is unclear what help could be on the table during Thursday's meeting, which will be held on the sidelines of a US-Africa trade conference in Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
Mr Sharif's authority extends barely half a dozen blocks from the presidential palace in his ruined capital, Mogadishu, and that is largely enforced by a beleaguered force of African Union peacekeepers. Al-Shabaab controls almost all of the rest of southern and central Somalia.
There are grave concerns that US arms shipments will bolster al-Shabaab's claim of foreign interference in Somalia, a key plank in its call for foreign fighters to join its jihad.
"It is an impossibly delicate line that they have to tread," said a Western diplomat in Nairobi.
"Sharif clearly needs more muscle to combat al-Shabaab, but if it's the US which provides that, it makes al-Shabaab stronger. It's a vicious and potentially even more deadly circle."
More than 18,000 people have died and up to 930,000 now rely on international food aid since fighting between al-Shabaab and Mr Sharif's transitional federal government erupted last year.

\

Teenage peace brigade project weekly progress

2009-08-01T15:08:00.002+01:00

Dear All: hope my email finds you in a good health and spirit

Apologies for being too late to update you about my Teenage peace brigade project, on those days when I was trying to start the project, some conditions forced me to travel to the capital city Addis Ababa for visa and then to Amsterdam, the Netherlands for training again one more time I would like to ask apologies both from the coordinators and participants. Accepted? Let me continue…….

Before informing you what we have done this week, let me brief you about Teenage peace brigade project, since forgotten diaries project is helping us to transform conflicts in to peace and I have a strong belief that this initiative should be applied at community/grass root levels then I decided to introduce peaceful conflict resolution tools and techniques to children and teenage in my community. Sp that they can mobilize their peers, the school communities and the society as a whole.

To introduce these tools and techniques we will establish peace brigades at 6 schools and training will be given to nominated leaders of these brigades then to reach, the school community, partner organizations and the society at large; public debates and discussion forums will be organized, we have identified partner organizations that can work with us to delver this project effectively.

Scaling up best learning of this project is the main thing we hope to achieve in addition to making this initiative successful even after the end of the project implementation period.

Thanks to Youth Action for Change and the funding agency, we launched my project this week the first thing I did was establishing a steering committee that can control the over all activities of the project, members of the committee were represented from Amhare youth Association, Green and Wealthy Ethiopia, schools selected for the project and local government representatives, they are five in number. The reason I prefer to establish this committee was to show transparency and share responsibility in the community and to avoid any possible interruption of the project if I am not available in the future by any means.

The committee selected 30 of which 20 are children and the rest 10 are teenage to take part in the training to be held for 6 days which will start by the coming Monday, each school represented 5 students 40 % of trainees are girls to ensure gender balance.

The training will be given by an experienced expert and it will cover major topics such as peace building, conflict resolution and club management and methodologies are lecture, group work, exercise and plenary session.

Glad to read your comments

Amare Abebaw, Ethiopia

'Fighter influx' for Somali group

2009-07-04T07:40:00.000+01:00

An Islamist commander in Somalia has told the BBC there has been an influx of fighters from overseas joining their battle against the interim government.
The al-Shabab militant leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said several hundred foreigners had joined their militia, many from Pakistan.
Meanwhile, at least 30 people have been killed in fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, over the past three days.
Africa Union leaders meeting in Libya are due to discuss Somalia later.
There have been calls for the AU to boost its force of some 4,000 peacekeepers based in Mogadishu.
The BBC's Andrew Harding, in Buale in the south, says an al-Shabab commander confirmed foreign fighters were among his ranks.
The radical al-Shabab Islamists, who are accused of links to al-Qaeda, already control much of the south of the country.

Militant alliance
Earlier this week government forces displayed what they said were the bodies of some al-Shabab foreign fighters.
But the insurgents denied that any foreigners had been killed.
Fierce fighting between government forces and militants around Mogadishu continued on Friday for a third day, leaving 30 people dead and 70 wounded.
The fighting started late Wednesday and has continued in residential areas north of the city, witnesses told the BBC
Each side blamed the other for starting the violence.
"We have been attacked and we are defending ourselves and our legal government," said military spokesman Farhan Asanyo on Thursday.
Muse Abdi Arale, of the Hisbul Islam group which fights alongside al-Shabab, said government soldiers attacked them and in response they pushed them back and have taken new areas.
Since 7 May, an alliance of militant Islamist hardliners has been locked in ferocious battles with pro-government forces in Mogadishu.
More than 165,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

Somalia minister killed by bomb

2009-06-21T06:36:00.001+01:00

Somalia's Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden has been killed in a suicide car bomb attack north of the capital Mogadishu, witnesses and officials say.
Somali diplomats were also reportedly among at least 10 people killed in the blast at a hotel in Beledweyne.
Somalia's president blamed al-Shabab - accused of links to al-Qaeda - which later claimed the attack.
Al-Shabab is among militants who have been trying to topple the fragile UN-backed government for three years.
On Wednesday, at least 10 people died when a mortar hit a Mogadishu mosque. The city's police chief was killed in a separate attack.
'Invaded by terrorists'
In Thursday's blast, witnesses said a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the Medina Hotel in Beledweyne, some 400km (249 miles) north of Mogadishu.
Most of the victims were burnt beyond recognition after the explosion, a local medic was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
Abdulkarim Ibrahim Lakanyo, a former Somali ambassador to Ethiopia, was reportedly among those killed in the blast.
Mr Aden had recently moved to Beledweyne, a town close to the Ethiopian border, in an effort to stop Islamist insurgents gaining more ground in Somalia, the BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says.
Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told a news conference in Mogadishu: "As you see this country was invaded by terrorists who do not allow for the existence of the Somali national flag, its sovereignty and any peace to this country.
"This group is hiding under the cloth of Islam. You know that a lot of foreigners are pouring into the country day by day," he added, in an apparent reference to Islamist fighters from overseas he has previously warned are entering Somalia to join the insurgents.
Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme the transitional federal government was still in control but urged the international community to help "before it is too late".
The failed Horn of Africa state has not had an effective national government since 1991 and some four million people - one-third of the population - need food aid, aid agencies say.
Pro-government forces have been locked in ferocious battles with radical Islamist guerrillas in Mogadishu since the second week of May.
The UN refugee agency's representative to Somalia, Guillermo Bettocchi, said on Wednesday the recent bout of bloodletting in the country was the "worst ever" in nearly two decades of chaos.
But Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN special representative for Somalia, denied on Thursday that the conflict was getting worse.
"The president and prime minister have been put in place in January and February. It is not even six months, so you will not have total peace after two decades of violence overnight," he told Focus on Africa.
"These people [Islamist guerrillas] tried around 7 May to take power by force; they have not been able to do it. That they have resorted to suicide bombs or killing, there is nothing any country can do against these kind of people, but this is different from taking power."
President Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, took office in January but even his introduction of Sharia law to the strongly Muslim country has not appeased the guerrillas.

Ethiopia rejects Somali request

2009-06-21T06:02:00.000+01:00

Ethiopia has refused a request by Somalia for military support to fight insurgents, saying such an intervention would need an international mandate.
The Somali authorities have been battling Islamist insurgents who control much of the country.
The speaker of Somalia's parliament had earlier urged neighbouring countries to send troops within 24 hours.
Ethiopian troops helped topple an Islamist movement in Somalia in 2006, but were withdrawn earlier this year.
On Saturday Somali parliamentary Speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur urged neighbouring Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen to intervene as fierce fighting continued for a second day in the capital Mogadishu.
But Ethiopian government spokesman Bereket Simon said that an international mandate was needed for such an intervention.
He added that the international community, not just Somalia's neighbours, should assist its transitional government.
Assassinations
Somalia has been without an effective government since 1991. Its UN-backed transitional government controls only parts of Mogadishu, but little of the rest of the country.
There are some 4,300 African Union troops deployed in Mogadishu, but they lack any mandate to pursue the insurgents.
Pro-government forces have been fighting radical Islamist guerrillas in the capital since 7 May.
On Friday, gunmen killed Mohamed Hussein Addow, an MP who represented the Karan district where fighting has been particularly intense in recent days.
It was the third killing of a high-profile public figure in as many days.
Somalia's security minister - an outspoken critic of the militant Islamist group al-Shabab - was killed in a suicide attack in the northern town of Beledweyne, and Mogadishu's police commander was also killed this week.
Militant groups including al-Shabab, which is accused of links to al-Qaeda, have been trying to topple Somalia's government for three years.
Some four million people in Somalia - or about one-third of the population - need food aid, according to aid agencies.

Somali journalist: 'I saw my boss shot dead'

2009-06-21T05:50:00.001+01:00

Somali journalist Ahmed-Tajir Omar Hashi was walking in Mogadishu's Bakara market with his boss, the head of one of the country's leading broadcasters, Radio Shabelle, recently when he heard the crack of gunfire.
"I was hit in the left hand and the bullet passed into my left side above the kidney. It felt as if I was hit with a little stone. I did not know what it was because I had never been shot before," says Mr Hashi who is recovering from his injuries in hospital.
"When I looked back, I saw Muktar Mohamed Hirabe lying on the ground and a man with a hand-gun standing above him. Then, I released that I was in trouble and ran for my life.
Mr Hirabe became the fifth journalist to be killed this year in Somalia, which has become one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists to work.
Anonymous threats
"I touched my left side which was wet with blood. I felt a twinge in my stomach, probably where the bullet came out and when I ran my hand over it, one of my fingers went into the bullet hole," says Mr Hashi.
"I was running fast but I glanced back and I saw the young gunman shooting my colleague in the head again. He then fired a shot in my direction. I went into a building to escape."
Many journalists have received anonymous phone calls from people asking them to massage facts to work for what they say is "the defence of the country".
Sources told the BBC that in the week he was killed, Mr Hirabe also received these calls.
He was asked to give money to help what was described as the work of the "mujahideen" (holy warriors) in Somalia.
He refused and contacted leaders from the hardline Islamist group al-Shabab to check with them whether their people had made the threats.
Al-Shabab asked to see the phone numbers so they could check them out, but before he could do that he was killed in broad daylight in a Mogadishu street controlled by al-Shabab.
To show their respects, most media organisations stopped broadcasting and 14 of the best known Somali journalists said they would stop working until security improved.
They said that threats and assassinations made it impossible for them to work.
The editor of Radio Voice of Peace, Abdu-Aziz Mohamud Guled, said most of the journalists had been murdered in insurgent strongholds and seemed to be operating with impunity.
Holy war
Both main insurgent groups, the Islamic Party and al-Shabab, have denied involvement in the murder of Mr Hirabe, blaming what they call the enemies of the Somali people.
But some question the willingness of the hardline Islamists to catch those responsible for the murder of journalists. The Islamists control Bakara Market where the murder took place and while they seem to be able to catch thieves with relative ease, a murderer has been able to walk away free.
A reliable analyst told the BBC Somali Service that the anonymous callers are accusing journalists of carrying out anti-Islamic work and would be held accountable.
They are demanding that al-Shabab be known as Harakatu al-Shabab al-Mujahideen; which would effectively mean that journalists have to accept that al-Shabab are fighting a holy war for the benefit of all Somali people.
Faced with threats, kidnappings, beatings and even death, many journalists are turning their back on the profession or even fleeing the county.
The Somali government has condemned the latest killings and sent its condolences to the family of the deceased journalist.
Information Minister Farhan Ali said that the government knows that the killings are the work of groups that are against peace in Somalia and there will be a day when they will be held responsible for their actions.

