Taken Question
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC
January 17, 2008
QUESTION TAKEN AT JANUARY 17, 2008 DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2008/jan/99443.htm
Somaliland
Question: Prior to this week, when was the last time that senior U.S. officials met with officials of Somaliland?
While the United States does not recognize Somaliland as an independent state, and we continue to believe that the question of Somaliland’s independence should be resolved by the African Union, we continue regularly to engage with Somaliland as a regional administration and to support programs that encourage democratization and economic development in the Somaliland region.
Reflecting the nature of our engagement, the U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamoto met with Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin and his delegation when they were passing through Addis Ababa in early January 2008; the U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger held consultations with Somaliland Foreign Minister Abdillahi Mohamed Dualeh and his team in Nairobi in Fall 2007; and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi E. Frazer also met with Somaliland Foreign Minister Dualeh during the African Union summit held in January 2007.
Released on January 17, 2008
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2008/jan/99466.htm
Project : support to primary school education -- location : Hargeisa, Somaliland (19 schools)
American Institutes for Research (AIR)
USAID. Bur. for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade. Ofc. of Education
Crisis Education
Project: Support to Primary School Education
Location: Hargeisa, Somaliland (19 schools)
Implementing Organization: CARE International in Somaliland
Type of Programming: Enhancing the quality of formal primary school education
Target group/beneficiaries: Direct beneficiaries include primary school students with a special focus on girls, teachers, school administrators, and communities
Stage: Crisis (long-term instability and IDPs)
Environmental Context of the Program
SOCIAL: Over the past two years, the population of Northwest Somalia has increased dramatically due to the large number of returnees arriving in Somaliland from the camps in Ethiopia. Most, if not all, of the returnee families were able to send their children to school in the camps, and there is the expectation that educational facilities will also be available in Somaliland. This has been demonstrated by the widespread community support for Koranic schools. A 2002 assessment of available facilities in Hargeisa, carried out by CARE and the Ministry of Education (MoE), revealed that 70% of the students learn while sitting on the floor, while many schools teach classes in shifts, due to the limited number of usable classrooms. Approximately one-third (36%) of school-aged children are not attending school, either due to lack of facilities or lack of family resources. In the 21 government managed primary schools in Hargeisa town, there are an estimated 327 teachers, with an approximate student population of 21,300 students. This represents a student/teacher ratio of 66:1.
CULTURAL/RELIGION: Somalis are a relatively homogeneous ethnic group from a cultural linguistic point of view, stretching across at least four countries in the Horn of Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. Their main internal social differentiation is on the basis of clans and sub-clans, but even within the clan system, most clans and sub-clans are transnational. In this system, lacking a hierarchical chain of authority or anything resembling the state or a judiciary, social relationships are defined in terms of kinship based on descent from a common ancestor. In Somali society, as in most pastoral societies, kinship is traced through patrilineal descent. The genealogies, which traditionally both Somali boys and girls have to learn by heart as part of their initiation to adulthood, define an individual’s place in society as well as political relations.
ECONOMIC: In terms of average income, Somaliland is economically one of the world’s least developed countries and its economic performance is heavily dependent on the regional prices of livestock. Poverty is pervasive in this largely subsistence economy, which hinges on
the vagaries of the rainfall, trapped by extreme social conservatism and threatened by uncertainty of peaceful existence as a result of centuries-old clan-based discord and rivalry.
The cash economy of the country is dominated by the exports of livestock by the trade from Ethiopia in the stimulant leafy shrub, Khat, fruits, vegetables, and coffee, and the import of
manufactured goods.
Political Relationships: Somaliland, a self-declared republic that was formerly the northwest section of Somalia, has in recent years found a measure of stability after the February 2005.
TARGET GROUP: The target groups for the Support to Primary School Education include communities and school administrators. The goal is to provide structurally sound sanitary facilities and classroom environments that promote learning to students in the targeted schools in Hargeisa.
MATERIAL/PHYSICAL RESOURCES: Schools are rehabilitated to provide sound, sanitary facilities and classroom environments that promote learning. Additionally fences have been put around the school to restrict access to school grounds. Without a proper fence, schools and even classrooms have been invaded by returnees or unemployed youths who do not attend schools, greatly disrupting learning, as well as discouraging parents from sending their girl children to school. Fencing and gates help to create a secure, peaceful environment for learning, particularly for girls. Desks and chairs for teachers as well as desks and benches for students have also been provided as well as textbooks and teaching kits, which include items such as world maps and globes, mathematical charts, blackboard rulers and chalk, and stationary items.
FINANCIAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES: Funding has been provided by EU with communities providing in-kind support. Communities have contributed an average of 11% of the rehabilitation costs of schools. CARE has worked with communities and other stakeholders during the rehabilitation process, with Community Education Committees(CECs)1 playing a key role in the selection and supervision of contractors undertaking rehabilitation work.
COMMUNITY MOBILIZATION: Capacity building for CECs has focused on professional development for community mobilization, DELTA (development, empowerment and leadership teams in action), strategic planning, and financial management. To enhance the long-term sustainability of schools, the project works with CECs, school administrators, and the (defacto) Ministry of Education to identify viable income generating activities. Potential income generating activities include literacy, numeracy, and business skills training for adults. Schools are encouraged to offer services targeted at women heads of households.
Professional development is also provided to CECs on how to develop effective fundraising strategies and how to identify and target potential sponsors, such as businesses who might be interested in providing either cash or in-kind support.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: In-service teachers have participated in workshops that seek to improve the teaching content and methodologies2. The project has worked with teachers in both a workshop and on-the-job setting, and the content of workshops based on an in-class assessment of teachers. Education officials were also included in capacity building activities that sought to improve their ability to provide supervisory support to teachers in the target school and the education sector as a whole. Specific training topics have included computer applications, management, supervisory skills, finance and administration, strategic planning and policy development. The application of skills and knowledge gained during these workshops has resulted in the development of strategic plans and policy guidelines for the education sector, as well an increased level of monitoring by the education authorities of teachers’ performance and school enrolment.
1 Community Education Committees (CECs) are similar to Parent Teachers Associations.
2 This includes teachers from the 18 government-managed primary schools that CARE worked with, as well as three additional government schools in Hargeisa whose teachers were included at the request of the Ministry of Education. 2
Education in Crisis Project Profile: Somaliland
Programming Interventions: Impact and Effectiveness
ACCESS: CARE established and strengthened the capacity of 18 community education committees (CECs) and (de facto) Ministry of Education officials as well as rehabilitated 18 schools. The increased sense of community ownership and the physical rehabilitation of schools has resulted in an increase in enrolment of both boys and girls, with a total of 21,307 students benefiting from improved educational facilities by the end of the project. This represented an increase in the number of targeted students of 7,307, or 52% over the original target.
MANAGEMENT: The project worked with communities and the (de facto) Ministry of Education to establish CECs that would have responsibility for overseeing activities in the targeted schools. Capacity-building Professional development was provided to CECs for their roles and responsibilities, health and nutrition, and school management. The CECs played a key role in the preparation of the schools’ development plans, as well as the mobilization of communities’ contribution either in cash or in kind. In addition, CECs participated in the selection and supervision of contractors undertaking rehabilitation activities, and they made inspection visits to ensure that children maintain basic personal hygiene. Of the 18 CECs that CARE worked with during the project, approximately 61% were actively involved in project activities, while the remaining 39% played only a limited role. This was in part due to the rather high turnover rate of CEC members in many of the committees.
OVERALL PROGRAM EFFECTIVENESS: Teacher professional development components requiring additional training include the effective use of available teaching tools, increased understanding of how children learn, effective disciplinary methods, and handling a large number of students. Furthermore, raising teachers’ awareness about issues such as gender, as well as how to identify and work with students suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome linked to civil war, enhanced their effectiveness in the classroom. To facilitate the long-term sustainability of teacher training activities, CARE is coordinating with education officials to identify training priorities. It is anticipated that the training will focus on material development, teaching methodologies, and child development. Below is a list of potential training topics:
> Development of teaching aids and materials
> Child psychology and development
> Teacher effectiveness training
> Gender sensitivity
> Children with special needs
Phase II of the Support to Primary School Education is also advocating with education official to raise awareness about the special needs of slow learners. The project seeks to promote an increase in the number of female teachers as a way of promoting girl child education. Similarly, positive experiences with girls’ education, such as separate classrooms for girl students, will be explored and tested where possible. These advocacy efforts will not form a separate component, but rather will be integrated into project activities where appropriate.
EQUIP1: Building Educational Quality through Classrooms, Schools, and Communities is a multi-faceted program designed to raise the quality of classroom teaching and the level of student learning by effecting school-level changes. EQUIP1 serves all levels of education, from early childhood development for school readiness, to primary and secondary education, adult basic education, pre-vocational training, and the provision of life-skills. Activities range from teacher support in course content and instructional practices, to principal support for teacher performance, and community involvement for improving school management and infrastructure. EQUIP1 works with food for education issues and contributes to the provision of education and training in
crisis and post-crisis environments.
EQUIP1 is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Cooperative Agreement No. GDG-A-00-03-00008-00
Web site:
http://www.EQUIP123.net
Email: EQUIP1@air.org
RIGHTS-SOMALIA: UN Urged to Probe War Crimes
Joyce Mulama
NAIROBI, Nov 8 (IPS) - Rights groups are sceptical of the ability of the proposed Somali government to address the thorny issues of human rights abuses which have been at the heart of the collapse of Somalia since 1991.
The proposed government, which will be formed in neighbouring Kenya this month, is expected to relocate to the capital Mogadishu by the end of the year.
Even before Somalia’s peace agreement was signed in Kenya’s capital Nairobi last month, the G10, an umbrella of ten local human rights groups, had warned that the warlords jockeying for power were not the right people to restore human rights in the Horn of African country.
‘’Leaders and commanders of armed factions who would qualify for indictment for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity have been negotiating a peace deal whose mainstay is power-sharing for governance in a post-conflict Somalia,’’ said G10 in its ‘Human Rights Status Report: The Somali Situation, published by NOVIB, a Dutch relief organisation.
