NATIONAL MEDIA
8 July – Source: Halbeeg – 109 Words
Somali Parliament has approved the revised version of the media law bill on Monday. Out of 141 members present, 139 MPs voted in favor, one voted against and another one abstained. Lower House’s first Deputy Speaker, Abdiweli Sheikh Mudey announced the results of the voting.
It is expected to be submitted to the Upper House for endorsement before presidential assent. It’s the second time the Parliament passed a media law in the last three years. The cabinet sent the revised version back to the House after concerns raised by media advocacy groups. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Somalia is among the worst countries for press freedom.
8 July – Source: Radio Shabelle – 119 Words
Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni sacked the Director General of the Ministry of Finance Abdirizak Mohamed Hassan who has been in office for several years. Faisal Abdullahi Warsame was appointed as the new Director General, according to a presidential decree issued early on Monday.
The fired official who served as a general director of the ministry of finance since the formation of Puntland in 1998, has now been appointed the director of the livestock center. The President also dismissed Central Bank Chief, auditor and accountant general of the government. In the presidential decree, the reason behind the sacking was not mentioned, but the president has been carrying out reforms in the administration since he took office in January 2019.
8 July – Source: Radio Ergo – 480 Words
Getting access to a small bank loan enabled widowed mother Fowzia Jama’aHaybe to turn her life around when it seemed there was no hope. She had been forced to sell her three-room house in Jigjiga, in Ethiopia’s Somali regional state, to secure the release of her two sons being held for ransom by people traffickers in Libya. The $1,700 she got from the sale allowed her to pay off the $800 demand for each of her sons, who were trying to migrate to Europe. But as the sole breadwinner, after her husband was killed in a road accident in 2015, Fowzia sank into poverty and misery until accessing the loan from a Somali–owned bank, Ray’s Bank, in Jigjiga. “After selling my house, I had nothing left and was forced to live in a hut made of sticks and old scraps of iron sheets. Life became very hard until I got the loan,” said Fowzia.
Ray’s Bank lent her 12,500 birr ($450) in 2018 to set up a business under a microfinance scheme targeting 45 poor families. She invested in buying shoes from the capital Addis Ababa to sell in Jigjiga. “They lent me small money but to me, it felt like a gift because it was something I was able to use to change my life,” Fowzia told Radio Ergo. She paid off the loan in just six months. She is now planning to open a new shop and buy a plot of land to build on with the $3,671 she has accumulated. She might take a second loan from the bank. “I live in a two–bedroom house that costs 1,500 birr ($53) a month. I am somehow financially stable,” she said.
Fardowsa Abdi borrowed birr 20,000 ($714) from Ray’s Bank to start a clothing business in Jigjiga. She brings in merchandise from Togwaje on the Somali border. “I was given the loan in April and agreed to repay within a year in installments of 1,000 birr. I have already paid two instalments and I have 50,000 birr now,” said Fardowsa, a mother of seven. She is able to pay her children’s school fees and monthly rent of 1,000 birr and feed the family. “I am happy that I can put food on the table and even think about building a good future for my children. My husband and I are now working together to run the business,” she said.
Mohamed Amin Sharif, manager of Ray’s Bank in Somali regional state, said they are planning to extend the microfinance scheme loans to 50 more people. “Our plan is to support poor people. These people do not know the procedure for applying for bank loans. But when they come to us, we assess their situation and ask them to come with a referee, then we proceed to give them a loan,” he said.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
8 July – Source: EU in Somalia – 378 Words
Today, education stakeholders gather in Mogadishu to discuss the progress in the education sector as well as challenges and plans from improving access to quality education and training for Somali children and youth. The two-day workshop brings together federal and state education authorities, donors, implementing partners, civil society and private sector representatives as well as school communities.
This is the fifth comprehensive education sector review organized under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education. The review also aims to assess the progress made towards the implementation of the Education Sector Strategic Plan 2018 to 2020. The plan articulates critical education needs of the country including system development. It serves as the basis of alignment of donor support to the sector. “Development of our country hinges on the provision of quality education to the population. Our government is committed to ensuring good quality education services reach all Somali children and youth wherever they are, thereby allowing them to realize their fullest potential. We extend our gratitude to the Somali people whose resilience enabled schools to run in a challenging context” says Abdullahi Godah Bare, the Federal Minister of Education, Culture and Higher Education.
“The education sector in Somalia has evolved over the years with children attending school more than doubling over the last decade; increased number of schools under direct management of the government; administration of common secondary examinations, roll-out of national curriculum among other gains” says EU Ambassador Nicolas Berlanga Martinez. As the donor community, we assure you of our continued support to the education sector. We are well aware the role education plays in poverty alleviation, social inclusion and gender equality.