Food insecurity concerns after poor rains in Somaliland

2009-06-11T07:17:00.003+01:00

Livestock deaths have occurred across Somaliland as a result of drought

HARGEISA, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) - Officials in Somalia's self-declared Republic of Somaliland are concerned about food security following poor rains during the March-May planting season, known as the Gu'. Mohamed Muse Awale, chairman of the National Environment Research and Disaster Preparedness Agency (NERAD), said the situation was deteriorating throughout the country as nowhere had experienced reliable rains. "A little rain has been reported in Golis mountains and the west of the country, but even these places dramatically dried up as soon as Xaggaa [summer] winds started; we are coming together with our partners from the Somaliland government and our international partners in the Ministry of Interior to discuss how to handle this problem," Awale said. He added: "We are now collecting information from the remote areas, where NERAD does not have offices, with the collaboration of the Ministry of Interior, which has radio calls in everywhere in the country; after that we will call for help." Unless additional rainfall is experienced in June, there could be crop failure in many parts of Somaliland, officials of the Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU) of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said. Mahdi Geidi Kayad, an FSAU liaison officer in Somaliland, said the 2009 Gu’ rainfall was way below normal in terms of distribution and coverage. "The normal rainfall average is 500-600mm but only 40-60 percent of the normal average has been received so far," Kayad said. "For this reason, it is predicted [that] if additional rains do not fall in June, about 80 percent of crop production failure [will be recorded] in Hargeisa and Awdal Regions.

Livestock deaths The FSAU report also noted that livestock had died due to drought in the region. "Most of the new-born lambs died due to lack of milk or fresh grass to eat; sheep were the hardest hit by the drought, particularly emaciated ewes, while giving birth," the report said. "Their death rate abruptly went extremely high, about 30-45 percent in most areas of Gabi and Sool plateau." Moreover, drought-related livestock diseases increased, FSAU said, adding that carcasses of dead animals were found everywhere, especially in Upper Nugal, Gabi Valley and Sool Plateau. Ahmed Aw Dahir, mayor of Las Anod, the administrative capital of Sool, said: "The rainfall was much below normal; the Haggaa seasonal winds have started. For this reason, we are worried if more rains do not fall soon severe drought may erupt in the region, as well as the surrounding regions. "This will impact badly on the livelihood of both pastoralists and people in the urban centres, who depend on the rural agricultural areas."

No one left to tell the story

2009-06-11T06:58:00.005+01:00

Jaffer Mohamed Kukay, a Somali journalist who is now a refugee in Djibouti (file photo) : Five Somali journalists have been killed and dozens more have left Mogadishu, this year, after receiving death threats

NAIROBI, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) - At least five Somali journalists have been killed and dozens more have left the capital, Mogadishu, this year, after receiving death threats - creating the spectre that some, if not all, independent media may close down due to lack of staff. There are 11 independent radio stations and two TV stations in the city. "We are in a very difficult and dangerous situation. We are being forced to choose between reporting on what is happening and our lives," Hamdi Kadiye, an executive member of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUJOS), told IRIN. The killing on 7 June of the Radio Shabelle director Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe has added to pressure on journalists in the capital. "All we do is cover the story. We don’t side with any group, but the fighting groups want to silence us to make sure no one hears or sees the suffering they are causing," she added. She said many journalists had left because "they no longer felt they could carry out their duties". She admitted that Somalia's story may be lost in the process, but said: "You cannot ask someone to continue when you know their life is in serious danger." Since late 2006, when Ethiopian troops backing the Transitional Federal Government ousted the Union of Islamic Courts, dozens of Somali journalists have been killed, five of them this year alone, or forced into exile due to the ongoing fighting in the capital. Ali Sheikh Yassin, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organisation (EHRO), told IRIN that journalists were in even "more danger now than at any time in the past". He said harassment and intimidation of journalists had increased this year. "We get reports of journalists getting anonymous calls and SMSs [text messages] threatening them."

If this trend of journalists being killed or forced to flee continued, many independent media would be shut down, he added. "Unfortunately, many of the radio stations and even the TV stations will close for lack of staff. There is a real danger that the independent media will be no more," said Yassin. That would be a catastrophe for the Somali people and particularly for the people of Mogadishu, he said, adding that the fighting groups could achieve their aim. "They are keen to keep the world from knowing the crimes being committed and the humanitarian disaster their actions and activities are creating." A civil society activist, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that both sides in the conflict were worried and afraid that the media reports would be used against them "if they are made to appear in court to answer to their actions". He added: "Thousands have been killed or maimed. Hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes. Someone has to eventually take responsibility for that." If journalists left and the independent media ceased to exist, there would be no one to tell the story of those suffering in the camps, in their homes and in hospitals, he said. "They are not only killing and starving the people, now they will make sure no one knows about it."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=84783

fighting for recognition

2009-05-19T15:29:00.003+01:00

18th May is the independence day of Somaliland from Somalia; girls are so colorful and proud to be Somalilanders.

Somaliland Independence Day 18th May: Fashion Day or a Chance to Reflect About Whom We Are and Who Want to Be?Each and every year on the 18th May, we the people of Somaliland remember, we will always remember the mothers and fathers who laid down their lives for peace and progress of this honorable nation. We always remember these fallen heroes and heroines because of their loyal contribution. Today the history of our beloved country is written as a result of their hands, we remember them because our history is written by their toil and misery. We remember them because their hunger to give us equal opportunities is unmatched, we remember because they taught us to change the world with words and not with guns, we remember because we cannot afford to forget. It is my greatest hope that this year’s anniversary (18th May 2009) could be different in that we can remember our duties to continue writing and teaching our history to the young and the frail, so they can take pride in their historical identity as the people of courage and wisdom, because those who fell taught them better. Anniversaries are not supposed to be fashion shows or just happy moments, but a chance to reflect about whom we are and who we want to be. When the 18th May 09 arrives (insha allah), I hope we could all of us remember where we come and where we want to go as the people of Somaliland. When we celebrate we must ask ourselves: “how will history remember us?” will it remember us as fashionable people who gathers to entertain large audience by dancing or just singing with no modest, or as people of duty to a country? Will people in centuries to come speak about our names or they will never know we existed? As the founder of Somaliland Anniversary in Southern Africa, I will commemorate and remember the befallen this year because it is the right thing to do. I believe that when this year’s anniversary comes we all must ask ourselves what we can do for Somaliland. Personally I think we can do more as the people of the Diaspora. I think we can make significant changes to the lives of the many and millions by constantly talking and urging other nations to take cognizance of our strides as the Somaliland people in as far as peace stability is concerned and economic attempts in reconstruction.The theme on the forth coming 18th May, should be CHANGE, I am ardent believer in socio-political and economical change in Somaliland and civic duty and I believe we have the resources to foster change from where we are. We can do more together. I believe Somaliland is fortunate to have us in the Diaspora in order to strengthen foreign relations and support, but to do that we must have common vision.Long Live Somaliland…..Long Live Somaliland.

Samira Hassan

SOMALIA: Al-Shabab's pyrrhic victory?

2009-05-19T15:18:00.002+01:00

Al-Shabab militiamen: Local observers say the militia group has yet to gain popularity among locals

NAIROBI, 19 May 2009 (IRIN) - Somalia's Al-Shabab militia have recently captured several strategic towns near Mogadishu, but the group has yet to gain popularity among locals, observers said. The onslaught has sent thousands of displaced civilians on the run again and crippled aid operations in the southern regions. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that 40,000 people have been displaced since fighting intensified on 7 May. Other aid workers say at least 150 people have been killed and more than 400 injured. "The capture of Jowhar goes to the heart of the problem in Somalia and demonstrates that indeed the government in Mogadishu is by and large extremely weak," Timothy Othieno, an analyst at the London-based Overseas Development Institute, told IRIN. "The government needs to engage with the people who matter, including hardliners, who include Al-Shabab," he added. Al-Shabab has continued to expand its control of southern and central Somalia and captured Jowhar, 90km north of Mogadishu, on 17 May. According to a political observer in the capital, however, the capture of Jowhar may be a sign that Al-Shabab has peaked. "In my opinion this is as far they will reach," he said. "They have entered hostile territory, where they are less popular than even the Ethiopians [troops] were." The Ethiopian soldiers were invited by the Transitional Federal Government in December 2006 to help oust the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). Pointing to the recent defection of prominent opposition figure Sheikh Yusuf “Indha Cadde” to the government side, which he described as a boost, the observer said Mogadishu's apparent weakness "may in fact work to the benefit of the government by galvanising supporters to take the offensive". Separately, a regional analyst, who requested anonymity, said: "The fall of Jowhar is less a sign of Al-Shabab's strength than the government's apparent disarray and paralysis. "Either the opposition will maintain the initiative, fatally eroding the government's authority and cohesion; or the crisis will provoke a determined and unified reaction from the government." Al-Shabab is a militant Islamist group that was part of the UIC and gained prominence during the Ethiopian military presence.
Farhan Ali Mahamud, the Minister of Information, told IRIN the government promoted reconciliation and would pursue dialogue. "We will not undertake any action that will add to the suffering of our people," he said. "Their [Al-Shabab’s] actions have led to the population rallying around the government. Elders, religious leaders and ordinary people are coming forward to defend their government," he added. The current fighting has had a devastating impact on the population and the fall of Jowhar will make it even more difficult to access those needing assistance, aid workers said. "For those who depend on them [aid workers] it means no help for now," one Somali civil society leader said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=84450

Ethiopia troops 'back in Somalia'

2009-05-19T14:55:00.002+01:00

Ethiopian military forces have crossed back into Somalia, four months after leaving, witnesses told the BBC.