‘’The fact that the peace (process) is dominated by warlords raises an important issue: how will the (process) yield a framework that addresses past gross human rights violations including documented cases of political killings, massacres, mass rapes indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians, forced occupations and displacements, among others?’’ the report wondered.
Somalia’s peace talks have been taking place in Kenya since 2002. The talks culminated into the election of 275 members of parliament on Aug. 22, 2004, some of whom are warlords controlling powerful factions and involved in armed combat.
Mediated by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional body, comprising Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Djibouti, the peace process is aimed at ending the over-a-decade conflict. The process also resulted into the election of a speaker Sep. 15, 2004. Similarly, delegates at the talks elected Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as president Oct. 10, and Ali Mohammed Ghedi as prime minister Nov. 3.
Ghedi is expected to name a cabinet in the next 30 days that will form a new government, putting an end to lawlessness in Somalia. Somalia has been without a central government since 1991.
The Horn of African country plunged into turmoil after the ouster of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Since then, it has been in the hands of warlords who have been fighting to gain control over large tracts of territories. Some territories have declared autonomy from Somalia, such as Puntland in the north East and Somaliland in the North West.
Now rights groups and women parliamentarians want the international community to help the proposed government to address the human rights violations, particularly rape. The groups have asked the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to appoint a Special Rapporteur on violence against women to lead a mission to Somalia, to establish the magnitude of violation of human rights.
Somali women parliamentarians have also called upon the international community to advocate for a commission to look into war crimes particularly rape, which they say has been used as a weapon of war by militias.
‘’We are asking the international community to come in because it is difficult to trust (warlords) to set up measures of addressing crimes against humanity such as rape,’’ Asha Abdalla, a legislator and human rights campaigner, told IPS Nov. 4. According to her, during the early period of the war, a woman was raped every one hour.
The Human Rights Status Report concurs that rape of women was and is widespread, and that it has been used as a tool to punish and intimidate ethnic factions. ‘’Thousands of Somali girls and women were raped during war time in the country between 1991 and 1994. War crimes against the female population have been committed at unprecedented levels and with impunity in Somalia,’’ said the report.
It singles out establishment of rape camps as one of the worst atrocities committed against Somali women, particularly in Mogadishu, the country’s capital. ‘’These were the result of militiamen who abducted several women, imprisoned them in villas and then subjected them to repeated rapes and other forms of sexual abuse. While all the women and girls were vulnerable to these attacks, rapists usually targeted those belonging to rival factions or who had weak clan affiliations,’’ said the report.
The militiamen have also been accused of following Somali women into refugee camps in Kenya to gang-rape them.
Critics say these are serious offences that should not go unpunished. ‘’We, as women parliamentarians, are taking this up and we want action taken against offenders once found guilty by a truth commission, if it is formed,’’ Abdalla said.
Observers say the proposed truth commission should also deal with arbitrary killings. The killings are widespread due to the high prevalence of arms in the country, which has resulted from the 13 years of lawlessness.
Aid agencies have termed Somalia as one of the most highly armed in the world. In 1999, the Red Cross said the 1.3 million residents of Mogadishu alone possessed more than a million guns, out of an estimated 550 million small guns in circulation across the world.
It is believed that due to the absence of mechanisms to address proliferation of small arms and lack of a proper administration including the judiciary, the rule of the gun and bullets have become ways of dispute resolution, access to and control of resources, and exertion of power and governance.
According to statistics compiled by rights groups in southern Somalia, more than 530 civilian deaths from armed conflict were recorded between July 2002 and June 2003. However, the organisations say the figures could be higher since many of the incidents go unreported.
Human rights groups have also raised concern over kidnappings, which have been taking place in Somalia. Most perpetrators are said to be militias associated with the warlords.
At a July 2004 press briefing in Nairobi, Martin Hill, Amnesty International’s researcher for Horn of Africa noted that about 300 kidnappings were carried out last year. ‘’But the figure could be higher,’’ he said.
The conflict has resulted into displacements of Somalis. Statistics from the United Nations indicate that the first year of the war alone saw over one million people fleeing Somalia, while over two million became internally displaced. Currently, the UN estimates there are about one million Somalis in the Diaspora.
Analysts say the only way to address atrocities and forge reconciliation among Somalis is through creation of an internationally monitored truth and reconciliation commission. ‘’Somalis have been hurt. But, since they are a forgiving community, if told the truth and perpetrators known, forgiving and healing can take place,’’ Khaleef Hassan, a renowned political analyst for Somalia, told IPS.
‘’If the government takes the route of a commission to look into abuses, it will not go wrong. It must exhibit the will for respecting and upholding human rights,’’ he said.
Hill urged Somalia’s proposed government to be committed to human rights. ‘’New human rights abuses must not be tolerated and those responsible for past crimes against humanity must be held accountable. Those implicated in the crimes (warlords) should not hold public offices.’’ (END/2004)
August 13, 2007
Human rights violations in Somalia
All sides in the current war in Somalia are committing war crimes by indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas and the execution of captured combatants as well as civilians according to Human Rights Watch. According to the report, “Shell Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu,” (
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/08/06/somali16599.htm)the fighting in the Somali capital in March and April resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the displacement of over 400,000 people. “The warring parties have all shown criminal disregard for the well-being of the civilian population of Mogadishu,” said Ken Roth, executive director for Human Rights Watch. “The UN Security Council’s indifference to this crisis has only added to the tragedy.”
Ethiopia, with the backing of the United States, invaded Somalia late last year. Most Americans were not aware our government was giving full support to Ethiopia until reports came out regarding the involvement of U.S. military personnel in an attack against an Al Qaeda operative that resulted in the deaths of a number of civilians.
This from the BBC:
- All sides have committed war crimes in Somalia's conflict this year, according to lobby group Human Rights Watch.
- It says the worst abuses have been by Ethiopian soldiers, who are supporting the government against insurgents.
- Ethiopians have often indiscriminately attacked civilian areas and looted hospitals, its report says.
- While insurgents have fired mortars into residential areas and executed civilians, since Islamists were driven from power in Mogadishu last December.
- Both Ethiopia and the Somali government have denied the claims, reports Reuters news agency. More than 1,000 people were killed this year in the heaviest fighting since 1991, as Ethiopian and government troops tried to drive the insurgents out of Mogadishu.
- "The insurgency placed civilians at grave risk by deploying among them," said Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth.
"But that is no justification for Ethiopia's calculated shelling and rocketing of whole neighborhoods."
"Commanders who knowingly or recklessly order indiscriminate attacks are responsible for war crimes," the report said.
But these charges were denied by Ethiopia.
"As usual, Human Rights Watch is engaged in its now well-known fabrication, and in misinforming the world in unsubstantiated fairy-tales," Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, told Reuters.
- Somali government troops played a "secondary" role, backing up the Ethiopians but failed to help civilians, said the report - Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu.
- Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon told Reuters the government's only goal was "to restore sanity" not "massacre its own people".
- The UN says some 400,000 people have fled the violence in Mogadishu in the past four months. HRW says the international community has ignored the suffering in Somalia.
"The UN Security council's indifference to this crisis has only added to the tragedy," said Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth.
- Mr Roth urged the Security Council to make strong provisions to protect civilians when it discusses proposals to turn the 1,500 strong African Union force into a UN peacekeeping mission.
Since the end of the April offensive, insurgents have continued to stage deadly attacks on an almost daily basis.
Over the weekend, two prominent journalists were killed.
- Some 1,600 Ugandan peacekeepers are in Somalia but they have failed to end the violence. A reconciliation conference is under way in Mogadishu but Islamists and the city's clan elders have refused to attend unless the Ethiopians leave the country.
http://hoosierinva.blogspot.com/2007/08/human-rights-violations-in-somalia.html
UNICEF Press centre
Children in Somalia speak out for peace
"I would like to go to school and become a pilot"
NAIROBI, 11 December 2007 - The launch of the 2008 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) for Somalia, featured the voices of children, particularly that of a young girl who wants to be a pilot.
“I would like to go to school and become a pilot,” said Fartoun Ibrahim, aged 14. “I am asking the world to help us. I want my missing brother back. I want to leave this place with my family and live elsewhere.”
Somalia has seen a drastic deterioration in the humanitarian situation since the start of 2007 with over 1.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Less than a fourth of Somalia’s population can access basic health services and only 29 per cent use a safe water source. Preventable or easily treated diseases remains the main killers of children and women.
“Children like Fartoun live in one of the most vulnerable protection environments in the world,” said UNICEF’s Representative to Somalia, Christian Balslev-Olesen. “Women and children in the centre and south of the country are the worst-affected, with thousands of families displaced, livelihoods disrupted, and an estimated 83,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition,” he added.
The 2008 CAP aims to address the most urgent needs of the 1.5 million people affected. As one of the leading agencies providing emergency assistance to the children and women of Somalia, UNICEF has appealed for US$ 47 million for 2008. This amount will enable UNICEF and its partners to provide critical life saving interventions to 350,000 children under the age of five; vaccinate 1.4 million children against polio; and treat up to 90,000 malnourished children.
UNICEF will also provide 1.2 million displaced or vulnerable persons with access to safe water and sanitation; enable 120,000 children to resume their schooling and equip 20,000 girls and women with knowledge and skills to prevent HIV, while also mobilising communities to reunite families, end the recruitment of child soldiers and prevent injuries from mines and unexploded ordinance.
With generous funding from UNICEF and its partners the 2007 CAP, were able to ensure, amongst other results, that half a million people had access to basic health care; 1.6 million children were immunized against polio and 883,000 against measles; some 200,000 people had access to safe drinking water, nearly 60,000 displaced children were able to resume their schooling, over 240,000 displaced and vulnerable households received essential shelter and survival items, and 28,000 young girls and women learned skills to protect themselves and others from HIV, sexual violence and abuse.
