February 20, 2014 | Daily Monitoring Report.
U.N. may extend eased Somalia arms embargo despite concerns – diplomats
20 Feb – Source: Reuters – 154 words
The U.N. Security Council is unlikely to fully restore a decades-old arms embargo on Somalia, despite concerns about the possible diversion of weapons to al Qaeda-linked militants, but may extend eased restrictions on government purchases, diplomats said.
A year ago, the 15-member council agreed to partially lift the arms embargo on Somalia, allowing the government in Mogadishu to buy light weapons to strengthen its security forces to fight Islamist groups.
However, a confidential U.N. monitors’ report obtained by Reuters last week, warned of “systematic abuses” by Somalia’s government – which the monitors say has allowed the diversion of weapons that Somali authorities purchased after the Security Council eased the arms embargo last year.
“Given the concerns about the way the suspension has been operated, we’re thinking of … continuing the suspension but for a more limited period with some very strict criteria,” said a senior U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Key Headlines
- Premier Abdiweli: “Limited Ethiopian troops present in Somalia” (BBC)
- U.N. may extend eased Somalia arms embargo despite concerns – diplomats (Reuters)
- Mental Health in Somalia (AMISOM)
- Extreme genital mutilation on retreat in Somaliland (AFP)
- UN: Go Slow Over Repatriation of Somalia Refugees (CCTV)
- Al Shabaab ambush kills 6 in Mogadishu (Radio Dalsan)
- Prime minister Abdiwali Shiekh flies to Kampala Uganda (RBC)
- Al Shabaab flees from Hiiraan’s vacinities (Radio Shabelle)
- UN warns of ‘grave’ food shortage in Somalia (Al Jazeera)
- IGAD Italy sign Jubaland reconstruction accord (Walta Information Centre)
- Somaliland House of Elders resolve the row within the parliament (Somaliland Informer)
- Somali Refugees in Yemen Asked to Be Taken Back to Their Country (Yamen Online)
SOMALI MEDIA
Al Shabaab attack claims 6 in Mogadishu
20 Feb – Source: Somali Current/Radio Shabelle/Radio Dalsan/Hiiraan Online – 130 Words
Six people have been killed and nearly ten others were wounded after al Shabaab militants attacked government troops and AMISOM bases in southeastern of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Wednesdayevening. Witnesses said that heavily armed al Shabaab fighters attacked the bases in Heliwa District, engaging in a clash that lasted hours with the allied troops.
Addressing the Media on Thursday morning, Heliwa District Commissioner Omar Abdulle Ja’fan said the ambush was aimed to disrupt the improving security in the capital.
“Al Shabaab attacked three nearby AMISOM and government troops’ bases in the district, and the fighting was intended to interrupt peace in the area,” the district commissioner said.
It is the second time in two weeks that al Shabaab attacked a military base in Heliwa, as part of recent night-time shelling and bomb attacks by the militant group in the capital.
Prime minister Abdiweli Shiekh flies to Kampala, Uganda
20 Feb – Source: RBC – 127 words
A delegation led by the Prime minister of Somalia Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed which was in Nairobi, Kenya Since their arrival on Tuesday continued their journey to Kampala, Uganda. Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed is expected to have meetings with Uganda’s top Government officials.
The prime minister accompanied by the some of his cabinet members including Minister of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information have paid visits to the former Somali Embassy building in Nairobi Kenya which is under construction before their departure at the Jommo Kenyatta International Airport
This visit of Prime Minister Abdiweli to Uganda is his fourth visit to the countries whose troops are contributing to the African Mission in Somalia. Dr Abdiwali Sheikh also visited Ethiopia and Djibouti before arriving in Nairobi Kenya on Tuesday.
Al Shabaab flees from Hiiraan districts
20 Feb – Source: Radio Shabelle – 103 words
News coming from Beledweyne, the provincial capital of Hiiraan region, report that fighters from al Shabaab have retreated from some of the districts they were occupying in the central Somali region. Nuur Fanax, Garisyaani and other areas have been vacated by al Shabaab, according to the locals.
Al Shabaab’s forces fled from the areas, and are rumoured to have made their way to Buulobarde district of Hiiraan region, a strategic base to their leaders.
Deputy Governor and Political Affairs officer of the Hiiraan regional administration, Mohamed Ibrahim Ali confirmed the departure of al Shabaab from the region’s districts.
Somaliland House of Elders resolve row within parliament
20 Feb – Source: Somaliland Informer – 154 words
The mediators from the house of Elders on Wednesday announced the decision to bring the row that broke out in the house of national assembly to an amicable end. The First deputy speaker of the House of Elders Hon. Said Jama Ali has announced the verdict that the mediators reached which he said was that the total votes required to depose the chair of the parliament is 42 votes be it the speaker and the deputy speakers.