Their reported return comes as Islamist militants continue to seize towns from the fragile Western-backed government.
One resident said he saw Ethiopian troops digging trenches in Kalabeyr, a key junction that links much of Somalia to the Ethiopian border.
An Ethiopian spokesman denied the reports. Its troops left Somalia in January after two years in the country.
They entered Somalia in 2006 to help oust Islamist forces from the capital Mogadishu but withdrew under a UN-backed peace deal.

When its troops left, Ethiopia made it clear it did still reserve the right to intervene in Somalia if its interests were directly threatened.
There have been several reports of the Ethiopian military crossing into Somali territory for hot-pursuit operations, or to check vehicles moving in the border area.
The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says the latest reported troop movements may well be part of a similar, limited operation.
But Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Wahade Belay denied the reports.
"This is a totally fabricated story. We have no plans to go into any of Somalia's territory," he told Reuters news agency.

Language

Kalabeyr resident Fadumo Du'ale told the BBC's Mohamed Olad Hassan on Tuesday: "They have crossed the border late last night and they are here now. They look to be stationing here."
The town lies 22km (14 miles) from the Somali-Ethiopian border.
Another resident, Tabane Abdi Ali, told the BBC: "We recognise them because of their military uniform and the language they were speaking."
Bus driver Farah Ahmed Adaan told our correspondent he had spotted "a lot" of Ethiopian troops with 12 military vehicles.

"Some of them were digging trenches while others were guarding the whole area," he said.
"They stopped me and checked my car and then ordered me to move."
On Sunday, fighters from the al-Shabab group, which is linked to al-Qaeda, took the key town of Jowhar from government forces.
This is the home town of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and now that the country's rainy season has arrived, Jowhar is the only passable route into central Somalia from the capital.
Since withdrawing at the beginning of the year, Ethiopian troops have kept up a strong presence along the Somali border.
Ethiopia, a US ally, invaded its war-torn neighbour in December 2006 to prop up the transitional government and initially everything went according to plan.
Rebel resistance melted away before the 3,000-strong Ethiopian advance and the Somali government was able to set up in Mogadishu.
But the government did not extend its control and the Islamists continued to launch deadly attacks on both Ethiopian and Somali government forces.
About 4,300 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers from the African Union have arrived in Mogadishu, where they have taken up positions vacated by the Ethiopians in January.
But analysts say they are only in effective control of the presidential palace, airport and seaport in Mogadishu, while the Islamist guerrillas control chunks of the capital, along with swathes of central and southern Somalia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8057115.stm

Mogadishu engulfed by more mayhem

2009-05-13T14:46:00.002+01:00

Heavy clashes have resumed in Somalia's capital as some of the fiercest clashes in months show no sign of abating.

Pro-government forces in the city are exchanging fire with rebels from the radical Islamist group al-Shabab. Thousands of civilians have fled.
It came a day after the guerrillas and pro-government forces fought a deadly battle in central Somalia.
Meanwhile, the UN warned the Horn of Africa nation was facing its worst drought for at least a decade.
At least two people have been killed and 10 injured in Wednesday's fighting near the presidential palace in the Wardigley district and in the north of the city at the Bondere and Karan areas.
Five people died a day earlier during clashes in the village of Mahas, about 300km (180 miles) north-east of the capital.

'Rotting on the streets'
"Al-Shabab fighters ran into a mosque for refuge, but residents kept firing at them with rocket-propelled grenades," local man Aden Hussein told Reuters news agency by telephone.

But al-Shabab spokesman Sheik Ahmed Abu-Yahya said pro-government forces had lost the battle, telling AFP news agency by telephone: "Many of their dead are rotting on the streets."
It is estimated more than 120 lives have been lost since the latest round of bloodletting erupted on Thursday.
Somalia's fragile Western-backed interim government has been fighting radical Islamist groups like al-Shabab since 2006.
A moderate Islamist president took office in January but even his introduction of Sharia law to the strongly Muslim country has not appeased the guerrillas who battle pro-government and African Union (AU) forces in the capital almost daily.
Meanwhile, the UN special representative for Somalia warned against treating the upsurge of fighting as just another round in a civil war, with faction fighting faction.
Ahmed Ould Abdallah told a meeting at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, that Somalia now had a legitimate government and the current fighting should be viewed as an attempted coup d'etat.
He said: "There is no civil war any more in Somalia. What we have in Somalia is a government - weak, fragile - but it is a government and we have a moral, political obligation to help it. We cannot treat the aggressor and the victim at the same level."

Sierra Leone surprise
The AU announced a boost for its peacekeeping effort in Mogadishu - with the unexpected offer a battalion from Sierra Leone, which would raise the strength of the force to more than 5,000 troops.

The BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says the AU peacekeeping force in Somali lacks manpower and is under-resourced.
Although it has been able to keep the port and airport open it cannot stop fighting on the present scale or provide more than very limited protection to civilians, she adds.
The AU is still hoping for wider support through the UN, but every new outbreak of fighting makes it more likely the outside world will write off the problem as unsolvable, according to our correspondent.
The UN meanwhile warned that drought had left nearly half the Somali population malnourished and some 3.2 million people in urgent need of food aid.
Somalia, a nation of about eight million people, has experienced almost constant conflict since the collapse of its central government in January 1991.
It is estimated that more than 16,000 civilians have been killed by fighting since the start of 2007 and more than one million are internal refugees.

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

2009-05-13T14:05:00.002+01:00

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages. Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different? Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

Somaliland youth risk death in search of better life

2009-05-03T11:24:00.002+01:00

HARGEISA, 30 March 2009 (Somalilandpress) - Harir Omar Yusuf, about to finish high school, should be choosing a degree course and deciding on a career direction; instead, he spends most of his time planning a perilous escape from his hometown of Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland in the northwest of Somalia, to Europe.
“As soon as I finish high school I will go there, because I have nothing to stay for in Somaliland,” he told IRIN, adding that his parents could not afford university fees and he was not assured of a place even if they could.
Yusuf has many friends who have made the journey - first through Ethiopia, then Sudan and Libya and finally to Italy via the Mediterranean Sea - and are now living as illegal immigrants in Italy and other European nations. He also has many friends languishing in Sudanese or Libyan jails, arrested for entering the country illegally, and knows of many who died making the trip, but he remains determined.
Tens of thousands of Somalis also try to cross the Gulf of Aden into Yemen every year aboard small vessels run by people-traffickers operating from Somali ports; according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), one out of every 20 people attempting the journey in 2007 died.
Yusuf says he would rather risk death than live a life of certain poverty in Somaliland.

Unemployment

“The issue of young people running away is very problematic in Somaliland,” said Omer Ali Abdi, the director of the youth department in the Ministry of Youth and Sports. “Year after year, graduates from secondary schools are increasing and our universities just don’t have the capacity to take in all of them - and even when they graduate from university, there is no guarantee they will get a job.”
According to Ahmed Hashi Abdi, vice-minister in the Ministry of Planning and Coordination, only 10-20 percent of people under 35 are employed.
“Because it is unrecognised internationally, Somaliland has no access to bi-lateral funding, which has caused our economy to suffer, especially after the livestock ban of 1999, which destroyed the main source of income of most of our people,” Abdi said. “For the same reason, international scholarships and higher education exchange programmes are not open to our students.”
An outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in Saudi Arabia in 1999 resulted in a regional ban on imported livestock from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti; the ban on Somalia remains in place and now includes several other Middle Eastern nations.
After the ban, remittances became the main foreign exchange earner; thousands fled the country during an outbreak of war in 1988, and regularly send money to their families. The Ministry of Planning estimates remittances account for US$500 million - or about 80 percent of Somaliland’s economy.
“When people leave the country legally, we are happy that they are able to send back money, but as much as possible we try to discourage young people from leaving illegally - then it becomes a matter of life and death and we cannot encourage that,” Abdi said.
Despite the risks, many families scrimp and save to send their children on these journeys. Over the past year, Amina Rooble (not her real name) has spent more than $6,500 on transport, communication, paying traffickers and bribing prison officers, all in an effort to get her son Hashim to Italy.
Although his boat sank, Hashim survived and is now seeking asylum in Italy. “Even though my son was rescued, two other members of my family died on that boat,” Rooble said.

Incentive to stay

The government and local NGOs have run campaigns to discourage young people from leaving, but according to Yahye Mohamoud Ahmed, head of the Somaliland National Youth Organisation NGO, unless the government can provide some motivation, young people will continue to escape in droves.
“They have no incentive to stay - no jobs and no businesses, so it is fairly futile to tell them to stay,” he said. “They need to be given the capacity to feed themselves here.”
Ahmed added that many young men were now taking swimming lessons and using hi-tech communication equipment - such as satellite telephones to make SOS calls - to make their trips safer.
“When they hear about their friends and relatives in London or Italy, they get encouraged to go; even when their relatives have no jobs there, they still think they have a better life than here,” he added.
According to Ahmed Abdi, the national development plan includes the creation of two vocational training institutes in every region of Somaliland to boost the number of tertiary institutions and the variety of courses available.
“We also intend to set up micro-finance schemes to enable them to be self-supporting,” he added.
He noted that despite the continued livestock ban, a few countries in the Arab world were starting to buy Somaliland’s meat, and the government hoped the Saudi ban would be lifted, restoring the industry.