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/media_42193.html
League of Minnesota Human Rights Commissions
Somali Culture: An Islamic Point of View
By some estimates, more than 40,000 Somali have settled in Minnesota in the past few years, leaving behind possessions, relatives, and a country ravaged by civil war for a new life in a radically different culture. But there's one thing they could not leave behind: their Islamic faith...
An Islamic Point of View
"We think, act and live within the framework of Islam," explains Adan Mursal, Chairman of Somali American Friendship Association, who counsels refugees and assists those who face discrimination. "We are guided by our religion, it is not something we can abandon."
To be Muslim, followers must show their faith and devotion to Allah by obeying the "five pillars of Islam." They must:
- Pronounce the "declaration of faith" (Allah is the only God, and Mohammed is his messenger);
- Pray five times each day ;
- Make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca;
- Donate money -- pay alms -- to the poor;
- Fast each day during the month of Ramadan.
As Minnesota's Somali population grows, it is not uncommon for Islamic values to collide with the practices of American employers, especially when the employer is unfamiliar with Islam. Among the issues raised by the clash of cultures, the Islamic requirement to pray has proved a particular challenge for both Somali workers and their bosses.
"To be Muslim, prayer is something that you have to do. It is not something you have a choice about," explains Mursal. And no matter what shift a Muslim works or when he chooses to sleep, the five prayers must be done at fixed times each day -- approximately noon, mid afternoon, sunset, early evening and at about 6 AM.
For a Muslim employee working a typical eight-hour shift, at least two breaks will likely fall during work hours. Under the Minnesota Human Rights Act, non-discrimination may require employers to make a reasonable accommodation for an employee's religious practices, unless to do so would be an undue burden. While some employers have been cooperative, others have objected to providing special breaks or otherwise accommodating the need to pray.
"We've had a problem with a large number of employers who would not give us time to pray," says Mursal. Some Somali Muslims have been fired for asking for time to pray; others have chosen to quit and find other employment. "We have seen so many different incidents that would not cause an undue hardship, but the accommodation was not there."
Although a prayer may take only five minutes, some employers have objected to granting the time, especially in assembly-line situations in which other employees may be idled if one worker is unavailable. Because many Somali have found factory work, the problems can arise often. "They say, 'While you are praying, I cannot let others just stand there while I pay them, '" Mursal says.
But some employers have been flexible, finding alternative assignments to minimize down time, and offering accommodations that work for both employer and employee. "If there is a willingness on the part of the employer as well as the employee, we can always work something out," Mursal suggests. An employee might be allowed to give up 30 minutes of a lunch break, in exchange for two 15-minute prayer breaks, for example.
Prayer is not the only Islamic practice that has caused controversy and need for accommodation in the workplace. Dress codes and grooming have also been contentious issues, especially for Islamic women who are expected to practice modesty through certain traditional forms of dress. A head scarf is common, as is a Direh, or long, billowing dress.
In one incident involving an employer at the Twin Cities International Airport, a Somali woman who worked in food preparation had been allowed to wear her traditional cultural dress, until one day when company policy apparently changed, and she was ordered to wear pants. She refused on religious grounds, and was later terminated.
"Her cultural dress did not prevent her from doing her job, and the employer's handbook did not say anything about dress," Mursal observes. "What some of the Somali are saying is, if their clothing doesn't prevent them from doing their function, then they should be able to wear it."
Other issues that may need accommodation include Islamic dietary requirements -- pork is strictly prohibited -- and the Islamic prohibitions against alcohol, which could be a consideration for Somali cab drivers. "In our religion, you do not associate with alcohol," Mursal explains. "If someone is drunk, we're not going to take them."
When an accommodation is denied and a Muslim is unable to practice his faith, sometimes the reason is not economics or ill will, but ignorance.
In one incident familiar to Mursal, a Somali worker was on a scheduled, authorized break, and using the time for prayer in the lunch room. "The employer came to him and said, 'Hey, stop, let's go, there's something important to do. '" When the Muslim worker continued to pray, his boss persisted. "Hey, it's not a joke, stop," he insisted. But the worker continued with his prayers.
"The employee ended up being fired, and that was unfair," says Mursal. "And I think that employers should be more educated about what the guy was doing. It was not an exercise, like lifting weights."
While cases of potential religious discrimination have increasingly made headlines and lawsuits have become more common, most Somalis would prefer to reach an understanding with their employers. There have been far more cases of discrimination than charges or lawsuits, Mursal says, because Somali people have a tendency not to complain.
"We are new to this country, and when it comes to civil rights, it's not something that we have heard of or practiced in our country," Mursal comments. "As far as we can remember, Somali were under a dictatorship, and we had no rights at all. Police could just come in and do whatever they wanted in your house."
But change is in the air. As Somali people become aware of their rights, the willingness to walk away from unfair treatment without a fight is fading. And with more than 40,000 Somali now living in Minnesota, the need to accommodate followers of Islam, like the rights of individual believers, cannot reasonably be denied.
This material previously appeared in the Minnesota Department of Human Rights' newsletter,The Rights Stuff.
ISLAMIC FESTIVALS
Celebration of end of Ramadan: (Id aI-Fitr).
End of pilgrimage to Mecca (idai-Adha)
Birthday of Mohammed: (Mawlid al-Nabawi)
Koran revealed to Mohammed: (Layl' at al-qadr)
Somali Culture and Customs
Somali Dress
Men
Men wear western pants or a flowing plaid ma'awis (kilt} western shirts, and shawls.
On their heads they may wrap a colorful turban or wear a koofiyad (embroidered cap).
Women
Women usually wear one of the following dress:
- Direh, a long, billowing dress worn over petticoats.
- Coantino, a four-yard cloth tied over shoulder and draped around the waist.
- Toob, commonly worn throughout Africa
- Hijab, and head scarfs are very common
Customs and Courtesies
Greetings
Somali warmly greet each other with handshakes, but shaking hands with the opposite sex is avoided.
Common verbal greetings include:
- Assalam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)
- Nabad miyaa (is their peace).
- Subah wanaagsan (Good morning)
- Galab wanaagsan (Good afternoon)
- Habeeb wanaagsan (Good night)
Gestures
- Somali use sweeping hand and arm gestures to dramatize speech. Many ideas are expressed through specific hand gestures:
- A swift twist of the open hand means "nothing" or "no".
- Snapping fingers may mean "long ago" or and "so on"
- A thumb under the chin indicates "fullness".
- It is impolite to point the sole of one's foot or shoe at another person.
- It is impolite to use the index finger to call somebody; that gesture is used for calling dogs.
- The American "thumbs up" is considered obscene.
http://www.humanrights.state.mn.us/somali_islam_pov.html
Minnesota Department of Human Rights
CRIN Human Trafficking: Greed and the Trail of Death
5/25/2006
Link:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article571693.ece
The human trafficking trade out of Somalia is now one of the busiest, most lucrative and the most lethal in the world. The ferocious violence and anarchy in the region has kept the scale of profits and misery the most hidden from outside eyes.
Now, say the United Nations and humanitarian agencies, the extent of people smuggling in the region rivals traditional routes into Europe from Africa via the Mediterranean, a journey in which mass drownings are common. But the bodycount in the route from Somalia to Yemen - which leads on to the Middle East and Europe - is actually higher, and the type of deaths meted out even more shocking.
Dozens corpses are found floating in the Arabian Sea every month, often with gunshot wounds, often with hands tied behind their back - victims of traffickers who have jettisoned their cargo in the most final way.
The question of illegal migration and asylum-seekers is a hot topic now in the West, and nowhere more so than Britain, with mainstream politicians - not just from the far right - playing the race card. The latest groups of foreigners to be subjected to critical, often xenophobic, scrutiny are the Somalis, who have recently arrived in Britain large numbers. Members of the community have been blamed for recent high profile murders, and have also been accused of an array of offences from gang fighting to fraud to the importation of qat, a hallucinogenic plant.
Here, in the streets of Boosaaso, on the very tip of the horn of Africa, one gets to see the sheer grinding poverty, the drought and the endless strife that is driving the dispossessed from not only Somalia, but also neighbouring Ethiopia to risk the most perilous voyage in the world.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says about 30 boats a month are arriving in Yemen from Boosaaso. The numbers of deaths are said to be hundreds, but it could well be thousands. Earlier this month at least 39 passengers drowned after being forced to jump off their smuggling boat at gunpoint. It was one of many such incidents.
Boosaaso in Puntland, a self-declared autonomous area in north-east Somalia, is world's busiest smuggling hub. The port city, with a population of 200,000, is hosting another 12,000 from the rest of Somalia and Ethiopia seeking a passage out.
The remittance the workers who do get jobs send back to their families is the biggest foreign-revenue earner for Somalia, a country with no economic infrastructure and where the recently elected government cannot even get into the capital, Mogadishu, wracked by a civil war between Islamists and warlords. Under the rules of the "war on terror", the Americans are backing the warlords, their enemies during the US's ill-fated intervention in Somalia 13 years ago.
The few who can afford it will pay about $70 (£38) to stowaway on larger ships. But for the majority the journey will be spent packed in leaky boats manned by Kalashnikov-carrying crews who, having collected the per-head fee of about $ 30 up front, can kill them with little or no risk of ever getting caught.
The boats used for the trips are moored at the portside, swaying on the waves. Designed to take 20 to 30 people, they will have upwards of hundreds packed into them for the night time crossings. The gross overcrowding predictably leads to frequent breakdown of ships, which the owners solve by flinging their human cargoes overboard. Many of those who survive the journey are left scarred by being pressed against searing engines and exposure to bitingly cold winds at nights.
In one particularly horrific case the crew of the smuggling boat killed all the passengers, except a 10-year-old Ethiopian boy, Badesa, who was kept to clean the boat. He was eventually dumped back in Boosaaso where, after days on end with little water and no food, he was found sitting on the pavement. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) took him to a hospital and arranged his repatriation to Ethiopia. He is now recovering from starvation but unable to speak, traumatised from his horrific experience.
