London conference awaits 'vision to take Somalia forward'

Somali president expected to present plans for rebuilding military, police and justice systems, as civil society calls on nascent government to empower women and provide jobs

On Tuesday next week, the UK hosts yet another big conference on Somalia, bringing together officials from 50 countries and organisations, including the UN, African Union and International Monetary Fund.

The most significant difference from last year's London event is that instead of a tottering and discredited transitional regime, Somalia now has a fully fledged government, led by Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Elected last September, the 57-year-old professor and activist is the first leader chosen inside Somalia since the 1991 overthrow of president Siad Barre, which sowed the seeds for the country's descent into chaos.

Next week's gathering can be seen as a concerted attempt to bolster the Somali government's legitimacy as it seeks to rebuild the country after more than two decades of conflict. The conference will be co-chaired by Mohamud and David Cameron, the UK prime minister, and its main aim is to signal international support for Somalia as the new government sets out its vision. But in a setback to the UK, Somaliland, which broke away from Somalia in 1991, refused British entreaties to attend on the grounds that it would not have been treated as equal to the Somali government. Somali officials, however, are upbeat.

"We hope the international partners will support Somalia's implementation of its plans and priorities," Nuradin Dirie, a presidential adviser, speaking from Mogadishu, the Somali capital, says. "We will be presenting plans for rebuilding the military, the police, the justice and public financial management systems. It is a vision of a political process to take Somalia forward."

There may be some announcements of financial commitments, but those are expected to come at an EU-hosted conference in Brussels in September. Somalia will be very much on the international agenda this year. It will feature in meetings of the G8 group of industrialised countries, and the Tokyo international conference on African development, culminating in the Brussels meeting on the new deal for fragile states.

The new deal – strongly backed by countries recovering from conflict such as Timor Leste and Liberia – seeks to put poor countries in the driving seat on development strategy rather than donors. At its core are five peace- and state-building goals: legitimate and inclusive politics; security; justice; economic foundations (jobs); and revenues and services. The thinking is that unless aid focuses on peace, money will go to waste. Somalia has enthusiastically embraced the approach and now wants donors to back its plans.

Britain – which has pledged to spend £80m this year and next on aid – is on board. It has voiced support for the new deal, which seeks to align donor funds with the priorities of the recipient country, and has emerged as a strong cheerleader for the new Somali government. Last week, Britain reopened its embassy in Mogadishu, the first EU country to do so since Barre's overthrow. Turkey is committing diplomatic and financial resources.

Somalia needs all the international support it can get. Although security has improved since al-Shabaab militants were driven out of Mogadishuby Amisom peacekeepers, the group continues to kill.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, this week expressed concern that the Islamist insurgents seem to be targeting Somalia's legal system, after the Somali deputy state attorney, Ahmed Malim Sheikh Nur, was killed by gunmen as he was leaving a mosque after Friday prayers. The threat posed by al-Shabaab explains the urgency behind the government's efforts to build a credible military and police to deal with hardcore elements who remain implacably opposed to reconciliation.

The Somali government says it will welcome dialogue with those who turn their backs on violence. "The doors are open to those who renounce violence [to] be part of the political process and we will take every step to include people," Dirie says, adding that the president and prime minister want to rebuild the security infrastructure to provide law and order.

While noting the importance of peace- and state-building, civil society representatives, who attended events in London in the runup to the conference, say it is important to maintain development, particularly after the 2011 famine in which nearly 260,000 people died.

"Although the drought has ended, we need to build capacity to prepare for future emergencies, we need to invest in farming and livestock," Aydrus Daar, executive director of Wasda, an NGO that works in the Horn of Africa, says. "There are short-term recovery projects but no three- to five-year programmes."

Fartuun Adan, executive director of the Elman peace and human rights centre in Mogadishu, urged the Somali government to embrace civil society. "We have lots to contribute, we have been working in Somalia for the past 22 years, whereas the government is very new in its job," she says, adding that the government should do its utmost to empower women and ensure enough jobs.

Abdirashid Duale, chief executive of Dahabshiil, a remittances company, who will take part in an investment conference following the event in London, is confident there will be jobs as Somalia rebuilds. "The young generation in Somalia is where the future lies and yes there will be jobs," he says, "because we need people to build airports, electricity systems and infrastructure."

Laura Hammond, senior lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, however, says it is important not to get carried away with expectations. "The new government is a real gift to the international community and much better than it was expecting," she says.