Youth policy

The Ministry of Youth and Sports, in partnership with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), is drafting a national youth policy - due to be passed by parliament in 2011 - that hopes to address issues of youth emigration, unemployment, education and political participation.
“What we need more than anything is resources from our international partners focused on development rather than strictly emergencies - resources focusing on education and building the economy would encourage young people to stay and build their own nation,” the Ministry of Youth’s Abdi said.

The political legacy of Mohamed Ibrahim Egal (the seventh annivesary of the death of beloved late president)

2009-05-03T10:51:00.002+01:00

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to piece together the political philosophy of the late President of Somaliland, Mohammed Ibrahim Egal, into a set of principles and values that underpinned his political outlook and his actions. This seventh anniversary of his death provides an appropriate context to examine Egal’s political legacy, with the distance afforded by time, hopefully, enabling a measure of objectivity in the analysis. As with all such endeavors, this enterprise is fraught with the dangers of simplification of complex domestic and foreign policies on one hand and over-analysis of actions dictated by the practical exigencies of the day on the other. In this context, we must remain aware that Egal always viewed himself, first and foremost, as a practical politician and was generally suspicious or skeptical of the grandiose claims of political ideologues. Nevertheless, it is a fact that, his flair for realpolitik and focus upon practical governance notwithstanding, Egal believed passionately in certain philosophical principles which grounded his political beliefs and guided his policies, and which can and deserve to be presented as a coherent political philosophy. It is this underlying essence of his political legacy that this essay will attempt to explore and elucidate. For want of a better phrase, we shall call this set of core, political beliefs and principles, or philosophy if you will, Egalism.
A major constraint in the research for this essay, not to mention a sad loss for students of Somali and African politics, is the woeful dearth of published work by Mohammed Ibrahim Egal himself. Much of the research for this essay is, therefore, based upon Egal’s speeches, letters to various organizations and individuals, conversations with the writer over many years after his release from prison, correspondence with the writer during and after his stints in prison, and discussions with his friends and contemporaries. It is a great pity and a tremendous loss for scholars of African politics and history that Egal was not able to finish a book he had long been planning on Africa’s post-independence political history and his vision for the continent’s future. His detailed and personal knowledge of many of the principal players in Africa’s post-independence political history, not to mention his personal participation in many of the defining moments of post colonial African history, would have provided his views with a unique and definitive insight.
Somali Nationalism & Pan-Africanism
Anti-colonial nationalism was certainly one of the principal foundations of Egal’s political ethos and evolution. He spent the late 1940s and early 1950s studying in Britain and was exposed to the anti-colonial fervor prevalent throughout the British Empire at the time. Among the African students he met at this time with whom he became close friends and who would go on to lead the independence struggle in his own country (much as Egal did in British Somaliland) was Tom Mboya of Uganda. Egal also got introduced to the Pan-Africanism of Nkrumah, the tenets of which seemed to him to offer an African and nationalist remedy to the problems inherent in the colonial borders bequeathed the continent by the European powers. Indeed, Egal was to strike up a close friendship with Nkrumah that was only broken years later by the exile of Nkrumah and the imprisonment of Egal.
After completing his formal education in Britain, Egal returned to the British Somaliland Protectorate in 1957 and immediately got involved in the nationalist struggle for independence, quickly becoming the leader of the Somali National League (SNL) - the independence party of British Somaliland that formed the first government of Somaliland. The people of British Somaliland were very susceptible to the idea of political independence and the drive for independence from Britain found fertile ground in the national psyche.
The SNL was not the only political party agitating for independence in the British Somaliland Protectorate. There was also the United Somali Party (USP) which had a socialist perspective. Although, there was a clan element to the differences between the SNL and the USP, it is also true that there were ideological differences. The philosophical orientation of the SNL in ideological terms was pro-western and in favor of market economics, while that of the USP was pro-eastern (i.e. USSR and China) and favored a socialist, command economy. This leads us to one of the defining principles of Egalism – a belief in market economics and the limitation of government in economic activity principally to regulation and supervision. Another important difference between the two parties relates to Somali nationalism and Egal’s different perspective to most, if not all, of his contemporaries regarding union with Somalia and how to achieve the dream of Greater Somalia. Egal opposed the immediate union of Somaliland and Somalia which was promoted by all the other nationalist leaders of Somaliland and which was enthusiastically supported by the public. He had found the leaders of the Somali Youth League (SYL), the principal nationalist party of Italian Somalia, somewhat cooler to the idea of union and he found their proposed conditions for the proposed union effectively subsumed Somaliland into Somalia.
He, therefore, proposed that Somaliland defer the proposed union for a period of six months during which period the two sides would negotiate terms for union which would be acceptable to both sides. He envisaged the creation of Greater Somalia as a process whereby each specific territory would unite with a core Somali Republic (to be formed by the union of British Somaliland and Italian Somalia) through negotiations on the terms of such proposed union. Accordingly, he believed that it was essential that Somaliland and Italian Somalia negotiate terms for union which would serve as a template for the other territories that would accede to the union in the near future, i.e. Djibouti, NFD and Haud & Reserved Area. Upon the independence of Somaliland, when the SNL won the elections to form Somaliland’s first government, Egal’s political opponents decried his proposal as an attempt to cling to power at the expense of the dream of Greater Somalia. As the independence of Italian Somalia on 1 st July 1960 approached, the nationalist fervor in Somaliland became an unstoppable torrent that could not be contained, and Egal reluctantly acceded to popular demand and Somaliland united with Italian Somalia unconditionally on 1 st July 1960 to create the Somali Republic. The terms of the union were those proposed by the SYL which Egal had found unpalatable.
Egal’s vision of a Republic established through negotiation and dialogue and characterized by power sharing, regional autonomy and equality was replaced by the voluntary takeover of Somaliland by Italian Somalia. The inequitable terms of the union soon became apparent to the population of Somaliland, once the heady effect of the nationalist fervor of independence had abated. The union had to be ratified by the people of both Somaliland and Italian Somalia through the adoption of the constitution of the new Republic in a national referendum in 1961. While the new constitution was overwhelmingly ratified in the erstwhile Italian Somalia, it was soundly defeated in Somaliland evidencing the dissatisfaction of the populace there to the terms of the union into which their nationalist fervor had precipitously impelled them. While his opponents had characterized Egal’s opposition to the terms of the union proposed by the SYL in the context of his personal political interests, the fact is that his opposition was motivated not only by the inequity of the terms of union, but also by a different vision of Greater Somalia. Egal understood much more clearly than his fellow Somali politicians the great difficulties that would be faced in obtaining the acquiescence of other African nationalist leaders to the creation of Greater Somalia.
He understood very clearly that that both Ethiopia and Kenya would characterize the quest for Greater Somalia in terms of an irredentist Somali Republic seeking to annex contiguous regions of it neighbors in direct opposition to the central tenets of the African nationalism, i.e. Pan-Africanism. He believed that the only way that Somalis could successfully make the case for Greater Somalia within a Pan-African context was by reference to the core anti-colonial principle of self determination. To this end, he proposed that the Somali people had been divided by the colonial carve up of Africa and that with the liberation of Africa, the Somali people themselves freely and voluntarily wished a union of the territories they inhabited. On this basis, Egal reasoned that it would be impossible for fellow Africans to deny Somalis their inalienable right to self government. For this reason, he argued that the Republic established through the union of Somaliland and Italian Somalia embody this principle by enacting a constitution that guaranteed a significant degree of regional autonomy through regional assemblies and protected the rights of minorities. He was convinced that this was the best way to attract the other Somali inhabited territories to join the union voluntarily and also overcome the objections of other African leaders.
However, events overtook the internal debate over the union as Britain reneged on its promise to hold a plebiscite supervised by the UN in the NFD on union with Somalia and to then abide by the wishes of the majority in the territory as evidenced by said plebiscite in the independence negotiations for Kenya. The result of the vote was an overwhelming majority in favor of union with Somalia, which the British government ignored by granting independence to Kenya without making any provision for respecting the wishes of the people of the NFD. The new Republic of Somalia responded by walking out of the British Commonwealth amid condemnations of “the perfidy of Albion”. Tensions between the new Republic and Kenya and Ethiopia steadily worsened and in 1964 the first war between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Haud & Reserved Area, which Britain had ceded to Ethiopia, despite promises to the contrary to Somaliland prior to independence, broke out.
Another attempt to reconcile the perceived irredentism of Somali nationalism with the continental nationalism of Pan-Africanism, which is a another defining element of Egalism, is evident in Egal’s foreign policy during his brief period as Prime Minister of the Republic between 1967 and 1969. Almost immediately upon assuming office in 1967, Egal embarked upon a policy of détente with Somalia’s two neighbors, i.e. Ethiopia and Kenya with whom relations had been tense, and often bellicose, since the Republic was established in 1960. He was successful in establishing cordial, personal relations with both Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and these warm personal friendships were translated into a significant easing of tensions on both borders. Somali trucks and property which had been confiscated by Ethiopia as well as individuals who had been imprisoned in that country for violating border regulations were freed and propaganda directed by both sides against each other was stopped. Similar confidence building measures were taken between Kenya and Somalia. Egal embarked upon a charm offensive throughout Africa designed to counter Somalia’s negative image in the continent as a recalcitrant, warlike irredentist bent upon wresting away land from its neighbors.
His close, personal relationships with many African leaders, including Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Kaunda, Nyrere and Tafawe Balewa helped immeasurably in this effort and he was largely successful in reintegrating Somalia into the mainstream of African politics. It is important to point out here that Egal had spent three years in the political wilderness in Somalia from 1964 (when he resigned from government) until 1967 when his candidate won the Presidential elections and he became Prime minister. During this time, in addition to planning and executing his political comeback, he developed a rationale for reconciling the unification of Somali people and territories with Pan-Africanism. He foresaw that the best hope for economic development and advancement for the newly independent states of Africa lay in regional groupings that would not only create larger markets with economies of scale for investment and trade, but that would also enable African countries to negotiate with foreign countries and companies on a more equal footing.
To this end, he proposed enlargement of the East African Community (grouping Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) to include Somalia, Ethiopia and Zambia. This proposal, which was positively received by his contemporaries, was to be announced at the East African Community (EAC) summit meeting in Arusha in 1968. Egal had been charged by the other leaders, namely Haile Selassie, Kenyatta, Obote and Kaunda, with the responsibility to prepare the statement however, in the event, Egal was unable to attend the said meeting in order to defeat a no-confidence vote in the Somali Parliament orchestrated by his opponents, and it fell to Julius Nyrere of Tanzania, as the host, to present the proposal in Arusha. Nyrere chose not to do so. Later that year, 1968, Nyrere announced the implementation of his personal vision of African Socialism, “Ujamaa” to the party congress of his TANU party in Arusha, and the famous Arusha Declaration that the world remembers today is Nyrere’s proclamation of “Ujamaa” and not the expansion of the EAC to reshape East Africa that was the brain child of Egal. In the context of Somalia’s quest for the union of the Somali people, Egal’s vision was as simple as it was practical. Since the Somali people were pastoralists, migrating seasonally with their herds of livestock in pursuit of pasture and rainfall, the fundamental problem faced by them as a result of their division between various nation-states related principally to crossing the borders of mutually hostile countries.
Once Somalia and Ethiopia became members of the new, enlarged EAC the immigration and customs controls at the borders would be greatly minimized enabling the nomadic Somali pastoralists to move freely with their herds across national boundaries, much as the Masai and other pastoralists move back and forth between Kenya and Tanzania. Thus, the single greatest source of friction between the Somalia and its neighbors, Ethiopia and Kenya, would be removed. Secondly, Egal reasoned that the close economic and political cooperation between Somalia and its two neighbors, which the new treaty relationship envisioned, would create the conditions that would encourage these two countries to afford their Somali regions greater autonomy. In this perspective, he was indeed ahead of his time, as evidenced by the federal constitution granting a significant measure of autonomy to the individual regions adopted by Ethiopia after the overthrow of the Mengistu dictatorship. Egal also reasoned that by replacing the constant friction over the border, not to mention the armed belligerency that characterized Somalia’s relationships with its neighbors, with free movement of people and trade, the Somali people would shed their traditional hostility and suspicion of Ethiopia and Kenya. Again, Egal was far ahead of his time, as is evidenced by the open borders between Ethiopia and Somaliland and the amity between the peoples of these countries. This is all the more remarkable since the Somaliland was the part of the erstwhile Republic that was most belligerent to Ethiopia.