Women and young girls - a surprisingly large number are among the travellers - are vulnerable to sexual abuse and being sold to brothels in Arab countries. Women also have to cope with other common dangers. Farhia Ahmed Mohammed, 17, was packed into a boat with 94 others on a trip to Yemen six months ago, lasting two days and nights, when two of the passengers asked for water from the crew. "The owner and his men had water, but they refused to give it," said Farhia, a tiny girl in a red traditional jilbab, from Ethiopia."There was an argument and they shot the two men with their Kalashnikovs. Then they threw the bodies over the side. A woman who also asked for water was beaten with a stick.
"When we got near the shore the rest of us were thrown into the ocean. I could swim but even then it took me 45 minutes to get to land. There were others who could not swim, six of them were children. I think they were alright because everyone helped each other." She returned to Boosaaso earlier this year, but after failing to find work she is thinking of getting on the migrant trail again, back to the Middle East, and, if possible, on to England.
Fuad Yusuf, 27, from Mogadishu, was on a boat when fellow passengers were forced into the sea. He and 169 others, squashed into a space 12 feet long and five feet wide, had almost reached their destination when the engine broke down.
"The time on the boat was terrible, there were so many of us we couldn't move. At the end we could see the lights of the villages on the coast, but then the boat stopped," he recalled. "The owner and his men had AK-47s and they told a group of men to jump out and swim. They had no choice. Those who could swim made it to the shore, but the ones who could not died. I don't know how many. There were other deaths, because there was no fresh water left, one man began to drink sea water. His eyes rolled, and he died.
"You can ask 'why should people take such risks?' But if you are really poor, and have no way of feeding your wife and children, you have to take a chance. This is difficult to explain to someone who has a full stomach every day.
"After Yemen I went to Saudi Arabia and worked for six months. I earned $700 and that was needed to make sure my family had essential things. I had seven people to look after."
Amira Ali Mohammed wanted to exchange the daily dangers of Mogadishu for work in Saudi Arabia, had paid a fixer $40 for the trip. In the early hours of the morning, on the way to the boat, the man and his companion dragged her off and attacked her.
Sitting on a floor of stamped mud in a shelter of torn fabric at "100 Buush", a refugee camp of unrelieved squalor, the 22-year-old, who had fled fighting in the capital, recalled: "They suddenly got hold of my arms and started to drag me away. It was on the beach, I could see people in the distance going towards the boat, but there was no one near. I started screaming ... The men got scared and I ran back. I could not face going to that boat again.
"I wanted to work as a maid in Saudi Arabia, they pay you well there. The money was given by my parents, now I have no more money and I am stuck here in this place. I cannot go back to Mogadishu, it is too dangerous."
Betsiba Zerihun, an official with the IOM, who counsels women who are trying to migrate illegally, said: "Girls are in great danger in this situation. I have recently dealt with the case of a 17-year-old girl who was going to catch a boat. She was sleeping in a shed on the beach when she was taken away. She was gang raped by nine men. She died."
There are 80,000 registered refugees in Yemen, of whom 75,000 are Somalis. Unofficial estimates put the real figure at several hundred thousands. Most of those migrants want to seek jobs outside Yemen, in Saudi and the Gulf states. Others, however, want to go further afield, into Europe and Britain.
In a sultry day of sauna-like heat, the workers at Boosaaso's dockside were humping huge bags of cement at $1 a day. Many of them had been smuggled abroad before and then been deported back to Somalia. But there is a general desire to try again and some want to try their luck in the West, with England as the preferred destination.
Mahmud Abdi Mohammed, 33, made the journey in a boat built for 50 taking 170. He recalled how the crew would lash out with sticks if the passengers tried to stand up. "I was hit on the head and blood kept pouring out," he said. "But at least we were not made to go into the water."
If he were to go abroad again, it would be to the UK. He charted the way : "I would go from Yemen into Syria and from there to Turkey and Europe and then make my way up."
Abdi Ali Noor, 28, would also go to England. "That is my dream, I just want to work hard and get good money there, then I will come back home. I will be no trouble to anyone," he said.
The men appear well informed about the situation of Somalis in the UK. Mr Noor said: "They are blaming all the people for crimes committed by just a few, that is a generalisation." Mr Mohammed interjected: "If someone commits murder, that is wrong in the eyes of Allah, and he should get his punishment. People go to Britain because they know someone already there. This will continue."
Abdi Karim Mahmoud, 21, has spent $70 on his mobile telephone calling his uncle and cousin, who have been living in London for the past 13 years, on his way to Boosaaso from Mogadishu. He, too, hopes to get there via Yemen, and wanted his relations to send money to the extended family. Mr Mahmood's journey was particularly difficult because he was hit by shrapnel in the latest round of fighting in the Somali capital. He has cuts to his left leg and has lost a toe. "I was sitting outside just talking to my friends when the shell landed," he said. "I have injuries, but I suppose it could have been worse. Afterwards I talked to my mother and father that I had to get away. If I am to die then I would rather that it happened trying to leave the country than sitting in Mogadishu. They agreed that if I went away I will be safer and also I will be able to send back money."
Mr Mahmoud thinks he will have to pay $40 for his passage. He has got the money. The frail young man, who looks young for his age, is fiercely determined to succeed in his attempts at escape. "I will try to get to Yemen every day," he said. "If I do not succeed one day I will the next. If they catch me and send me back I will try again. I am not worried about death. I live in Mogadishu."
Dennis McNamara, the UN's special advisor on displaced people, said: "What is happening here is horrific. As bad as the worst cases involving migration. In fact, we have never seen photos like the ones we are seeing here, of men, women and children drowned with their hands tied behind their backs.
"Some of these people will end up in Europe. It is in the self-interest of Western nations who say they do not want this influx from the South to help this region so that people do not have to make these dreadful journeys."
One of the main problems in dealing with the crisis is endemic corruption. The racketeers have ties with senior officials in the Puntland administration. At the central police station 30 people, including women, are being held for offences involving human trafficking - the catch is that none of them are smugglers, but would be migrants. Each one has been arrested after handing over their fare to the smugglers who then miraculously got away from the police.
Among those incarcerated is 35 year old Amal Hussein Ali whose seven children are left back in Mogadishu, in the care of her ageing mother. She faces a minimum of one and maximum of three years in prison, said the police chief, Colonel Mohammed Rashid Juma. The Colonel professes sympathy for Amal's plight, but continues in a stentorian voice: "She has gone beyond the law, she is an illegal immigrant, which is forbidden under the Puntland constitution. I am here to defend the constitution from danger. She is a criminal."
But there is no such law under the constitution. According to Somali sources the police are waiting for the clans of the prisoners to buy them out. The human trafficking industry continues to be a profitable one for dealing in misery.
[Source: The Independent]
http://www.crin.org/violence/search/closeup.asp?infoID=8393
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery
Somalia
Somalia is located in extreme E Africa [map] directly south of the Arabian peninsula across the Gulf of Aden. It comprises almost the entire African coast of the Gulf of Aden and a longer stretch on the Indian Ocean. It is bounded by Djibouti (NW), Ethiopia (W), Kenya (SW), and the Indian Ocean (S & E). Mogadishu is its capital. Somalia remains a fragmented country both politically and administratively. Despite continuing stabilization in the Northwest Zone of Somaliland and limited but encouraging progress in the Northeast Zone of Puntland, humanitarian personnel have faced varied and complex challenges. In the Central and Southern Zone in particular, insecurity prevailed. Key development indicators identify the situation in Somalia as one of the worst in the world.
Scope and Magnitude. Information regarding trafficking in Somalia remains extremely difficult to obtain or verify; however, the Somali territory is believed to be a source, transit, and perhaps destination country for trafficked women and children. During the year, warlord militias, the Islamic Courts Union, and the TFG conscripted and recruited child soldiers for armed conflict. In September, for example, the Islamic Courts Union summoned headmasters from Mogadishu's schools and required them to each commit a quota of school children to attend a military training program. In early 2007, the TFG reportedly recruited children unlawfully in central Somalia to supplement its army in Mogadishu. Armed militias purportedly traffic Somali women and children for sexual exploitation and forced labor internally. There are anecdotal reports of children engaged in prostitution, but the practice is culturally proscribed and not publicly acknowledged. Somali women are trafficked to the United Arab Emriates, and perhaps other destinations in the Middle East, for commercial sexual exploitation. Somali children are reportedly trafficked to Djibouti for commercial sexual exploitation. Ethiopian women are trafficked to and through Somalia to the Middle East for forced labor and sexual exploitation. In past years, trafficking networks were also reported to be involved in transporting child victims to South Africa for sexual exploitation; continuation of this practice could not be confirmed. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2007
The Desecration Of Somalia
By Amii Omara-Otunnu. December 20th, 2007
[Issues Of Principle]
The chilling facts about the humanitarian crises of Biblical proportions unfolding in Somalia as a result of the proxy war in that country are numbing.
Yet despite the facts about violations of important principles of international, humanitarian and human rights laws, there has scarcely been unequivocal outrage and robust action taken by individuals and organizations, which traditionally are regarded as being in the vanguard of raising and mobilizing public awareness about egregious violations of human rights and principles of the United Nations.
This is not to say there have not been some humanitarian or human rights organizations and individuals, who have nobly performed heroic work to save lives in otherwise objectively appalling conditions and tried to bring attention to obscene violence in Somalia. Outstanding examples of such organizations are United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
On balance, however, there has been at best anemic attention paid to the multifaceted tragedies in Somalia. This calls to question the criteria used by various organizations to put a spotlight on issues of human rights and humanitarian crises in Africa and elsewhere.
But before we pose some questions, it is necessary first to review the relevant known facts leading to and about the catastrophic humanitarian crises in Somalia.
On December 6, 2006, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1724 (S/Res/1725 (2006)) on Somalia that calls for the respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and unity of Somalia. The resolution expressly prohibited the deployment of troops from neighboring countries, as peacekeepers in Somalia.