"But there is a danger of letting euphoria cloud our judgment. I hope people are patient enough with it and yet able to hold it to account, although international engagement has to be on Somali terms. That will be part of shoring up the government's legitimacy."

read more

Somalia Islamists ban food aid, child deaths ‘off the charts’

Nairobi, Kenya • A decision by extremist Islamic militants to ban delivery of food aid and a "normalization of crisis" that numbed international donors to unfolding disaster made south-central Somalia the most dangerous place in the world to be a child in 2011.

The first in-depth study of famine deaths in Somalia in 2011 was released Thursday, and it estimates that 133,000 children under age 5 died, with child death rates approaching 20 percent in some communities.

That’s 133,000 under-5 child deaths out of an estimated 6.5 million people in south-central Somalia. That compares to 65,000 under-5 deaths that occurred in all industrial countries in the world combined during the same period, a population of 990 million, said Chris Hillbruner, a senior food security adviser at FEWS NET, a U.S.-sponsored famine warning agency.

"The scale of the child mortality is really off the charts," Hillbruner said in a telephone interview from Washington.

FEWS NET was one of two food security agencies that sponsored the study. The other was the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit - Somalia. The two agencies had warned the world as early as fall 2010 that failed rains in Somalia meant a hunger crisis was approaching.

"The world was too slow to respond to stark warnings of drought, exacerbated by conflict in Somalia, and people paid with their lives. These deaths could and should have been prevented," said Senait Gebregziabher, the Somalia director for the aid group Oxfam.

The new study put the total number of famine deaths at nearly 260,000. The Associated Press first reported the death toll on Monday, based on officials who had been briefed on the report.

In March 2011 some 13,000 people died from famine, the study found. In May and June 30,000 people died each month — at least half of them children. The U.N.’s formal declaration of famine didn’t happen until July.

Why was there such a slow humanitarian response? One reason Hillbruner indicated was the feeling that Somalis are always suffering.

"I think that one of the key issues is that there was this normalization of crisis in south-central Somalia, and that I think the international community has become used to levels of malnutrition and food insecurity in southern Somalia that in other parts of the world would be considered unacceptable," Hillbruner said.

read more

Somalia famine killed nearly 2, 60,000 people: UN

London: Over a quarter of a million people, including young children died in a famine in Somalia between October 2010 and April 2012 because the international community did not act quick enough, according to a UN report. 

The report was commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network. 

The study estimates that 4.6 percent of the total population and 10 percent of children younger than five (about half of 258,000 Somalis) died in southern and central Somalia, the reports said. 

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia Philippe Lazzarini said that the number of deaths in famine have confirmed that much should have been done before the famine was declared in July 2011, adding that warnings back in 2010 about the starvation following the drought period did not trigger sufficient action and people needing most help have been the most difficult to reach. 

According to FAO, lower Shabelle has been the hardest hit area in Somalia as one in five children younger than five have perished there. Southern Somalia also received less humanitarian assistance in 2010 and much of 2011 than it had in 2008-2009, the report said.

Researchers claim that this has been one of the worst famines in the past 25 years. 

Lazzarini further said that humanitarian community in Somalia witnessed huge mobilization once the famine was declared that ‘helped mitigate the worst effects of the crisis.’ 

At the peak of the crisis, between May and August 2011, about 30,000 more people died each month, according to the study. 

The International humanitarian organization Oxfam said that the mistakes committed in Somalia in 2011 reflect catastrophic political failures and must never be repeated, adding that the humanitarian officials made a slow response that took a huge toll on lives.

Stating that the world leaders meet next week must ensure better steps for improving the situation in Somalia, Oxfam officials have said that they must plan to invest in long-term development by creating jobs, supporting farmers and pastoralists and properly training security forces. 

Lazzarini confirmed that since 2011, the UN community and its partners have changed their operating methods as they are aware that about 2.7 million people in the state are still in need of life-saving assistance and moral support to rebuild their lives and overcome their crisis and want to ensure that Somalia never goes through a famine again. 

ANI

read more

Britain Re-Opens Embassy in Somalia

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, right, shakes hands with
Somali President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, at the opening of the newly built
British Embassy in the Somali capital Mogadishu, Apr. 25, 2013.

Roopa Gogineni

April 25, 2013

British Foreign Secretary William Hague flew to Mogadishu on Thursday to re-open the British Embassy - making his country the first Western nation to resume a permanent diplomatic presence in Somalia in 22 years.

The British Embassy in central Mogadishu was forced to shut its doors in 1991 after Mohamed Siad Barre's government collapsed and Somalia plunged into chronic civil war.