Rgds,

Samira

Mortars Threaten U.S. Congressman’s Plane in Somalia

2009-04-20T08:57:00.000+01:00

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Representative Donald M. Payne of New Jersey, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, narrowly escaped a mortar attack on Monday as he was ending a visit to Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-ridden capital, that he undertook against the advice of the Obama administration.
Just a day after American military snipers killed three Somali pirates and freed a kidnapped sea captain, eliciting vows of revenge from pirates and other Somalis, several mortar rounds exploded in the vicinity of Mr. Payne’s plane as it was taking off from Mogadishu for Nairobi, Kenya. At least 10 civilians were wounded in the explosions.
The congressman, a Democrat from Newark, was unhurt and it was unclear if insurgents who routinely shell the airport were trying to hit his plane or were simply unleashing another assault on the city’s main lifeline.
The Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group vying for control of the country, later took responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.
“We fired on the airport to target the so-called Democratic congressman sent by Obama,” said Sheik Hussein Ali, a spokesman for the Shabab. “Let him go back with the message of our strength and enmity towards the U.S. and its allies. No single group can claim control of Mogadishu, and Al Shabab will continue its attacks.”
Mr. Payne met for several hours with Somalia’s new president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and the country’s prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, and stressed that the Obama administration had turned over a new leaf toward Somalia. He had been “strongly discouraged” from making the visit by the State Department, said his press secretary, Kerry McKenney, but had decided to travel there “even if it’s dangerous, to see how the United States might be able to help stabilize the situation,” Ms. McKenney said.
During the Bush administration, the American military carried out several airstrikes against terrorism suspects in Somalia. In 2006, American forces assisted Ethiopian troops in a troubled, bloody intervention that led to thousands of civilian deaths and overthrew a grass-roots Islamist government led by Sheik Sharif. At the time, Mr. Payne was one of the few high-ranking American officials who publicly stood against the Ethiopian invasion.
“America wants to be a friend,” he told a crowd of Somalis at a news conference on Monday.
Mr. Payne had planned his visit before the hijacking of the United States-flagged cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, and did not know for certain that he would go until shortly before Monday’s visit, Ms. McKenney said. Piracy was among the subjects he discussed with Somali officials.
“If there were no piracy, the U.S. forces would not have intervened,” he said. “I think every country and company has a right to protect itself.”
On Monday, news spread across Somalia — mostly by radio — that American snipers had killed three pirates holding Capt. Richard Phillips.
Captain Phillips’s wife, Andrea, spoke to the news media on Monday in South Burlington, Vt.
“We did not know what Richard was enduring while being held hostage on the lifeboat, and that was really the hardest part — the wondering,” Mrs. Phillips said in a statement. “My family and closest friends held on to our faith knowing that Richard would come home.”

Somalia Adopts Islamic Law to Deter Insurgency

2009-04-20T08:30:00.001+01:00

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s Parliament voted unanimously on Saturday to institute Islamic law, a measure lawmakers say they hope will strengthen popular support for the government and siphon it away from the Islamist militias fighting an insurgency here.
The vote ratified a decision by the cabinet last month to adopt the legal code of Islam based on the Koran, known as Shariah.
“God is great, God is great, the Parliament voted for the implementation of the Shariah law,” the deputy speaker of Parliament, Osman Elmi Boqore, said after the vote. “We are grateful that we implemented it today.”
The minister of justice, Sheik Abdirahman Mohamoud Farah, speaking to the lawmakers, said that the opposition hard-liners would no longer be able to use Islam as a justification for attacking the government.
Most Somalis generally welcome the introduction of Shariah, suggesting that it was the only solution that Somalis could agree on.
“I am happy with the Shariah,” said Ismahan Haghi Aweis, 24, a student in Mogadishu, the capital. “I hope that the fighting is all over.”
The Shabab, a hard-line Islamist insurgent movement that controls large swaths of southern Somalia, has imposed its own version of Islamic law and vowed to rebel against the government.
Last week, two members of the Islamic Courts Union, a moderate Islamist group that is part of the government, were assassinated in Mogadishu. The group accused the Shabab of the killings. The Shabab denied the allegations.

NewYork Times

GLOBAL: Real men don’t cry – or do they?

2009-04-20T07:01:00.001+01:00

Men don't cry. Men take risks. Men don't ask for help. Men are strong. Men have many sexual partners. These stereotypes of masculinity are contributing to the spread of HIV throughout the world, experts warned at a recent symposium on men and boys. "Among other things, these stereotypes affect access to health care, the expression of one's sexuality, access to sexual and reproductive health services, and vulnerability to HIV,” said Purmina Mane, the adjunct executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) at the First Global Symposium Engaging Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality, held recently in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Quoting various studies, Mane pointed out that among men high-risk behaviour was accepted and even encouraged, and most were more concerned about their masculinity than their health. Studies have shown that among men knowledge about their health was lower than among women, and reproductive health was generally considered a women’s subject. Women talked about pregnancy, family planning, breast cancer and menopause, but never about sexual pleasure; men discussed sexual performance, sexual dysfunctions and sperm counts, but never contraceptive methods. When this lack of knowledge is compounded by another macho stereotype – that seeking help is a sign of weakness – men’s health is at far higher risk. In the case of HIV, men are known to use counselling and voluntary testing services much less frequently than women, and men also tend to begin antiretroviral treatment later. "Late diagnosis and treatment means that many continue to practice unprotected sex, running the risk of reinfection and of unknowingly infecting their partners," said Mane. These stereotypes also have consequences for women. Dumisani Rebombo, a technical counsellor in South Africa to the international reproductive health organization, EngenderHealth, recalled a patient he had counselled after a positive diagnosis.
"I asked him what his next steps would be, and asked him to bring his wife to the support group. He said he wasn’t going to reveal his status to his wife, nor was he going to use a condom, because he was a man and he’d find a way to deal with it." The notion of a man’s strength and invincibility was one of the main risk factors for HIV infection, he commented.

Selective perception

Graça Sambo, executive director of Fórum Mulher, an NGO working to promote women's rights, said the idea that men should have multiple sexual partners was contributing to Mozambique’s national HIV prevalence of 16 percent, one of the highest in the world. "A lot of men have many sexual partners because this is what is expected of them," she said. "Masculinity is very much instilled by culture and by tradition, which say that men have to be studs." Sambo pointed out that although information about AIDS and the dangers of multiple relationships was widely available, if it involved a change in behaviour, men preferred to ignore it. "We need men who think differently, and who can influence behaviour change ... Many of them are changing in the private sphere and acting in a more conscientious manner, but bringing this change into the public sphere is still very hard, because there is still a great deal of peer pressure and they fear being made fun of." UNFPA’s Mane concluded: "We need to redefine what it means to be a man. HIV is an opportunity to re-evaluate the rigidness of these norms."

SOMALIA: Second thoughts about returning to Mogadishu

2009-04-20T06:27:00.001+01:00

NAIROBI, 14 April 2009 (IRIN) - Mother-of-five Fadumo Hussein wishes she was still living at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) instead of in the makeshift dwelling in Mogadishu she returned to three months ago. "At least at the camp we had health care; here we are cut off… We have had no help, except from the MCH [Mother-Child Health clinic] where we get some medicines,” she said. Hussein returned home after Ethiopian troops, which had been supporting the forces of the Transitional Federal Government, left the country. She found her home destroyed and now lives in a hut on her compound. Many Mogadishu residents like Hussein recently returned from IDP camps, but are facing healthcare and livelihood challenges. Only mothers and children benefit from the services of local MCH clinics, which are supported by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Zahara Abdullahi, who runs the MCH in Yaqshiid District near Hussein's home, said the facility, which provides health support for the community, had been overwhelmed by the number of people seeking help. Because of the improving security situation in the area, she said, "we are seeing a lot more traffic." Yaqshiid District, north of the city, was one of the worst affected by the violence. "We are seeing a lot more cases of malnutrition," Abdullahi said. "We provide the medicines we have, but we cannot give the food they need."