It specifically reiterates “its insistence that all Members States [of the UN], in particular those in the region, should refrain from any action in contravention of the arms embargo and related measures, and should take all actions necessary to prevent such contraventions.” In addition, it “calls upon all parties inside Somalia and all other States from action that could provoke or perpetuate violence and violations of human rights, contribute to unnecessary tension and mistrust, endanger the ceasefire and political process, or further damage the humanitarian situation.”
But within the month, at the end of December, the neighboring country of Ethiopia, traditionally a perennial threat to the territorial integrity of Somalia, sent an estimated 15,000 troops into Somalia. This was in direct contravention of important principles of the UN Charter, as well as in violation of the UN Security Council’s resolution 1725, which amplifies an earlier UN Security Council resolution on Somalia, S/Res/1724 (2006). Paradoxically and tragically, none of the powers on the Security Council stood up for the principles of the UN Charter and/or for the Security Council’s own resolutions.
What has transpired since the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia? Here are some of the notable facts: By April 2007, there were credible reports that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia had set into motion unprecedented violations of human rights, on a scale that would qualify as war crimes. This occurred during a four-day offensive to eliminate insurgents in the Somalian capital, Mogadishu, at the end of March, by joint Somali-Ethiopian troops.
During the offensive the troops engaged in indiscriminate flattening of pro-insurgent neighborhoods with tanks, helicopters and artillery. It was reported that these were the heaviest onslaughts on civilian population in 15 years in a city notorious for bloodshed. The offensive triggered a massive exodus of people from Mogadishu. The U.N. estimated that in the month of March 2007, about 124,000 people fled the capital city.
The military atrocities committed by Ethiopian-Somalia’s transitional government troops did not go unnoticed. A European Union security expert who visited the country indicated that the joint Ethiopian and Somali troops may have committed war crimes during the offensive. The European expert is reported by Reuters to have said, "There are strong grounds to believe that the Ethiopian government and the transitional federal government of Somalia and the African Union force commander ... have through commission or omission violated the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court."
Human rights scholars and observers believe that at the very least, Ethiopian-Somali government troops have a case to answer for potential complicity in the commission of war crimes. However, to date, no clear public pronouncements have been made by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which in accordance with the Rome Statue has a duty to investigate and prosecute war crimes.
Five months later in September 2007, the UN human rights envoy to Somalia, Ghanim Alnajar, after visiting the country on a fact-finding mission, indicated that he was going to recommend a full investigation into alleged war crimes in Somalia.
By November 2007, the calamitous humanitarian crisis in Somalia had reached Biblical proportions. The intensity of the crisis in Somalia might be illustrated by highlighting the fact that, within a space of two weeks in November, for example, it was reported that an estimated 173,000 people fled Mogadishu, brining the total of displaced people by mid-November to more than 850,000.
Without the crisis abating and with hundreds of thousands of Somali on the verge of dying of starvation and lack of medical treatment and sanitation, the UN confirmed that the humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia was the worst in Africa. It was deemed far worse than the much rightly publicized humanitarian crisis in Darfur region of Sudan. In the words of Ahmedou Oud-Abdallah, the top United Nations official for Somalia, “The situation in Somalia is the worst on the continent.”
The general data on the scale of human suffering may not sufficiently capture and convey the plight of individual Somali. Yet in the figures, are thousands of human lives devastated for no good reason except that they were born Somali and grounded in the country.
We can get a glimpse of the type of personal suffering experienced by summarizing the individual stories of a couple of people that have been reported. Natheefa Ali, who escaped a bloodbath in Mogadishu to a market town of Afgooye, said that her 10-month-old baby was so malnourished she could not swallow. “Look,” Ms. Natheefa said, pointing to her daughter’s splotchy legs, “her skin is falling off, too.” In Afgooye where Natheefa Ali escaped to, the United Nations report shows that the malnutrition rate is 19 percent, as compared with about 13 percent in Darfur. Malnutrition of 15 percent is considered the emergency threshold.
Another individual, Fadumo Abdullahi, aged 30, fled fighting in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, and trekked to a makeshift camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Bosasso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, in northeastern Somalia, which is nearly 1,000 miles northeast of Mogadishu. She fled leaving her four children with her mother, in the hope to undertake the arduous journey to Yemen and then Saudi Arabia. The trip to Bosasso took her 10 days, navigating around bandits checkpoints where people were shot routinely.
Interviewed in Bosasso, she said, "I have no relatives here, so I stay at the camp [for internally displaced people] during the night and during the day I go out to people's homes to take away their rubbish. They pay me 5,000 shillings [about 25 US cents] for every load of garbage I remove. On a good day I make about 25,000 [$1.25] but some days I get nothing. I know the danger I face going to Yemen, but what is the alternative? In Mogadishu, you don’t know from day to day whether you will see another sunset. You hear about women robbed or raped every day. My neighbor was raped and then beaten badly with a gun by soldiers. She was in hospital, not dead but not alive.
That is when we moved and my mother and I decided that I should take the risk of going to Saudi. I know going to Yemen I may die but only once. There are worse things than that kind of dying, and that was staying in Mogadishu." By mid December, it was estimated that that 60 percent of Mogadishu's residents had fled their homes.
The humanitarian situation had deteriorated so much that by mid-December 2007, children in particular were in exceptionally precarious conditions that UNICEF called for the creation of safe zones in Somalia for about 1.5m children whose lives have been blighted by the conflict. In a statement, the head of UNICEF, Ann Veneman, pointed out that not only were the children malnourished and at a high risk of disease, but they were also suffering from exhaustion and emotional trauma.
Ironically but not surprisingly, in December, United Nations officials conceded that the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia’s Islamist movement before the Ethiopian invasion. Laroche, head of the U.N. humanitarian operations said, “It was more peaceful, and much easier for us to work.” He concluded, “The Islamists didn’t cause us any problems.” Ould-Abdallah called those six months, when the Islamic Courts Union were in control of most of the country, Somalia’s “golden era”; it was, he said, “essentially the only epoch of peace most Somalis have tasted for years.”
It should be mentioned to avoid misunderstanding that Somali suffering and being used as pawns in geo-political power games did not begin with the invasion of Ethiopian troops, apparently sponsored by the U.S. Administration in December 2006. A review of Somali history shows that the Somali people have more often than not been sliced into pieces like a cake and divided up among various powers, without any regard for their interests and welfare. For instance, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Somali were partitioned into four colonies against their will.
The “share-out” of the Somalis during the high-tide of the new European colonial imperialism was among the following powers: Italy got one portion, which they named Italian Somaliland; the British grabbed another portion; and the French claimed Djibouti.
The African empire of Ethiopia also got a slice: it was allowed to enclose the Ogaden within its territory. Although it lost the Ogaden to Italy during the invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930s, it renewed its control of Ogaden in 1941, with the sanction of Britain. In fact, it was the partitioning of the Somali and the mistreatment of the people in Ogaden by Ethiopia, which provided the impetus for the first pan-Somali resistance movement led by the charismatic and puritanical religious leader, Mohammad Abdille Hassan. For his unflinching nationalist fervor the British derogatorily referred to Hassan as the “Mad Mullah.”
Much later during the Cold War, in the 1970s, both the Soviet Union and U.S.A. jostled for geo-strategic position of advantage over Somalia, by changing sides whenever expedient. The latest Ethiopian invasion of Somalia with the connivance of external powers simply falls in a long established pattern of using the country and people as pawns in larger geo-strategic calculations.
It should also be noted that since the demise of the Said Barre regime in 1991, civilians in Somalia have been subjected to various cycles of violence and displacements. In fact, more than 800,000 people fled Somalia in 1991 and 1992, during the heat of the crisis in the post-Barre period. It was this, in effect, which set in train the nation's downward spiral. By the time of the Ethiopian invasion, close to 450,000 Somali remained internally displaced, and with about 150,000 people lived as refugees in other countries. In fact there was no semblance of effective central government, until Islamic Courts Union asserted authority in most parts of the country in mid-2006.
Nonetheless, despite the history of foreign powers and elites using Somali people as pawns and the continual nightmares to which they have continually been subjected to in the quicksand of clan politics, the current situation and context in the country is different. The fact that foreign powers can intervene and hemorrhage the people and country to virtual death in the context of the twenty-first century puts to pain the rhetoric of human rights and claims about human progress. Although it must be regarded as a triumph for cynical power-politics of geo-strategic calculations, it is also a severe indictment of the international community.
In terms of comparative analysis and without diminishing the enormity of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, it should be noted that, unlike Darfur where the suffering is being attended to by a billion-dollar aid operation and more than 10,000 aid workers, the UN estimates that the total emergency aid for Somalia to date has been less than $250,000. In effect, the Somalis caught up in the inferno of violence have more or less been left to fend for themselves, with the world barely noticing, leave alone caring about the magnitude of the humanitarian crises in this region of the Horn of Africa.
The difference in approach to, and of providing funds for, Somali and Darfur cannot be explained simply by reference to the insecurity in the former. A major factor might be the lack of interest in the very humanity of the Somalis.
Eric Laroche, head of United Nations humanitarian operation gave voice to the view of many fair-minded people with human hearts, regarding the attitude if not approach of the international community to Somalis, when he said: “If this were happening in Darfur, there would be a big fuss. But Somalia has been a forgotten emergency for years.” In view of the calamitous humanitarian crisis in Somalia, we are entitled to ask a few probing questions, even if we cannot hazard or obtain answers. For in most cases, all that the powerless are entitled to is the right to ask questions.
The following are some of the pertinent questions: What is the purpose of the UN Charter, if its principles can be violated recklessly without consequence? Why should the world take seriously UN Security resolutions if they cannot be enforced; or if those violate such resolutions are not even simply condemned? Is it a case of selective morality, that some UN Security resolutions are enforced while others are conveniently ignored?
Or could the lack of robust response to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia be attributable to the particulars of the perpetrators and victims? Why is the international community not requiring both the occupying Ethiopian troops and its allies in the Transitional Federal government to fulfill their respective duties? Why is the ICC not approaching with vigor the allegations of war crimes in Somalia? And why is the African Union standing impotently while the great majority of the people of Somalia are being violated in broad day light?