Twenty-two years later, British diplomats are planning a return to Mogadishu. Foreign Secretary William Hague attended a flag-raising ceremony at the site of a new embassy Thursday.

“I said we would open an embassy as soon as the security situation permitted it,"Hague said. "So it is a sign of confidence in the future that we are opening it.”

The reopening follows major strides made by African Union forces in securing the capital city from al-Shabab militants.

But the peace is tenuous. Just last week al-Shabab attacked a Mogadishu courthouse, killing or wounding dozens of people.

The new embassy sits in the airport compound behind mortar-proof sandbags and heavily guarded by African Union troops.

Hague expects this location to be temporary. "I hope over time this will be an embassy that is able to move into the city itself," he said.

Matt Baugh, the first British ambassador to Somalia in 21 years, was appointed last February but has been based in neighboring Kenya.

The Foreign Office is expected to soon announce a new ambassador to take up post in Mogadishu when the embassy becomes fully operational in late July.

Other nations are expected to follow the British Embassy's move from Nairobi to Mogadishu. Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia have already reopened their embassies in the Somali capital.

On May 7, London will host its second international conference to coordinate the stabilization of Somalia. Prime Minister David Cameron has prioritized Somalia in his role as president of the G8.

More: http://www.voanews.com/content/britain-opens-embassy-in-somalia/1648779.html

read more

UNICEF says genital mutilation on decline in Somalia

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Attitudes in Somalia toward a practice that critics decry as torture may be changing, as new data released by the U.N. children's agency on Tuesday showed that female genital mutilation among children in northern Somalia is on the decline.

The survey released by UNICEF and the governments of Somaliland and Puntland found that 25 per cent of girls from the ages of 1 to 14 years old have undergone the practice, compared with 99 per cent of women in those regions.

UNICEF has been working with community and religious leaders in northern Somalia to try to change attitudes toward female genital mutilation. Sheema Sen Gupta, the chief of child protection for UNICEF in Somalia, said that 28 communities in Somaliland have declared an end to the practice, and UNICEF hopes to have that number up to 60 by the end of this year.

"If you ask the average Somali woman why they practice FGM now, they will tell you it's for religious reasons. But it's not religious because FGM predates Islam," Gupta said.

In December the U.N. General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling for a global ban on female genital mutilation, a centuries-old practice stemming from the belief that circumcising girls controls women's sexuality and enhances fertility. It has also been linked to religious and cultural practices, although Muslim and Christian leaders have spoken out against it.

"When religious leaders are able to come out and say this is not a religious practice, then people start listening," said UNICEF chief Gupta.

Female genital mutilation is commonplace in 28 countries in Africa as well as in Yemen, Iraq, Malaysia, Indonesia and among certain ethnic groups in South America, according to Amnesty International. But the issue is a worldwide concern because it is also practiced by immigrants in diaspora communities.

The U.N. said in 2010 that about 70 million girls and women had undergone the procedure, and the World Health Organization said about 6,000 girls were circumcised every day.

Aside from religious reasons, Somali women say that they choose female genital mutilation for their daughters so that they are more eligible for marriage, said Gupta.

"Even the women who are educated, including Somali women living in the U.K., for example, when we talk to them and try to understand why they practice FGM they say, 'My daughter is not going to be marriageable if she is not circumcised,"' Gupta said. "So the social pressures are such, the traditional norms are such, that even when people know that it's painful, it's barbaric, etc., people are saying, 'Can my daughter be married?"'

But Gupta said that when she talks to Somali men and asks if a woman should be circumcised, the men say they don't know and that the women say it needs to be done.

The survey data released Tuesday is only the fourth multiple-indicator cluster survey to be carried out in Somalia, a notoriously difficult place to gather solid information over the last 20 years.

The survey also found that the literacy rate among women in northern Somalia is on the rise, as is school attendance. Access to quality drinking water is also up.

However, Susannah Price, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, said that new information showing a low number of children being vaccinated was "depressing," and it showed more work needs to be done.

The future does appear brighter for reducing the number of girls subjected to female genital mutilation, said Gupta. She noted that Somalia's new constitution, passed last year, bans the practice. Al-Shabab, the militant group that controls large parts of south-central Somalia, also bans it, she said.

"I think we've made a dent and I think, for us, I think there's going to be quite a bit of progress from now on," Gupta said.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/unicef-says-genital-mutilation-on-decline-in-somalia-1.1239737#ixzz2QgMzhtvK

read more