Furthermore, the Members of the Parliament cannot bring a motion in which they intend to oust the chair from the posts. The parliament will go on a recess and the speaker of the house of national assembly Hon. Abdirahman said that they will honor the verdict reached by the house of elders.
The speaker of the parliament accompanied by the deputy speakers and the speaker of house of elders along with Haji ABdi Warabe met with Somaliland head of state at the presidential palace.
The mediation teams have informed the president about the decisions reached to end the feud that put the house at gridlock. The president welcomed any agreement made to end the dispute and praised the mediation team for reaching solution.
Premier Abdiweli: “Limited Ethiopian troops present in Somalia”
20 Feb – Source: Radio Shabelle/BBC Somali Service – 91 words
The Prime Minister of the Somali government, Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed, who gave an interview to the BBC Somali Service, spoke about the Ethiopian troops presence in Somalia.
Mr Abdiweli denied comments that there are unknown number of Ethiopian forces within his country and explained the Ethiopian forces in Somalia are limited and serve under AMISOM’s peacekeeping mission. The Prime Minister of the Somali government is on a tour to visit the countries that have their troops present in Somalia.
Somaliland Court Delivers Verdict against 4 Journalists
19 Feb – Source: Somaliland Sun – 138 words
The regional court of Maroodi-Jeh sitting in Hargeisa has finally concluded the case against four journalists arrested in December last year for taking part in an illegal demonstration, inciting the public, creating disturbance contrary to public order and breach of peace.
The journalists were arrested while taking part in a demonstration in support of their comrades following the closure of Hubaal a Hargeisa based independent paper that was viewed as pro opposition by the ruling regime.
The trial judge while delivering his verdict warned the members of the press from public incitement in discourse of their professional responsibility. The judge Mr. Ahmed Dalmar Ismail fined three (3) accused Said Khadar Abdullahi, Abdiaziz Bashir Noor & Abdisalaam Abdirashid to pay 600,000 SLSH (equivalent to $100) whereas Hassan Maal Dhidar was acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence warranting the charges.
China construction equipment reach Somaliland
19 Feb – Source: Somaliland Informer/Burco Online – 123 words
Heavy equipments that Somaliland purchased from China in a bid to construct the road that links Erigavo to Burco have reached the country on Wednesday via the port of Djibouti. A large ceremony was held in Hargeisa to announce the purchased equipment have reached the country.
There are tractors, bull dozers and water truck tanks and as announced by the Minister of presidency that the equipment will be used for the construction of Erigavo road. The government of Somaliland has pledged to build the road with the help of the people. The equipment will be the second that the government bought it from China after money allocated in the national budget in 2013.
Last week the government received agricultural equipments via the port of Berbera be it tractors. The government of Somaliland is busy with luring foreign investment in order to purchase equipments.
Somaliland being 23 years old is the first in history that the administration has bought agricultural, and and coast equipments. Somaliland minister of Finance has boasted that the three past years that the Kulmiye party was power achieved lots of development projects.
REGIONAL MEDIA
Somali Refugees in Yemen Asked to Be Taken Back to Their Country
20 Feb – Source: Yemen Online – 104 words
A substantial number of Somali refugees in Yemen are requesting to be return back to their home country Somalia following roughly when 5000 Somali refugees were recently transferred back to their country.
The Somali refugees in Yemen insisted on the Somali and Yemen governments to work together and make it easier for the safe homecoming back to the motherland; Somalia.
They also asked for Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government to fulfil the promise they made to those who want to go back to Somalia. Yemen is home to thousands of Somali refugees who fled the motherland after struggle and a civil war hit their country.
UN warns of ‘grave’ food shortage in Somalia
20 Feb – Source: Al Jazeera English/AFP – 287 words
More than 850,000 people in Somalia are in desperate need of food and are living “in crisis and emergency conditions”, the director of UN humanitarian operations has said.
John Ging, who just returned from a three-day visit to Somalia, said on Wednesday that another two million Somalis out of a total population of 10 million were considered to be “food insecure”.
“These figures are very, very large,” he told a news conference at the UN headquarters in New York. “They tell us a simple message which is that the situation in Somalia for Somalis on the humanitarian side is very grave. It’s also very fragile.”
Ging said the UN World Food Programme’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit reported this month that 857,000 Somalis were in acute crisis conditions and required urgent humanitarian assistance.
IGAD, Italy sign Jubaland reconstruction accord
19 Feb – Source: Walta Information Centre – 187 words
The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Italian government yesterday signed an agreement providing 500,000 euro to be utilized for the stabilization and reconstruction of the Al-shabaab hard hit Jubaland of Somalia.