Back to the IDP camps?

Abdullahi said a number of families had returned to IDP camps because "they think they get better help there." Hibo Mohamed would like to return to an IDP camp but cannot afford the fare. "We were better off in the camp than here; the only assistance here is from the MHC and they don’t have food." A civil society source in Mogadishu, who requested anonymity, told IRIN many returnees were finding "their homes no longer existed and were having to start from scratch".

Wave of returnees

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), some 60,000 people have returned to Mogadishu since the start of 2009. Most are returning from IDP settlements in the Lower and Middle Shabelle regions in south-central Somalia, and Hiraan, Galgaduud and Mudug regions in central Somalia, said a UNHCR briefing note on 14 April. The returnees were heading mainly to the districts of Yaaqshiid, Wardhiigleey, Heliwaa and Hawl Wadaag in Mogadishu. Roberta Russo, associate public information officer for UNHCR Somalia, recently told IRIN the humanitarian community was "seriously concerned about the spontaneous returns to Mogadishu as the security situation is still volatile and basic services to help the returnees are not in place”. Meanwhile, the violence continues: Dozens were injured or killed on 13 April after shelling in parts of south Mogadishu.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83918

Aid workers seized in Somalia

2009-04-20T06:14:00.000+01:00

Armed men have kidnapped two foreigners working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in central Somalia, a local elder and an aid worker have said.
The two staff - one Belgian and one Danish - were seized along with their Somali bodyguards by around 25 armed men on Sunday.
"Unidentified armed men kidnapped two MSG-Belgium aid workers in Bakol region," Hassan Maalin, a local elder, told Reuters by phone from the area.
"They were heading to Hudur, the capital of Bakol, when gunmen took them away in their vehicle," another relief worker said.
The Somali staff travelling along with the two foreigners were later released.
Michel Peremans, a spokesman for the aid agency, confirmed that two workers were missing, but would not say if they had been kidnapped.
"When we lose contact with teams we can't give much information because it can give problems afterwards," he said.
"I hope you can understand that this is too delicate, too problematic at this stage."
A total of 35 aid workers were killed in Somalia in 2008 and 26 abducted, the United Nations says.The attacks have limited the ability of relief agencies to respond to one of Africa's longest humanitarian crisis.
More than three million Somalis - nearly half the population - depend on emergency food aid in a country that has been without an effective central government since 1991.
The Bakol region, near the Ethiopian border, is under the control of an armed opposition group that is fighting Somalia's weak UN-backed government.

Profile: Somalia's President Ahmed

2009-03-15T05:52:00.002Z

Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed came to prominence as one of the leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts, which controlled most of southern Somalia for six months in 2006

He was always seen as the moderate face of the UIC and was elected by MPs after agreeing a peace deal with the Western-backed government.
A former schoolteacher, he started to stand up to the warlords who had fought for control of Mogadishu since 1991, when one of his 12-year-old pupils was abducted.
Born on 25 July 1964 in the Middle Shabelle region, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is from the Hawiye clan (Abgal branch) - one of Somalia's four main clans, which dominates in the capital.
He studied at Libyan and Sudanese universities in the mid-1980s.
Mr Ahmed returned home to Jowhar in 2002, at a time when Abdulkassim Salad Hassan's government was trying to establish control of Mogadishu.
He worked against Mr Hassan with Mohamed Dhere, a warlord and his fellow clansman, who was then in charge of Jowhar.
Mr Ahmed became chairman of the regional court in Jowhar, but the alliance with the warlord did not last and in 2003 he fled for Mogadishu.

Turning-point
Mr Ahmed started teaching geography, Arabic and religious studies at the city's Jubba Secondary School.
That same year one of his pupils was snatched - amid a wave of abductions in Mogadishu - and the gang responsible demanded a ransom from the 12-year-old boy's parents.
Mr Ahmed was disturbed by the fact the kidnapping took place in an area dominated by his own clan.
It was a moment he would later call a turning-point.
Somalia's future president began campaigning within his local community to establish an Islamic court, of which he would be elected the leader.
The Islamic court managed to secured the release of his pupil and other abductees.
Mr Ahmed and others then began campaigning to combat the crime and banditry rampant in the poor neighbourhoods of north Mogadishu.
The five branches of the Islamic courts united to form the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and Mr Ahmed, who comes from a long line of religious leaders, was chosen to become the chairman.
The UIC rose to take control of the capital and large parts of south and central Somalia, driving out a US-backed alliance of "anti-terrorism" warlords from Mogadishu.
During their six months in power, the Islamic courts were divided between moderates and hardliners, with Mr Ahmed viewed as the moderate leader.
The UIC was itself ousted in December 2006 by an Ethiopian-led force.

Date with destiny
Mr Ahmed surrendered to Kenyan security forces three weeks after his group was routed from Somalia.

Can Somalia's new president tame a radical Islamist insurgency?
Between 2007-2008 Mr Ahmed was an exiled leader of a faction within the Eritrea-based Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).
A UN-backed peace process between moderate Islamists and the fragile Western-backed Transitional Federal Government, thrust Mr Ahmed back to centre stage.
He led his group into negotiations with the government and in December 2008 President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed quit after a power-struggle with his prime minister about the reconciliation talks.
A month later Mr Ahmed and 150 of his fellow ARS members joined the Somali parliament and he was elected to succeed President Yusuf.
He says he wants to make peace with Ethiopia, recruit Islamist militia fighters into a national security force and rebuild the country's social services.
President Ahmed - who speaks English as well as Arabic and Somali - says he is prepared to discuss any political or religious issues with insurgents still fighting in Somalia.
Analysts say the polyglot will need all his skill with words to deal with the likes of the radical Islamist al-Shabab militiamen, who control swathes of central and southern Somalia.

Somali cabinet backs Sharia plan

2009-03-15T05:32:00.001Z

The cabinet in Somalia has endorsed a proposal by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to implement Islamic law in the country.

Experts say the move aims to drain support for radical Islamist guerrillas who now control much of southern and central Somalia.
The bill is expected to go before parliament in the next few days.
The move came as the Somali president began a three-day visit to Burundi, which has peacekeepers in Somalia.

'Only option'

"The cabinet members discussed deeply on the issue regarding the Islamic Sharia law and the members unanimously approved full implementation," said Somali Information Minister Farhan Ali Mohamoud, according to AFP news agency.
"Islamic Sharia is the only option to get solutions for the problems in this country."
Last month, the president agreed to proposals by local and foreign religious leaders for a truce with hardline Islamists and the implementation of Sharia law.
Sheikh Sharif, a former moderate rebel leader, was elected in January following a UN-brokered peace process.
But hardline Islamist insurgent groups like al-Shabab have continued to battle the government and its allies.
In Burundi's capital Bujumbura on Tuesday, Sheikh Sharif extended his sympathies to the Burundian people on the deaths of 11 of their soldiers in a Mogadishu suicide attack two weeks ago.
Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza re-iterated his government's determination to maintain Burundi's deployment.
He said sending more troops was under discussion with the Somali authorities and the African Union.
The Horn of Africa country has not had an effective central government since 1991.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7865808.stm

Somali pirates hijack another ship

2009-02-01T09:40:00.001Z

The German military said there were two more suspected hijack attempts by pirates on Thursday

Somali pirates have hijacked a German-owned tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the Gulf of Aden, a maritime officials said.
"The MV Longchamp was hijacked this morning with a crew of 13 - twelve Filipinos and one Indonesian," Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme said on Thursday.
It was not clear where the tanker, which was flying the Bahamas flag, was headed.
The tanker has a capacity of 3,415 tonnes, Mwangura said.
Piracy havoc
Pirates have been causing havoc in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, hijacking dozens of ships last year and demanding tens of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
Hamburg-based ship operator Bernard Schulte Shipmanagement confirmed the hijacking. It said no ransom demands had been made.
"The master was briefly allowed to communicate with us and it appears that all crew members are safe," it said in a statement.
Piracy in the Gulf of Aden has prompted some shipping firms to take an alternative route via South Africa instead of via the Suez Canal.
The alternative shipping route has lowered the frequency of hijackings, but there have still been three boats captured this month.
The German military reported there were two more suspected attempts by pirates to attack ships in Gulf of Aden on Thursday.

Timeline: Somalia

2009-02-01T09:28:00.002Z

A chronology of important events and developments

July 1, 1960: Somalia gains independence. The country is created through the merger of the British Somaliland Protectorate and Italian Somaliland.

1963: Somalia breaks diplomatic relations with Britain, amid border dispute with Kenya.

1964: Fighting breaks out over border dispute with Ethiopia.

1967: Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke beats Aden Abdullah Osman Daar in elections for president.

1969: Shermake is assassinated.
October 21, 1969: Major General Muhammad Siad Barre seizes presidency in a bloodless coup.

1970: Barre says that Somalia is a socialist state. He begins a process of nationalising the country's economy.

1974-75: Somalia is blighted by severe drought, causing widespread starvation.

1977: Somalia invades the Ethiopia's Ogaden region, which is home to hundreds of Somali people.

1978: Ethiopian forces, backed by Cuban troops, push Somali soldiers out of Ogaden.
Barre turns to the United States after expelling Soviet advisers from Somalia.

1981: Barre prevents Mijertyn and Isaq clan members from holding posts in government. He fills the vacant positions with people from the Marehan clan.

1988: Somalia reaches a peace accord with Ethiopia.

January 1991: Barre's government is forced from power, promoting factional fighting.
November 1991: A power struggle breaks out between rival clan regional commanders, Mohammed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohammed.
Soon the government collapses and fighting breaks out between rival leaders. Thousands of civilians are killed in the violence, while thousands die of starvation because food aid cannot reach them due to the clashes.
Somali government soldiers have struggled to maintain order in the country [AFP]1991: Somaliland declares unilateral independence from Somalia.