Background
The EU support to the education sector in Somalia follows a Sector Wide Approach (SWAP), addressing priorities articulated by the education authorities in their strategic plans. Current support worth 60 million Euros is mainly targeted at strengthening education systems for the delivery of good-quality education. These interventions promote the provision of primary and secondary education, higher education, enhancing the capacity of teaching staff and education administration, curriculum implementation and holding centralised examinations. In addition, the EU supports payment of teacher salaries through country systems. The EU also contributes to the Global Partnership for Education which has significant investments in Somalia.
8 July – Source: VOA – 412 Words
Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has executed 18 people since Wednesday, an unprecedented rate of executions for the group, which is under pressure from U.S. airstrikes. Militants put to death four people in the southern town of Jamame on Sunday, immediately after the judge in an Al-Shabaab court declared them guilty. Firing squads shot and killed two men accused of being Somali government soldiers and a woman accused of being a spy for Kenya. The militants identified the woman as 20-year-old Iqra Abdi Aden.
Afterward, an 18-year-old man, Nur Bakar Jirow, was publicly stoned to death for allegedly raping a 16-year-old girl. The man argued the sex was consensual, but the judge said he deserved the death penalty because he was married at the time. On Saturday, Al-Shabaab firing squads killed three men accused of being Somali government soldiers in the town of Kurtunwarey in the Lower Shabelle region. In Buale town of the neighboring Middle Jubba region, the militants executed a man accused of practicing sorcery.
On July 3 and 4, Al-Shabaab shot and killed 10 men in two separate executions in Hagar and Salagle towns in southern Somalia. The group accused the men of spying for the Somali government, Kenya and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. All of the victims were convicted by militant courts, according to Al-Shabaab affiliate media sites. Al-Shabaab courts do not allow lawyers to represent the defendants, and the evidence largely relies on alleged confessions. Critics believe that Al-Shabaab’s militias torture the accused to force the confessions.
The group did not give a reason for the surge in executions, but has been the target of dozens of U.S. airstrikes over the past two and a half years. The airstrikes are often ordered on the basis of ground-level intelligence collected by Somali government sources. In other violence, at least seven people were killed and 22 others were injured in Mogadishu on Monday in two separate attacks, witnesses say. The first attack took place near a civilian hospital when Mogadishu police stopped a vehicle loaded with explosives. The driver refused to exit the vehicle, forcing police to open fire. Moments later the vehicle exploded killing two people and injuring 18 others. Separately, a suspected militant vehicle attempted to pass through a security checkpoint on a crowded road in Mogadishu. Security forces responded, killing two militants. A member of the police and two civilians were also killed according to witnesses. Four others were injured in the attack.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“Faced with this legal and economic uncertainty, some Somali women are challenging social norms and navigating the male-dominated property market in the hope that, one day, they will have the security that comes with owning a place of their own.”
8 July – Source: Reuters – 1108 Words
In the hallway of a large, brick-face apartment block in Johannesburg, Halima Jawahir greets her tenants, a group of six Somali women drying their henna-painted hands in the sunlight streaming through the windows. After fleeing ongoing civil war in her native Somalia in 2016, Jawahir is now reinventing herself as a property mogul in the Mayfair neighborhood in Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city. She rents an entire building of more than 100 flats from a South African landlord, before sub-dividing them into rooms, and subletting them to other mainly Somali and Ethiopian refugees. But as a refugee without documentation, Jawahir is also breaking the law by subletting flats – a risk worth taking, she said, to save up enough to one day own her own property. “I am a widow, so I have to look after myself,” said the 45-year-old, adjusting her green hijab as she sat on the couch in her second-floor flat.
The United Nations estimates that at least 30,000 Somali refugees live in South Africa. The country is wrestling with a massive backlog of asylum applications, according to human rights groups, leaving many refugees waiting months or even years for the authorization to work, go to school and find a place to live. Faced with this legal and economic uncertainty, some Somali women are challenging social norms and navigating the male-dominated property market in the hope that, one day, they will have the security that comes with owning a place of their own. Jawahir’s building is one of about a dozen properties in Mayfair that are being rented and then sublet by Somali refugee women, according to the Somali Community Board of South Africa.
For renters, subletting provides a stable source of income, and for their tenants it is often the only way they can afford a place to live, said Jawahir. This is especially true for refugee women, many of whom are running their households and raising their children alone as they wait in limbo to be granted refugee status. “Undocumented migrants do not qualify for government housing or subsidies and the impact of this overburdens mothers,” said Tiffany Ebrahim, a researcher at the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, a human rights organization. “And the private (housing) market is inaccessible because it is so expensive, forcing people to fall back on solutions that are temporary with little security of tenure.” Jawahir, whose name was changed to protect her identity, said that “as refugees and as women, we are always hustling”….. |