Whatever our views, the human tragedies in Somalia, which has reduced a resilient people almost to despair and hopelessness, should prompt people with human hearts but who do not make fetish of naked power, to reflect seriously about the functions and relevance of the United Nations Security Council. It should also be a cause for concern about the virtual impotence of the African Union and the state of Pan-African solidarity.
Although we might not have military materiel with which to defend the great majority of Somalis, at the very least, we should speak out and up against the abominations being committed in that country. It is imperative that we speak up out of human solidarity, because the lives of the people of Somalia have been placed in purgatory for far too long by forces that have arrogated to themselves the power to determine the fate of an African people.
If we are not to repeat the grave error of history, we should remember the logic of the poem by Rev. Martin Niemoller, the German Protestant theologian, who after the Jewish Holocaust and the elimination of a great many innocent people by the Nazi military and scientific machines penned these lines in 1945: “First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me”.
As we see the human debris and blood pile up in Somalia, we should not act with indifference like the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who, when faced with the menace of Hitler in the 1930s, played the power-politics of self-interests. He was reluctant to challenge Hitler so long as British interests were not directly threatened: he issued but anemic formal protests only when he saw the malign influence of the Nazis extended from area to area. He was compelled belatedly to condemn Hitler only when British spheres of influence were under threat of conquest.
With the unfolding human calamities in Somalia, we should not wait until it is too late to plead that it was a mistake not to have identified with the people in their hours of need, even if the powers that be might not care about the violations of principles of international, humanitarian, and human rights laws in Somalia.
The time is now for people of goodwill to be counted and to speak up against what is going on in Somalia and to demonstrate solidarity with the people, whose have for a whole generation lived in hellish nightmares.
http://www.blackstarnews.com/?c=122&a=4013
EHAHRD-Net deplores gloomy media situation in Somalia. Send appeals
For the journalists in Somalia, the Year 2008 has started from where the previous one ended in terms of threats and harassment of journalists. -As the TFG Parliament discusses the newly proposed media law, the authorities must ensure practical measures of protecting journalists as a first step to show their determination to defend freedom of the press. (15-JAN-08)
EHAHRD-Net has continuously monitored the events surrounding the media. Already in the first few weeks of the New Year, the situation looks gloomy. According to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), EHAHRD-Net's founding member, at least two journalists have been injured while two other media persons have been arrested. The injured are; Abdikheyr Mohammed Jama, a presenter and technician with Radio Galkayo from the semi-autonomous northern province of Puntland and Mohammed Bashir Hashi (Somaliweyn radio) who was injured in Wardhigley on Thursday January 3rd 2008 during fire exchange between the authorities of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the insurgents. Those arrested are; Bashir Mohammed Abdulkadir, a reporter for the privately owned Radio Somaliweyn, Abdirahman Mohamed working with the same radio station, and Mohammed Shidane working for Radio Banadir.
-As the TFG Parliament discusses the newly proposed media law, the authorities must ensure practical measures of protecting journalists as a first step to show their determination to defend freedom of the press. All the actors on Somalia's political playing field must respect and uphold press freedom as enshrined in the Transitional Federal Charter and in recognized regional and international human rights instruments. With at least 50 journalists having fled the situation in Mogadishu only in the past four months, the future of the media in Somalia can only be said to be catastrophic and as such, both the TFG and the insurgents must desist from inflicting further misery on an institution that is widely considered as the fourth arm of government, says Hassan Shire Sheikh, left, Chairperson EHAHRDP/Net.
At least 8 journalists were killed in Somalia in 2007, scores of others were injured, while at least 50 fled Mogadishu in the past four months and are currently scattered in different countries with little or no assistance.
Appeal:
-EHAHRD-Net appeals to the TFG authorities to immediately and unconditionally release the arrested journalists and allow them unhampered continuation of their media work;
-EHAHRD-Net further appeals to the insurgents, the Ethiopian forces and the TFG to respect media freedom without fail. All warring factions must desist from any further attacks on journalists as a media black-out would constitute a further compromise of the rights of the Somali people;
-The Network calls upon the UN, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and all other concerned international humanitarian bodies to use their relevant mandates to ensure that Somali authorities desist from the ill-treatment of journalists; and that those already in exile receive adequate support not only to offer them a lease to life, but to enable them continue monitoring the situation back home.
http://www.humanrightshouse.org/dllvis5.asp?id=6187
War Of Terror: Somalia- 6,501 Civilians Killed In US Backed Invasion
December 31, 2007
The first accounting of the dead, injured and displaced caused by the US backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia has been released-
MOGADISHU, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Conflict in Somalia killed 6,501 civilians in the capital Mogadishu in 2007 and wounded 8,516 more, a local human rights group said on Monday. The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had recorded 1.5 million people uprooted from homes in the city during a year that began with the toppling of an Islamist movement, spawning an insurgency.
The group’s chairman, Sudan Ali Ahmed, blamed Ethiopian forces supporting the interim Somali government for many of the civilian deaths. Residents are often caught in the crossfire as Ethiopian soldiers battle Islamist-led guerrillas. “The international community must intervene in Somali affairs to force the Ethiopians to get out. At the same time they must bring a joint international peacekeeping force to secure the country,” Ahmed told a news conference. He said he believed the United States was funding Ethiopia to keep its troops in Somalia, and must take some of the blame.
I am yet to perceive that this invasion is in the public consciousness or that the US involvement is adequately reported. Darfur is aided by a huge campaign but then that attention aids the empire’s strategies. It is also highly likely that Ethiopian forces will invade Eritrea in 2008 aided by the US which has been agitating against Eritrea for months (bad luck for the country which was in the ‘coalition of the shilling willing’ in 2003, imperial winds change and allies become targets, you lie down with dogs etc. though Eritrea was at that time probably feeling they had to to avoid the treatment they are now getting). Why not shine some light there, stop a war before it starts and thus actually save thousands of lives? It really could be done, no more mopping up after an atrocity, don’t send troops, recall them, pre-emptive… peace.
Or will I be writing- Eritrea- and the number killed there exactly a year from now?
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/12/31/war-of-terror-somalia-6501-civilians-killed-in-us-backed-invasion/
Khaleej Times Online
Blundering into Somalia
BY ERIC S MARGOLIS. 30 December 2006
ETHIOPIA’S invasion of Somalia under cover of the Christmas holiday was a blatant aggression that is likely to widen the arc of conflict across the dangerously turbulent Horn of Africa. It also marks the opening of a new front in Washington’s war against Islamic militants and reformers.
Claims by Ethiopia that Somalia, a nation without any real military forces, threatened its border were as fanciful as assertions by Washington and Addis Ababa that the so-called ‘transitional government’ they had installed in the town of Baidoa represented anything more than its own well-paid members.
The US-backed and financed Ethiopian offensive was clearly designed to crush the first stable government strife-torn Somalia has had in 15 years of civil war and anarchy. The new Islamic regime, known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), recently managed to bring law and order to much of southern and central Somalia. In the north, a secessionist group has proclaimed something called independent ‘Puntland.’
The Union of Islamic Courts ended Somalia’s long civil war by crushing local warlords who were being armed and financed by the CIA. The US claims the Islamic Courts is a second Taleban-style movement containing ‘terrorists’ involved in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa who will turn Somalia into a hotbed of anti-American subversion. The UIC denies these allegations.
More important, under the Bush/Cheney Administration, any movement that has the audacity to call itself ‘Islamic’ immediately becomes a target of American hostility. The embarrassing total defeat of US-backed Somali warlords by the Islamic Courts militia led directly to Washington’s decision to press Ethiopia to invade Somalia.
Ethiopia has one of Africa’s more powerful, well-trained armed forces with over 1,300 tanks and a modern air force that are now increasingly equipped and aided by the United States.
The repressive regime of strongman Meles Zenawi seems the antithesis of President George Bush’s calls for democracy, but has become a primary ally of Washington that is seen as a bulwark against Islamic forces in Africa. Washington has quietly supported Ethiopia in its long border war against its bitter foe, Eritrea. In recent months, the Eritrea has become an important supplier of small arms and munitions to Somalia.
Somalia’s rag tag Islamist militias are helpless against Ethiopian tanks, artillery and attack aircraft. Ethiopia’s army could quickly occupy all of Somalia, but it would then be very hard-pressed to protect its long, vulnerable supply lines against attack by Somali guerilla forces.
Ethiopia has enough men to wage a two front war against Somalia and Eritrea, but a prolonged conflict would seriously undermine its fragile economy. Accordingly, Ethiopia’s likely strategy is to protect the western-imposed rump regime in Baidoa and launch attacks to prevent the UIC from consolidating power. But involvement by traditional enemy Ethiopia will undoubtedly further inflame Somali passions and strengthen the Islamic Courts. The latest war in the Horn of Africa could easily widen into a wider conflict that involves Eritrea, strife-torn regions of southern Sudan and Uganda, and northern Kenya, which has many ethnic Somalis.
Equally important, prolonged war with Somalia could open fissures in unstable, multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ethiopia. Though usually depicted as a Christian nation, at least 50 per cent of Ethiopians are Muslim, and 35-40 per cent Christians. Ethnic Amhara and Tigrayans comprise 32 per cent of the population, while long-oppressed, rebellious Muslim Oromo in the south account for over 40 per cent.
Ethiopia’s Muslims have long sought a voice in their nation’s affairs but were brutally repressed by Ethiopia’s royalist, Marxists, and now, the Tigrayn regimes. Conflict with Somalia could re-ignite the Oromo independence movement and lead to the splintering of Ethiopia, producing a reverse mirror image of ethnic-religious strife between Sudan’s northern Muslims and southern Christians and animists.
Ethiopia’s war against Somalia presents a more dangerous regional threat than an Islamic-run Somalia. The Bush/Cheney Administration is again showing its reckless ignorance and arrogance by charging into a tribal conflict, as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq, about which it knows nothing. Once again, Washington’s ‘cure’ will be shown to be far worse than the disease it claims to address.