According to the Ethiopian Herald, the agreement was signed by IGAD Executive Secretary Mahboub Maalim and Italian Ambassador to Ethiopia Renzo Mario Rosso.
Signing the agreement, Maalim said the grant would be used for restructuring administrative apparatus, development intervention to the region, stabilization efforts as well as the implementation of the Addis Ababa agreement signed in 2013 to enable the Jubaland Administration become a functional regional state of Somalia.
According to Ambassador Rosso, the grant would also help cover administrative costs, enhance efforts being made to strengthen a federal system in the country and craft the interim constitution of Somalia that is highly considered to eventually bring about peace and security.
“There are various problems, mainly of political and humanitarian nature, in Somalia requiring such contribution from the international community,” he added. He said the IGAD Forum would continue to work with the international community to assist Somalia in its stabilization and reconstruction effort.
Mental Health in Somalia
19 Feb – Source: AMISOM – 4:05 min
After more than two decades of civil war, a newfound peace has finally descended over Mogadishu, allowing many to return to their old lives. While homes and businesses can be rebuilt though, it is the psychological effects of warfare that are often the hardest to overcome.
Today Dr. Habeeb operates more than half a dozen mental health centres throughout Somalia. Helping hundreds of people suffering from mental illness get over the traumas of war.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
U.N. may extend eased Somalia arms embargo despite concerns – diplomats
20 Feb – Source: Reuters – 154 words
The U.N. Security Council is unlikely to fully restore a decades-old arms embargo on Somalia, despite concerns about the possible diversion of weapons to al Qaeda-linked militants, but may extend eased restrictions on government purchases, diplomats said.
A year ago, the 15-member council agreed to partially lift the arms embargo on Somalia, allowing the government in Mogadishu to buy light weapons to strengthen its security forces to fight Islamist groups.
However, a confidential U.N. monitors’ report obtained by Reuters last week, warned of “systematic abuses” by Somalia’s government – which the monitors say has allowed the diversion of weapons that Somali authorities purchased after the Security Council eased the arms embargo last year.
“Given the concerns about the way the suspension has been operated, we’re thinking of … continuing the suspension but for a more limited period with some very strict criteria,” said a senior U.N. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Extreme genital mutilation on retreat in Somaliland
20 Feb – Source: AFP/Yahoo News – 871 Words
It is a ritual supposed to keep women “pure”, but an increased understanding of the severe health risks of extreme forms of female genital mutilation appears to be slowly rolling back its prevalence in Somalia’s northwest.
In the self-declared Somali republic of Somaliland, most women over 25 have undergone the most extreme form of FGM, known as “pharaonic”. This entails removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, cutting out flesh from the vulva and sewing up the outer labia, leaving only a tiny orifice for the passage of urine and menstrual flow.
The procedure is normally done with a razor blade when the girl is between 5 and 11 years old, and without any pain killers. They remain sewn up until marriage, at which point they are either opened up during sex — causing pain and distress to both partners — or cut open with scissors.
“I cut girls for 15 years. My grandmother and mother taught me how and it was a source of income for me — but I stopped doing any cutting four years ago,” recounted Amran Mahmood.
UN: Go Slow Over Repatriation of Somalia Refugees
19 Feb – Source: CCTV Africa – 02:13mins
The United Nation’s humanitarian agency is expressing concerns about plans to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees following reports by humanitarian workers who said the return cannot be rushed–at a time when security on the ground is still in question.
SOCIAL MEDIA
CULTURE / OPINION / EDITORIAL / ANALYSIS / BLOGS/ DISCUSSION BOARDS
“Somalia’s new government clearly faces daunting challenges given the scope of abuse and the extensive measures needed to address it. Many of the recommendations will take significant time and resources to implement. But preventing retaliation against victims who dare to speak out or against health service providers who are valiantly offering basic critical support is a crucial cost-free measure. It only requires the political will to make it happen.”
A First Step Toward Ending Somalia’s Rape Epidemic
20 Feb – Source: Reuters/Trust – 808 Words
Fadumo, a Somali journalist, finally spoke to the media about being raped after her calls to the authorities fell on deaf ears.
She said she had been raped by two other journalists several months earlier. Two days after her interview was broadcast, police hauled her in for questioning. Three weeks later, a judge convicted her of defamation—based on a complaint filed by the alleged perpetrators—and sentenced her to six months of house arrest. When I spoke to her in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, she told me: “The most important thing for me now is to have my life back.”
In late 2012 a new government came to power in Somalia. Shortly after taking up office the new President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, committed to tackling the country’s rampant sexual violence and to carry out essential security sector and justice reforms.