February 1992: Rival commanders sign a UN-sponsored ceasefire but fail to agree on monitoring provisions.
The UN deploys 500 soldiers in Mogadishu as part of United Nations Operation in Somalia (Unosom) which is intended to observe the ceasefire. Fighting continues to escalate.
December: A contingent of US marines lands near Mogadishu, under a UN peacekeeping mandate to assist in the delivery of humanitarian aid. The soldiers are also tasked with restoring order. 1993: US forces target powerful Somali leader Muhammad Farah Aidid. About 2,000 people are killed in clashes between the US marines and Aidid's forces, many of them civilians.
Seventeen US army rangers are killed when their helicopters are shot down in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

March 1994: The US ends its mission in Somalia.

March 1995: UN peacekeepers leave Somalia. Their mission is a failure.

1996: Aideed dies and is succeeded by his son, Hussein.

1998: Puntland region declares that it is autonomous from Somalia.

2000: Abdulkassim Salat Hussein becomes president of Somalia. Ali Khalif Gelayadh, the country's prime minister, announces a new government.

October 2004: Ethiopian-backed regional commander, Abdullahi Yusuf, is elected Somali president and head of a new transitional parliament.

June 5, 2005: Fighters loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) defeat US-backed leaders and take control of Mogadishu.

March-May 2006: Dozens of people are killed in fighting between rival armed groups in Mogadishu.
September: Transitional government and the Union of Islamic Courts hold peace talks in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
December: UIC loyalists flee Mogadishu in face of joint offensive by Ethiopian and Somali government forces. The joint force captures the city.
Al-Shabab has led a campaign against the government in recent months [AFP]January 2007: Union of Islamic Courts loyalists flee Kismayo, their port stronghold. Interim government puts state of emergency in place.
April: More than 320,000 Somalis have left their homes in Mogadishu since February amid fierce fighting, the UN says.
November: Nur Hassan Hussein is appointed as prime minister after his predecessor, Ali Mohamed Gedi, resigns.

May 1, 2008: US air raid kills Aden Hashi Ayro, leader of al-Shabab, an offshoot of the Union of Islamic Courts.
August 18: Somalia formally signs a peace deal with some opposition figures, but the pact is rejected by some groups.

August 22: Al-Shabab fighters seize Kismayu, a strategic southern port, after fighting that kills 70 people.

November 14: President Yusuf admits that insurgents control most of the country, raising the prospect his government could completely collapse.

December 14: Yusuf announces that he is sacking Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister, and the interim government.
December 15: The parliament votes in a special session in favour of keeping Hussein and his cabinet in office.
December 16: Yusuf appoints Mohamed Mohamoud Guled as prime minister, ignoring the parliament's vote in favour of keeping Hussein as prime minister.
December 24: Mohamed Mohamoud Guled resigns.
December 29: Yusuf resigns, saying that Sheikh Aden Madobe, the parliament speaker, will take over as interim president.

January 2, 2009: Ethiopia says it has started pulling its troops out of Somalia.
January 26: Last group of Ethiopian soldiers leave. Fighters from al-Shabab move into Baidoa, the seat of the transitional government.January 30: Somali MPs elect Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed new president of Somalia in neighbouring Djibouti.Janurary 31: President wins elections with 293 votes against 126 votes for his challenger, and is sworn in.

By Samira

New Somali president sworn in

2009-02-01T09:17:00.002Z

Ahmed easily won the parliamentary run-off vote against the son of Siad Barre [Reuters]

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has been sworn in as the new president of Somalia just months after his Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) signed a peace deal with the transitional government.
The ceremony in neighbouring Djibouti on Saturday came after Ahmed, who also led the Islamic Courts Union, won a run-off parliamentary vote.
The new president's Islamic Courts movement ruled Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia for six months before being ousted by the Ethiopian military at the end of 2006.
Ahmed easily defeated Maslah Mohamed Siad, the son of ex-president Mohamed Siad Barre, in Saturday morning's second round of voting, winning 293 votes to Siad's 126.
"My government will bring an adequate plan to overcome the difficulties the nation is facing," he said in a brief inauguration speech.
"I will deal with the humanitarian situation in the country and give priority to those who have been displaced by war."
Mohamed Nur, a Somali journalist based in Mogadishu, told Al Jazeera that people had taken to the streets to celebrate their new president.
"They think he is the best leader ever [to be] chosen as president of Somalia since 1960, when the country gained independence," he said.

Instability
Ahmed's other main rival, Nur Hassan Hussein, the prime minister, pulled out of the election after the first round.

The Somali transitional parliament held both the presidential vote and the swearing-in ceremony in Djibouti due to instability in its home country.
Ahmed vowed to form a broad-based government and invited all armed groups in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation to join the UN-sponsored reconciliation effort.
After being elected, he said he would reach out to former government leaders as well as to al-Shabab, the former armed wing of the Islamic Courts movement.
"Very soon, I will form a government which represents the people of Somalia," Ahmed said after being elected. "We will live peacefully with East African countries and we want to co-operate with them."
"I am extending a hand to all Somali armed groups who are still opposed to this process and inviting them to join us."
Al-Shabab has vowed to carry on fighting and already controls much of south and central Somalia, as well as large areas of Mogadishu, the capital.AU summit
After the swearing-in ceremony, Ahmed was expected to fly to Ethiopia for an African Union (AU) summit before returning to Somalia to put together his government.Abdirahman Abdi Shakur, an adviser to the president's party, told Al Jazeera that security was one of the main issues Ahmed would seek to tackle. "I would say that there will be huge challenges and at the same time opportunities," he said.
"We are finally seeing progress from the hard work by all sides to create an inclusive parliament"
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, UN's special envoy for Somalia
"Our approach is reconciliation not confrontation and we try to speak to everyone wherever they are in our country."
Abdullahi Yusuf, the former Somali president, resigned on December 29 after he was accused by the international community of being an obstacle to peace.
As part of an agreement brokered by the UN between the opposition and the transitional government, parliament was expanded to 550 seats, with 200 members of Ahmed's ARS group being sworn in earlier in the week.
Another 75 seats are still to be filled by other opposition and civil society groups, as part of an effort to bring former opponents into the government.

Election hailed
The parliament voted on Wednesday to extend by two years the term of the transitional government. Its original term of five years would have ended in seven months.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN's special envoy for Somalia, praised Saturday's "transparent" presidential vote.
"We are finally seeing progress from the hard work by all sides to create an inclusive parliament," Ould-Abdallah said in a statement.
"It is up to you, the fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters to prevail on your children, your young brothers and friends to stop the violence. For the last 20 years, it has not helped any group to win lasting victory."
Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991, when Mohammed Siad Barre was forced from power.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/01/200913191343772174.html

Somalia prepares for new leader

2009-01-29T06:37:00.000Z

Somalia's parliament has sworn in new opposition members as it prepares to elect a new president.
The new members belong to the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), a major opposition group.
Parliament, meeting in neighbouring Djibouti, also extended the mandate of the transitional federal government for another two years.
But the powerful Islamist al-Shabab militia says it will not recognise the new administration.
One-hundred-and-forty-nine ARS members were sworn in, including the group's leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed who is standing for president.
He was first to take the oath. With his hand on the Koran, he swore to protect Somalia's constitution.
'Fruits of reconciliation'
The expanded administration is part of a United Nations-backed reconciliation process aimed at restoring stability to Somalia after nearly two decades of conflict.

'I'm not afraid of al-Shabab'
UN special envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said: "We are going to tell the Somalis to assume their responsibilities. I expect Somalia to form its government and return to the capital Mogadishu."
A number of people have announced their candidacy for the presidency, including Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, former Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi, and former warlord Mohamed Qanyare Afrah.
Mr Hussein, who is considered one of the front-runners, appealed to groups opposed to the peace process to take part.
"I hope these people will join and see the fruits of reconciliation," he said.
But analysts say it is unlikely that peace will return soon to Somalia.
Al-Shabab has seized the town of Baidoa, which had been the seat of the Somali parliament.
The Islamist militia has declared Sharia law in the town, and parliament now works from Djibouti.
Some 16,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict and a million more have been forced from their homes.
The Horn of Africa country has not had an effective central government since 1991.

Ethiopia begins Somalia pullout

2009-01-18T10:40:00.001Z

source http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/africa/ 7808495.stm

Ethiopian military forces have begun pulling out of Somalia after two years helping the transitional government fight insurgents.Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's spokesman said the withdrawal would take several days.A convoy of about 30 Ethiopian vehicles loaded with troops and equipment left the Somali capital, Mogadishu.Hours earlier a roadside bomb killed two Ethiopian soldiers and a number of civilians died when troops opened fire."The withdrawal of our troops from Somalia has entered the implementation phase," Bereket Simon, special adviser to the Ethiopian premier, told Reuters news agency."The withdrawal is not an event that can be completed within a day. It will be finalised as quickly as possible."Ethiopia has suffered a steady drain on its resources and a constant trickle of casualties but has received much blame and scant praise for its deployment, the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt reports from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Bomb attack

About 3,400 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers from the African Union in Somalia are taking up positions vacated by the Ethiopians. Witnesses say the start of Friday's withdrawal passed without incident as a convoy of trucks loaded with troops, mattresses and other equipment left Mogadishu.A long column of vehicles left the capital for the small town of Afgoye, south-west of the capital, on the road to Baidoa and the border.But at least four civilians died earlier in the day when Ethiopian troops on patrol opened fire after two of their number died in a roadside blast at a busy junction in the south of the capital."A bomb exploded near a group of Ethiopian soldiers at the K4 crossroads," Somali police colonel Ali Hasan told AFP news agency."There were many civilian victims."Addis Ababa announced late last year that it would fully withdraw from Somalia by the first days of 2009.There are fears the withdrawal of the 3,000-strong Ethiopian force could lead to a power vacuum and that violence will continue despite a peace deal between Somalia's transitional government and one of the main opposition factions.Others say the pullout, together with this week's resignation of President Abdullahi Yusuf, could make it easier for a new government to be formed, including moderate Islamist forces.The president's critics had accused him of obstructing of a peace deal with the Islamist-led armed opposition.One hard-line opposition group, al-Shabab, seen as key to any prospect of a lasting peace, is snubbing the idea of power-sharing and has said Somalia risks a new civil war.Our correspondent says its involvement in Somalia has not been a happy one for Ethiopia.The first push, at Christmas 2006, went like clockwork. Opposition melted away before the Ethiopians and the transitional government was saved from imminent collapse.But our correspondent says that the government has not managed to use the time the Ethiopians bought it to establish a soundly based administration while the insurgency has revived in a more extreme form.Government forces only control parts of Mogadishu and the town of Baidoa.Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.

posted by Amare Abebaw,Ethiopia

Peacekeeper killed in Mogadishu

2009-01-08T10:50:00.000Z

An African Union peacekeeper has been killed and another one injured by a roadside bomb in the Somali capital.