What Washington should be doing is talking to leaders of the Islamic Courts to ensure Somalia is not used as a new base for Al Qaeda operations. This is a fair request that can be sweetened by offers of financial support and assurances the Ethiopians will be leashed. But this appears too subtle for the administration’s ham-handed crusaders who have already blundered into two lost wars and are now courting a third.
Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/
BUREAU FOR DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE (DCHA)
OFFICE OF U.S. FOREIGN DISASTER ASSISTANCE (OFDA)
Somalia – Complex Emergency
Situation Report #1, Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 December 20, 2007
BACKGROUND
Since 1991, widespread violence, endemic poverty, and recurrent droughts and floods have generated a complex emergency in Somalia. Continued civil strife and inter-clan conflicts have complicated the humanitarian situation and limited access to affected areas. Large-scale fighting since late December 2006 between the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Ethiopian forces, and militias associated with the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) have led to a further deterioration in humanitarian conditions. As a result, approximately 335,000 Somali refugees have fled the country, and approximately 1 million people have been displaced within Somalia. In August 2007, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU) for Somalia reported that more than 1.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, a 50 percent increase from January 2007. The combined effects of the failed April–June (gu) rains, conflict, massive displacement, and diarrheal disease in 2007 have severely exacerbated the food security situation and resulted in a significant increase in acute malnutrition rates, according to the 2008 U.N. Consolidated Appeal for Somalia. U.N. and relief agencies are coordinating efforts to improve access, but insecurity continues to hinder the provision of emergency assistance to affected populations.
On October 3, 2007, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael E. Ranneberger redeclared a disaster due to the ongoing complex emergency in Somalia. In FY 2007 and to date in FY 2008, the U.S. Government (USG) has provided more than $120 million for health, nutrition, agriculture and food security, livelihoods, coordination, protection, and water, sanitation, and hygiene programs, as well as emergency food assistance, peacebuilding activities, refugee assistance, and air operations.
NUMBERS AT A GLANCE SOURCE
Estimated Displacement from Mogadishu1 600,000 UNHCR2 – December 14, 2007
Long-Term IDP3 Caseload 400,000 OCHA4 – July 31, 2007
Additional Population in Need of Assistance 785,000 FSAU – August 2007
Somalia Refugees in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen 335,000 UNHCR 2006 Global Trends Report – June 2007
FY 2008 AND 2007 HUMANITARIAN FUNDING
USAID/OFDA Assistance to Somalia $26,377,844
USAID/FFP5 Assistance to Somalia $87,820,400
USAID/OTI6 Assistance to Somalia $1,000,000
USAID/CMM7 Assistance to Somalia $750,000
State/PRM8 Assistance to Somalia $4,871,560
Total USAID and State Humanitarian Assistance to Somalia $120,819,804
1 Figures represent estimated displacement from Mogadishu since April 2007, and do not reflect long-term displacement countrywide.
2 Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
3 Internally displaced person
4 U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
5 USAID’s Office of Food for Peace
6 USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives
7 USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation
8 U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
CURRENT SITUATION
Humanitarian agencies have increased emergency assistance to displaced and conflict-affected populations in southern and central Somalia in response to a new influx of IDPs from escalating violence in Mogadishu
and declining food security and nutrition indicators.
However, restricted access compounded by the increasing needs of vulnerable populations present significant challenges to humanitarian relief operations countrywide. As a result, current relief efforts are inadequate to meet the needs of an estimated 1.5 million Somalia Complex Emergency – December 20, 2007 Somalis requiring humanitarian assistance, according to OCHA. On December 10, the U.N. released a Combined Appeal Process (CAP) request for more than $406.2 million to address emergency needs of an estimated 1.5 million people, including 400,000 protracted IDPs and approximately 450,000 newly displaced.
Population Movements
Since October 27, more than 245,000 people are estimated to have fled renewed fighting and an intensification of military security operations in Mogadishu, according to OCHA. This figure includes 56,000 people displaced within the capital. The majority of newly displaced persons have relocated to Lower Shabelle and Middle Shabelle regions, where existing IDP populations are already straining available resources.
To date in 2007, conflict has displaced approximately 600,000 people within and from Mogadishu, including more than 200,000 concentrated in settlements between Mogadishu and Afgooye, Lower Shabelle Region. The latest waves of displacement and the estimated 400,000 long-term displaced population have increased the total estimated IDP population in Somalia to 1 million people.
In addition, fighting in October between the self-declared Republic of Somaliland and the neighboring autonomous region of Puntland over the disputed Sool Region displaced an estimated 50,000 people, according to OCHA. An October U.N. assessment to Sool prioritized shelter and water, sanitation, and hygiene services for approximately 30,000 people in need of assistance. In response, USAID-partner the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is transporting water to approximately 23,000 people in the region.
USAID/OFDA funding supports UNHCR efforts to track population movements. Through a network of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and monitors on the ground, UNHCR provides critical information on IDP movements, needs, and impacts on host communities.
Humanitarian Access
Insecurity, administrative delays, border restrictions, and military activity continue to hinder relief operations throughout central and southern Somalia. In November, OCHA reported that an increase in the number of checkpoints, inconsistent policies regarding NGO registration and taxation, and the continued closure of the El Wak border crossing between Kenya and Somalia resulted in significant delays in the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
In addition, escalating violence in Mogadishu and the targeting of humanitarian staff and assets further hamper mobility and access. Between November 18 and 20, armed militia attacks on food distribution centers in Wanle Wayne District in Middle Shabelle killed two people and injured six others. On November 26, armed men carjacked an NGO vehicle outside Afgooye in Lower Shabelle, reflecting an increasing trend in security incidents involving humanitarian organizations.
USAID staff in Nairobi work closely with U.N. agencies and implementing partners operating throughout central and southern Somalia to monitor humanitarian access and coordinate response efforts. In addition, USAID/OFDA funding provides support for logistics and the delivery of relief commodities to conflictaffected populations in Somalia, including humanitarian air transport through the U.N. Common Air Service.
Food Security and Agriculture
Poor performance of the April–June (gu) main rainy season severely reduced August harvests, resulting in the worst cereal production harvest in thirteen years, according to FSAU. In addition, USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) reports that the
recent erratic and below-normal October and November (deyr) rains are expected to further reduce water availability and pasture for local populations and livestock, particularly in the Shabelle valley and central regions.
Food security conditions are expected to continue to decline through the December to March dry season due to the cumulative effects of conflict, repeated market disruptions, new displacement, and poor rains, according to FEWS NET. The displacement of an estimated 245,000 people from Mogadishu since October 27 has increased competition for already limited resources among IDPs, host families, and other local communities, and rising food prices have reduced food access and availability. Since May, multiple factors have contributed to higher prices of staple food items, including the devaluation of the Somali shilling, increased transportation costs, and conflict-related disruptions of internal trade and import activities. In November, FSAU reported that the price of imported rice in Middle Shabelle and Lower Shabelle regions had risen 160 percent from October 2006 price levels.
On November 25, USAID-partner the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) started to provide daily prepared meals to a targeted 50,000 beneficiaries in Mogadishu, following earlier suspension of dry food ration distributions in June due to security concerns. From November 25 to 29, WFP completed the distribution of a one-month food ration to 180,000 displaced persons in the Afgooye area of Lower Shabelle.
In FY 2007 and to date in FY 2008, USAID/FFP has provided more than 110,000 metric tons (MT) of emergency food commodities to assist vulnerable Somalis. Ongoing FY 2007 USAID/OFDA funding supports six partners implementing agriculture, food security, and economy and market systems programs to mitigate the impact of the current crisis.
Nutrition
Preliminary results from three FSAU nutrition surveys conducted among agro-pastoral, riverine, and newly displaced populations in Lower Shabelle and Middle Somalia Complex Emergency – December 20, 2007 Shabelle regions from October 30 to November 9 indicate that malnutrition rates remain at critical levels. Global acute malnutrition (GAM) rates range from 14 to 17.6 percent and severe acute malnutrition (SAM) rates range from 2.9 to 3.2 percent, close to or above emergency
thresholds of 15 percent GAM and 1 percent SAM.
According to FSAU, an estimated 45,000 children under the age of five in Middle Shabelle and Lower Shabelle are acutely malnourished, including nearly 8,500 severely malnourished children. The U.N. CAP reported that the number of moderately or severely malnourished children may be as high as 83,000. Humanitarian agencies note particular concern for the more than 200,000 Mogadishu residents located in temporary settlements between Mogadishu and Afgooye. A September 12 to November 23 survey conducted by the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières in Hawa Abdi settlement recorded child mortality rates (CMR) for children under five of 4.2 deaths per 10,000 people, more than double the emergency threshold of 2 deaths per 10,000 people. MSF attributes increased CMR to severe malnutrition and inadequate sanitation conditions.
In FY 2007 and FY 2008 to date, USAID/OFDA has provided more than $4.2 million to support nutrition interventions, including supplementary feeding programs for moderately malnourished children and community therapeutic care for severely malnourished children. In addition, USAID/OFDA supports FSAU’s ongoing nutrition surveillance.
Health and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene
On October 2, the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert for a potential cholera outbreak in southern and central Somalia. To date, new cholera cases continue to be reported in Bay, Gedo, Lower Juba, and Middle Juba regions. On December 4, WHO reported 268 cases of acute watery diarrhea (AWD), including 10 deaths, in Baidoa, Bay Region, of which three out of four AWD samples tested positive for cholera. In response, USAID/OFDA partners WHO and UNICEF are providing emergency and medical supplies. In addition, USAID/OFDA funding supports water, sanitation, and hygiene programs to reduce transmission of water-related diseases, such as cholera.