Despite these commitments, Fadumo’s case is one of three high-profile Somali incidents of sexual violence Human Rights Watch documented in 2013 in which state security forces intimidated and sought to discredit women who reported rape. In two of the cases, the new Somali government prosecuted the women reporting the rape.
“Economically, Somaliland is a haven of free-market policies and entrepreneurship. With a per capita GDP of $350, Somaliland ranks ahead of Tanzania, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Many government services such as vehicle licensing, are delivered through the private sector. The port of Berbera provides a lucrative transport hub for trade with Ethiopia. Somaliland boasts a highly competitive telecoms industry, offering mobile and landline services that are among the cheapest in Africa.”
Somaliland: An African Success Story
19 Feb – Source: IBTimes – 811 Words
The Horn of Africa – a region comprising Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Yemen – has proved one of the world’s most vexing trouble spots for the last 50 years. Cold War rivalries, civil war and tribal conflicts have produced staggering humanitarian suffering and a dangerous breeding ground for terror.
While the world’s attention has focused largely on Somalia as the source for much of this instability, there is a good news story in the Horn of Africa that goes largely unnoticed: Somaliland. In June 1960, Somaliland gained its independence from Great Britain and was recognized as a sovereign state by 35 nations, including all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Five days later, the government of Somaliland chose to unite with Somalia to create a “Greater Somalia, uniting all the people of ethnic Somali origin.”
But this union was an unqualified failure. The central government in Mogadishu brutally repressed the people of Somaliland, killing 50,000 of its citizens, displacing another 500,000, bombing its cities and laying over 1 million land mines on its territory. In 1991, the people of Somaliland convened a Grand Conference, revoked the Act of Union and declared the independent Republic of Somaliland based on the borders of the former British Protectorate of Somaliland.
“Somalis have recently joined a long-standing, hard-working underclass in Saudi in a system resembling indentured slavery. Now thousands of them are being rewarded by expulsion to a likely scenario of war, violence, epidemic rape, starvation and widespread poverty, a situation many will walk into without preparation or resources.”
Deported to a war zone on the altar of Saudization
19 Feb – Source: Todays Zaman Blog – 1352 Words
“There is the Philippines room, the Ethiopia room, the Sudan room, the Somalia room. You don’t want to go to the Somalia room.” These words of welcome were from the sole English-speaking guard at the Riyadh detention center where I was held before being deported in 2012.
If the place had a name it would have been the King Khalid International Airport Ladies Detention Centre. It was introduced to me, mockingly, as “the five-star hotel” by the airport security official who escorted me there. As far as I could tell, it didn’t have an exact name. King Abdullah beamed down on us from a portrait on the wall, but apart from that national reminder, it soon became clear that this was an exceptional territory, an unaccountable place.
Before being escorted down to detention I sat for two hours in a room filled by the cigarette smoke of a tiny man in constant motion between a desk and a photocopy machine. He would leap up, photocopy something, crumple the paper into a ball that found its place among antecedent balls on the floor, photocopy the thing again, dash back to his desk, scribble, staple, and, perhaps half the time, produce another ball crumpled for the floor. The paperwork was urgent and profuse. My request for water was not urgent.
Cultural heritage: a basic human need – Sada Mire at TEDxEuston
18 Feb – Source: TEDxTalks – 19:03mins
Sada Mire is a Somalian archaeologist. She lived the first fifteen years of her life in Mogadishu, until 1991, when she settled in Sweden, as a result of the conflict in north-east Africa. She is founder and executive director of the Horn Heritage Organization. In the last five years, she and her team have made many archaeological discoveries, which feature in her numerous articles and chapters in international scientific publications. Sada believes that cultural heritage is a basic human need.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.
Top tweets
@amisomsomalia MULTIMEDIA: Mental health in #Somalia: The story of Dr. Habeeb http://bit.ly/1gjAJad.
@SomaliPM Kenya has played a key role in Somalia and this strong relationship will be strengthened further.pic.twitter.com/g0cwBXOPcv.
@loughrichard #Mogadishu wants #alShabaab flushed out of southern strongholds by end 2014. About to become Puntland’s problem? http://reut.rs/1cpJe4k.
@tres_HOA Read it for yourself: UN #Somalia and #EritreaMonitoring Group memo on Somalia government arms diversion claims http://somalianews.files.
@Refugees Photo of the day: Nerves & excitement – a #Somali#refugee family leave to start a new life in the #SouthDakota,#USA http://rfg.ee/tM3br.
Image of the day
Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto and the visiting Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed hold discussions at the DP’s Nairobi office. Photo: The Star/DPPS.