It comes days after the AU warned it may have no option but to leave Somalia unless its force was bolstered.
Ethiopia has begun withdrawing its 3,000-strong force from Somalia, two years after it helped the interim government oust Islamists in power.
In a separate attack, a man working for the UN was killed by three masked gunmen in south-west Gedo region.
Ethiopia's departure follows an agreement with the Somali transitional government and the more moderate wing of the Islamist-led political opposition during UN-sponsored reconciliation talks in Djibouti.
But government forces only control parts of capital, Mogadishu, and the town of Baidoa.
While Islamist and nationalist insurgents have vowed to overthrow what remains of the government, whose president resigned last month.

Battles with al-Shabab
The 3,600-strong AU force has faced frequent attacks from Islamist insurgents - especially the al-Shabab group - in the capital, Mogadishu.

The latest attack brings the number of AU troops killed in Somalia to nine, since the first Ugandan troops were deployed there in 2007.
A spokesman for the AU force said the incident took place on the outskirts of Mogadishu, when a convoy of peacekeepers was hit by an improvised explosive device.
The shooting in Gedo took place on Tuesday while Ibrahim Hussein Duale was monitoring a school feeding in a World Food Programme-supported school in Yubsan village.
Witnesses say the gunmen approached him while he was seated, ordered him to stand up and then shot him, the UN said in a statement.
The leader of a pro-government militia fighting al-Shabab in Gedo, Barre Hiraale, told the BBC's Somali Service that al-Shabab was behind the attack.
Mr Hiraale is a member of parliament and former warlord of Kismayo where he was ousted by al-Shabab fighters earlier this year.
On Tuesday his fighters took the town of Bardhere in Gedo from al-Shabab and fighting has been reported in neighbouring Bai region, considered one of the main bases for al-Shabab.
Observers say Mr Hiraale is being armed by the withdrawing Ethiopian troops, an allegation he denies.

UN criticised
Over the last year fighting has displaced roughly half of Mogadishu's population and half the country is dependent on food aid.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991 and in that time thousands have also fled to neighbouring Kenya.

Thousands of refugees have fled to neighbouring Kenya
Meanwhile, the UN's refugee agency has come in for criticism for saying recently that Somalis fleeing the civil war would be better off staying with relatives as the agency had no space in the main camp just over the border.
Dadaab camp on Kenya's eastern frontier with Somalia was designed for 90-000 refugees, but is now struggling to cope with three times that number, and hundreds more arrive every day.
The BBC's Peter Greste in Nairobi says that last year, more than 60,000 turned up at the gates after sneaking or bribing their way through the border that has been officially closed for most of the past two years.
But according to Judy Wakahiu of the Refugee Consortium of Kenya, not accepting refugees amounts to an abrogation of the UNHCR's responsibilities.
"I don't think its right to do that because according to the mandate of the UNHCR, they are supposed to receive and protect refugees regardless of the number," she told the BBC.
Kenya's immigration minister has admitted keeping the border closed has created problems, but has insisted that national security comes first.
Our reporter says the government has been negotiating with local communities for the past two years to acquire land for another camp near the border, but so far those communities have remained hostile.

Somalia's president quits office

2008-12-29T09:05:00.002Z

Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was appointed president four years ago

Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed has told parliament he is resigning.

The news comes a few days after the resignation of the man he had recently appointed as prime minister.
Ex-Prime Minister Mohamed Mahamud Guled quit last week saying his appointment was destabilising the government.
Mr Yusuf, elected four years ago, said he had failed to bring peace. The parliament speaker would take over leadership responsibilities.

'Failed in duty'
He addressed parliamentarians in Baidoa, saying: "As I promised when you elected me on October 14, 2004, I would stand down if I failed to fulfil my duty, I have decided to return the responsibility you gave me."
In his speech, broadcast on national radio, he said: "When I took power I pledged three things.
"If I was unable to fulfil my duty I will resign. Second, I said I will do everything in my power to make government work across the country. That did not happen either.
"Third, I asked the leaders to co-operate with me for the common good of the people. That did not happen," he said, according to Associated Press news agency.
Mr Yusuf had faced criticism for appointing Mr Guled in defiance of Somali MPs, who said the dismissal of his predecessor, Nur Hassan Hussein, two weeks previously, had been illegal.
The president had clashed in recent months with Mr Nur over attempts to negotiate a peace deal with the Islamist-led armed opposition.
Mohamed Mahamud Guled said he had chosen to resign "so that I am not seen as a stumbling block to the peace process which is going well now".
Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7802622.stm

Somali arms ban 'repeatedly broken'

2008-12-28T06:46:00.002Z

Somalia has been largely lawless since Siad Barre was removed from power in 1991 [File: EPA]

A 16-year embargo on arms shipments to Somalia has been repeatedly violated, according to a United Nations report.
The illegal trafficking of weapons is fuelling the conflict between government forces, Ethiopian troops and armed opposition groups, with supplies financed by Eritrea arriving from Yemen, the UN report published on Friday read.
"Most serviceable weapons and almost all ammunition currently available in the country have been delivered since 1992, in violation of the embargo," the UN group monitoring the embargo said in the report. "Commercial imports, mainly from Yemen, remain the most consistent source of arms, ammunition and military material to Somalia."
Armed opposition groups have retaken control of large areas of the Horn of Africa nation, launching near daily attacks on the transitional government forces and their Ethiopian allies.
The report said breaches in the embargo are being financed from sources "including the government of Eritrea, private donors in the Arab and Islamic world and organised fund-raising activities among Somali diaspora groups".
Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have been accused of fighting a proxy-war in Somalia, have been in dispute over their shared border since a bloody conflict ended in 2000.
Criminal gangsThe report said that criminal gangs, including pirates operating off the coast, were adding to the lawlessness in the country and are "typically self-financing, employing the proceeds from piracy and kidnapping to procure arms, ammunition and equipment".

"Some of these groups now rival or surpass established Somali authorities in terms of their military capabilities and resource bases," it said.Earlier this week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorising the use of land operations against Somali pirates, who have captured dozens of ships and held hundreds of crew members for ransom over the past year.The Security Council on Friday voted for the mandate of the monitoring group, which recommends groups and individuals who should be blacklisted for their role in the arms trade, to be extended for another year.
Somalia's transitional government, which is based in the central town of Baidoa because of the security situation in the capital Mogadishu, has effective control over only a small part of the country. Somalia has had no effective government since a coup removed Siad Barre from power in 1991, leading to an almost total breakdown in law and order.

Somali group seeks Sharia expansion

2008-12-28T06:41:00.001Z

Fighters with Al-Shabab, an armed group that has taken control of the southern city of Kismayu, have told Al Jazeera they plan to impose Islamic law across Somalia.
Kismayu, Somalia's third biggest city, was once one of the most dangerous places in the south of the country.
However, relative calm has been restored to Kismayu after the Al-Shabab Mujahideen Movement and one of its key allies, the Raaskambooni Camp Mujahideen, seized control of the city from local clans three months ago.
Abu Ayman, the leader of the Raaskambooni Camp Mujahideen, told Al Jazeera: "We want to use Kismayu as an example and a model of our rule to the rest of Somalia.
"Our aim is to get residents in faraway towns inviting us to come and govern them according to the way of Allah. The calm in Kismayu has benefited its down-trodden most."
Most of Kismayu’s residents agree with Ayman, saying they are now able to go about normal life without fear of attacks by marauding gangs of armed men who had terrorised them periodically for nearly 18 years.
"I remember times when young boys with knives used to rob us of our daily earnings. Now we can carry lots of money without any fear of being robbed," Mohammed Fundi, a porter and Kismayu resident, said.
Seyyid Ali, also a porter in the city, said: "We used to be sort of enslaved. When we load six lorries, we used to be paid for just one or two. Today we get wages equal to our output. We have justice here."

Peace, at a price
But Mohammed Adow, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Kismayu, said the apparent peace had come at a price.
In depth
“International aid agencies, the lifeline of Somalia’s poor, fled the town because of the fighting.
"They have still not returned as the Islamists have little tolerance for anything - or anyone – foreign," he said.
Adow said that "the suffering is huge as the poor are largely left to fend for themselves".
Kismayu has been left with just one hospital to serve the needs of nearly one million people from the city and surrounding areas.
The hospital used to be run by Medicins Sans Frontieres, who were forced to abandon the centre eight months ago after members of staff were killed.
Now, it is common for just one doctor to be on duty at a time, and medical supplies are dwindling.
Total breakdown
Dr Ali Hassan, who works at the hospital, said: “Our needs are many. Imagine a hospital like this operating without assistance from government or aid agencies. We have a shortage of drugs, equipment and staff are not motivated in any way."
Adow described the people of Kismayu as "numb to the myriad problems surrounding them".
"We used to be sort of enslaved... today we get wages equal to our output. We have justice here"
Seyyid Ali, porter and resident of Kismayu"They [residents] have survived the vagaries of war. They have weathered the almost 20 changes in Kismayu’s administrations over the past 18 years and its people have learned to live with and obey any group that has the upper hand," he said.
Somalia has had no effective government since a coup removed Siad Barre from power in 1991, leading to an almost total breakdown in law and order across most of the country.
The only relative stability experienced by some parts of the country came during the brief six-month rule of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006.
However, they were driven out of the capital Mogadishu, and other areas, by Ethiopian and government troops – sparking an upsurge in fighting.
Ethiopia is due to remove its troops from war-torn Somalia by the end of the year