Refugees
State/PRM is assisting both Somali refugees in the Horn of Africa and Yemen and relief efforts within Somalia. In FY 2007, State/PRM provided nearly $25 million to organizations supporting Somali refugees and conflict-affected populations in Somalia, including assistance for WFP refugee feeding programs and UNHCR shelter, protection, and emergency relief activities benefiting refugees in Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia.
Ky Luu
http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/.
U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
BUREAU FOR DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE (DCHA)
OFFICE OF U.S. FOREIGN DISASTER ASSISTANCE (OFDA)
Somalia – Complex Emergency
Fact Sheet #1, Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 November 2, 2007
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
* Since October 27, tens of thousands of Mogadishu residents have fled the capital due to an upsurge in fighting and an intensification of Transitional Federal Government (TFG) security operations, according to U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
* On October 30, more than 40 local and international NGOs issued a statement of concern regarding the escalating humanitarian crisis in southern and central Somalia and the impact of deteriorating access and security on relief operations. On November 1, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia issued a letter citing similar concerns.
* On October 30, following the resignation of Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed appointed Salim Aliyow Ibirow as Acting Prime Minister of Somalia’s TFG. Ibirow will serve until a new Prime Minister is nominated.
* On October 3, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael E. Ranneberger reissued a disaster declaration for Somalia due to the ongoing complex emergency. More than 1.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, a 50 percent increase from January 2007, due to the cumulative effects of drought conditions, floods, and civil conflict, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
NUMBERS AT A GLANCE SOURCE
Estimated Displacement from Mogadishu1 - 451,000
UNHCR2 – October 31, 2007
Long-Term IDP3 Caseload - 400,000
OCHA – July 31, 2007
Additional Population in Need of Assistance - 785,000
FSAU4 – August 2007
Somalia Refugees5 - 335,000
UNHCR 2006 Global Trends Report – June 2007
FY 2007 HUMANITARIAN FUNDING PROVIDED TO DATE
USAID/OFDA Assistance to Somalia$22,577,844
USAID/FFP6 Assistance to Somalia$59,239,400
USAID/OTI7 Assistance to Somalia$1,000,000
State/PRM8 Assistance to Somalia4,871,560
Total USAID and State Humanitarian Assistance to Somalia $87,938,804
CURRENT SITUATION
Displacement
* Preliminary reports from UNHCR indicate that nearly 90,000 IDPs have been displaced following an escalation of fighting in Mogadishu since October 27. This figure includes 17,000 people displaced within the capital. The majority of newly displaced persons, including an estimated 46,000 in Afgooye, have fled to Lower Shabelle Region.
* Between April and September 2007, more than 325,000 IDPs were displaced from Mogadishu to the surrounding Galgadud, Lower Shabelle, Middle Shabelle, Hiran, and Mudug regions, according to OCHA. Including the latest waves of displacement and the estimated 400,000 long-term displaced, the total IDP population in Somalia now exceeds 850,000.
* USAID implementing partners continue to provide food assistance and essential health, nutrition, agriculture and food security, and water, sanitation, and hygiene services to displaced and conflict-affected populations throughout Somalia. On October 15, the USAID-supported U.N. World Food Program (WFP) began food distributions for 81,676 beneficiaries in Lower Shabelle.
* In northeastern Somalia, increased tensions between the self-declared Republic of Somaliland and the neighboring autonomous region of Puntland over the disputed Sool Region have displaced an estimated 56,000 people, according to U.N. reports. From October 22 to October 28, joint U.N. assessment teams visited the Sool Region to identify priority needs and coordinate response efforts.
Humanitarian Access
* Insecurity, renewed fighting in Mogadishu, border restrictions, and TFG and militia activities continue to impede humanitarian relief efforts throughout central and southern Somalia. NGOs cite pervasive harassment, intimidation, inconsistent taxation and registration policies, and increased delays at checkpoints as major obstacles to the delivery of emergency assistance.
* Despite negotiation efforts, Kenyan authorities officially informed USAID partner CARE that the Government of Kenya will not permit the transport of humanitarian relief commodities at the El-Wak border crossing into Somalia, where CARE emergency food assistance for an estimated 7,400 people has been delayed since late September.
* WFP has temporarily suspended food distributions in Mogadishu after the TFG seized and detained a WFP official from October 17 to 22. Security concerns had previously prompted a suspension of WFP distributions in the capital from June 25 to October 15.
* On October 21, WFP reported an attempted pirate attack on a WFP-chartered ship off the coast of Brava port, south of Mogadishu. The attack is the third security incident involving WFP vessels since January 2007.
* In coordination with U.N. and relief agencies, USAID staff in Nairobi are monitoring the humanitarian situation and ongoing response activities.
Health
* On October 2, the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert for a potential cholera outbreak in southern and central Somalia, following seven confirmed cases in Banadir and Bay regions. A previous outbreak from January to July caused 1,100 deaths and affected more than 37,000 people. WHO warns that new cases represent a greater threat to already vulnerable displaced and conflict-affected populations.
* USAID implementing partners the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and WHO are providing cholera kits and oral rehydration therapy (ORT) supplies, including 24 million ORT packets, to affected populations.
USAID AND STATE HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
* USAID/OFDA emergency relief activities in Somalia benefit more than 2 million people affected by repeated shocks of drought, floods, and conflict. In FY 2007, USAID/OFDA relief efforts in Somalia totaled $22.5 million for critical assistance to conflict- and disaster-affected people and humanitarian coordination. USAID/FFP provided more than $59 million in food assistance to vulnerable populations in Somalia. USAID/OTI provided $1 million to support peace-building efforts through the National Reconciliation Congress.
* State/PRM is assisting Somali refugees in the Horn of Africa and Yemen and funding relief efforts within Somalia. In FY 2007, State/PRM provided nearly $25 million to support Somali refugees and conflict-affected populations in Somalia, including through UNHCR and/or NGO refugee operations in Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, as well as provided assistance for WFP refugee feeding programs. State/PRM allocated $3 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for work with IDPs and conflict victims in Somalia. In addition, State/PRM provided unearmarked contributions to UNHCR and ICRC for Africa programs, a portion of which assists Somalia.
PUBLIC DONATION INFORMATION
The most effective way people can assist relief efforts is by making cash contributions to humanitarian organizations that are conducting relief operations. Information on identifying such organizations is available in the “How Can I Help” section of www.usaid.gov – Keyword: Somalia or by calling The Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI) at 703-276-1914.
USAID encourages cash donations because they allow aid professionals to procure the exact items needed (often in the affected region); reduce the burden on scarce resources (such as transportation routes, staff time, warehouse space, etc.); can be transferred very quickly and without transportation costs; support the economy of the disaster-stricken region; and ensure culturally, dietary, and environmentally appropriate assistance.
More information can be found at:
o USAID: www.usaid.gov
o The Center for International Disaster Information: www.cidi.org or (703) 276-1914
o Information on relief activities of the humanitarian community can be found at www.reliefweb.int.
NOTES
1 Figures represent estimated displacement from Mogadishu since April 2007, and do not reflect long-term displacement countrywide.
2 Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
3 Internally displaced person
4 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia
5 Figures include approximately 335,000 Somali refugees currently living in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen.
6 USAID’s Office of Food for Peace
7 USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives
8 U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/
Somalia
CONSOLIDATED APPEAL
SUMMARY
Extreme underdevelopment
For Somalis, prolonged uncertainty about their future has inhibited their ability to cope and complicated reconstruction and development efforts.
For the twelfth year, Somalis have no central government, despite hopes arising from the Somalia National Reconciliation Conference of 2002.
Somalis still face extreme poverty and underdevelopment. They consistently rank among the lowest in the world on key indicators of human development, life expectancy, per capita income, malnutrition and infant mortality.
Somalis also suffer widespread human rights violations, including: murder, rape, looting and destruction of property, child soldiering, kidnapping, discrimination against minorities, torture, female genital mutilation, unlawful arrest and detention, and denial of due process.
Severe and chronic drought, as well as flooding, combined with insecurity, frequently disrupt farming.
The prolonged combination of these factors has eroded food security and livelihood capacities, impeded recovery and rendered many areas inaccessible to aid agencies.
Malnutrition rates in some areas remain at humanitarian crisis levels, which are considered 'normal' for Somalia.
The deterioration of traditional livelihoods has forced thousands to migrate to urban areas in search of employment. Conditions they meet there are only marginally better.
Basic coping mechanisms, including remittances from abroad and social security networks based on clan and kinship allow the chronically vulnerable – totalling about 750,000 – to maintain a fingerhold on survival.
The most acutely vulnerable include about 350,000 IDPs, more than 460,000 returnees and tens of thousands of Somalis from minority groups.
Helping the vulnerable
Projects in this CAP will to the greatest extent possible focus on meeting the needs of the acutely vulnerable groups of IDPs, returnees and minorities.
About 70,000 to 100,000 ex-combatants are also to be re-integrated into society.
The United Nations and participating NGOs will continue to work closely with local authorities and communities towards the following three strategic goals:
Enhancing the protection of, and respect for, the human rights and dignity of Somalis
Helping emerging governance structures, civil society groups and communities to contribute to stability and economic development
Saving lives, alleviating human suffering and helping vulnerable communities become self-reliant
Plans in this appeal are based on the expectation that humanitarian and recovery needs will not significantly change within the year, whatever the outcomes of the Somalia National Reconciliation Conference.
Request
The inter-agency programme outlined in the appeal will cost the United Nations and participating NGOs US$ 110,616,825 in 2004.
Funding Requirements in 2004 (US$)
SECTOR NAME ORIGINAL REQUIREMENTS
AGRICULTURE 4,226,028
COORDINATION AND SUPPORT SERVICES 1,750,980
ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND INFRASTRUCTURE 11,516,638
EDUCATION 14,826,827
FOOD 23,417,035
HEALTH 17,899,316
MINE ACTION 6,466,401
MULTI-SECTOR 9,023,723
PROTECTION/HUMAN RIGHTS/RULE OF LAW 16,984,826
SECURITY 568,719
WATER AND SANITATION 3,936,332
GRAND TOTAL 110,616,825
Copyright UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs