March 28, 2017 | Daily Monitoring Report

Somalia’s President Farmaajo Jets Off To Jordan For Arab League Summit

28 March – Source : Garowe Online – 187 Words

Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo is traveled to Jordan on Tuesday to participate in the annual Arab League summit in Amman on Wednesday. President Farmaajo left for Amman after an official invitation from the King Abdullah of Jordan. The summit will be attended by head of Arab states to hold talks on ongoing conflicts in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

During the summit, Farmaajo is expected to highlight about the drought crisis that hit the country and urge the leaders to push efforts to assist his government to avert looming famine situation. The trip is the third oversea visit by Somali President Farmaajo since he was elected into office. Following his inauguration, Farmaajo has paid visits to Saudi Arabia and neighboring Kenya, where he attended special IGAD summit in Nairobi last week.

Somali President’s visit to Jordan comes amid a standoff over the appointed new cabinet ministers by Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, as over 100 MPs along with the Speaker of Parliament calling for review of the lineup in line with clan’s power-sharing formula before the voting session in Parliament.

Key Headlines

Somalia’s President Farmaajo Jets Off To Jordan For Arab League Summit (Garowe Online)
Explosion In Mogadishu Kills Three Suspected Militants (Jowhar.com)
President Farmaajo Urges Citizens To Work With Security Forces In The Fight Against Al-Shabaab (Goobjoog News)
Somaliland Hospital Cares For Malnourished From Drought (VOA)
Finland Allocates $20 Million To Famine-hit African Countries (Africa News)
For One Somalia-Born UK Citizen Brexit Is a “Point of No Return” (Global Voices)

NATIONAL MEDIA

Explosion In Mogadishu Kills Three Suspected Militants

28 March – Source: Jowhar.com – 114 Words

Three suspected Al-Shabaab militants died last night when an explosive device they were planting around a key road in Mogadishu went off, killing them on the spot. A local resident said the badly mutilated bodies of the three men killed in the blast. The incident occurred at around 3:00 am local time.
Security officials said the militants were trying to bury a remotely detonated explosive device along the Warshadaha road when the explosion occurred, accusing the militant group of still being thirsty to harm more innocent lives. Such incidents have taken place several times before in Mogadishu and other parts of the country killing militants involved in burying explosive devices.

President Farmaajo Urges Citizens To Work With Security Forces In The Fight Against Al-Shabaab

28 March – Source : Goobjoog News – 166 Words

President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo has called on the public to work with the security forces to annihilate Al-Shabaab from Somalia. In an interview with state news agency SONNA, the President said the threat of Al-Shabaab must be dealt with conclusively and courageously. “The war on Al-Shabaab would not last forever; it has been going on for ten years, the war must end and we will be winners,” said Farmaajo.

He pledged that his government will fight Al-Shabaab which poses the biggest threat to peace and security in the country. “They are here to destroy property and kill the public but that will not be tolerated, their time is over,” he said. For a decade now, Somalia has been facing an insurgency by al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab, which the government is battling with the help of regional troops. The Somali militants have put up their onslaught on the government by staging attacks on AMISOM and government bases including public places in an effort to topple the internationally-backed government.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Somaliland Hospital Cares For Malnourished From Drought

28 March – Source: VOA – Video: 01:38 Minutes

As the breakaway republic of Somaliland grapples with a severe drought, medical workers are struggling to aid people left weakened by malnourishment and hunger. VOA’s Abdulaziz Osman filed this TV report from Erigavo, the capital of Sanaag region. Rob Raffaele narrates his report.

Finland Allocates $20 Million To Famine-hit African Countries

28 March – Source: Africa News – 329 Words

The Finnish government has allocated over £18 million (over $20 million) to five famine-hit African countries at risk of death and starvation caused by drought and conflict. The countries are South Sudan, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Nigeria, according to a statement from Finland’s Foreign Affairs Ministry on Monday. “The Horn of Africa is facing the worst food crisis in recent history. Approximately 20 million people suffer from shortage of food and water … Finland must be among those that are providing assistance,” said the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Kai Mykkänen who decided on the amount.

South Sudan will receive £7.6 million and Uganda will receive £2.2 million for receiving approximately 2,000 refugees from South Sudan daily despite being affected by drought. Somalia will also receive £5.5 million to support humanitarian work while Ethiopia will receive £755,000; and Nigeria will receive £2 million to aid those at risk of famine in the northeastern parts of the country.

The Finnish government acknowledged the severity of the crisis which is also affecting Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula. The Arab country will also receive EUR 1.5 million totalling Finaland’s humanitarian aid for famine-hit countries to £20 million. The Horn of Africa is facing its third consecutive year of drought causing thirst and hunger, decimating livestock, destroying livelihoods, spreading disease and triggering large scale population movements.

OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE

“With governments and institutions speaking unfiltered against religious and ethnic minorities, or people with certain sexual orientations, many racist people are coming out of the woodwork. There are even judges receiving threats simply for doing their jobs. This is not the England I grew up in, the one I wanted so much to belong to.”

For One Somalia-Born UK Citizen, Brexit Is a “Point of No Return”

28 March – Source: Global Voices – 746 Words

“Brexit has changed everything and we still don’t know how far that change will go,” says Ismael Einashe, a British journalist and Dart Center Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University Journalism School. I spoke with Einashe during Idea Camp, a program hosted by the European Cultural Foundation in Madrid in early March. “No one thought about what would come next and there weren’t any plans for the impact this decision would have on three million [citizens and residents of Great Britain].”

Einashe is one of the victims of the policies Great Britain has embraced in recent years. These policies have become more and more radical and mistrustful of the segment of the UK population who wish to remain in the EU, which includes a large part of the Muslim community. Seven out of ten Muslims voted against Brexit. Prime Minister Theresa May has, at various points, disparagingly referred to the 48% of anti-Brexit voters as the “metropolitan, capitalist elite,” “crybabies” and “citizens of the world.” Einashe asserts that these declarations have opened the door to a flood of racist incidents and commentary, similar to statements made by Trump in the United States and Le Pen in France.

Einashe’s path to citizenship was not an easy on. In 1994, when he was nine years old, Einashe arrived in London with his parents, fleeing Somalia’s devastating decade-long civil war. He grew up between the boroughs of Camden and Colindale, with Kurdish, Bosnian and Kosovar refugees on one side and working class whites on the other. The only black family in the neighborhood, the Einashes were received with hostility. “There were neighbors who would go as far as to throw garbage in our garden. My mother simply picked it up without saying a word.”

TOP TWEETS

@WBG_Climate: Unsafe drinking #water in drought-affected #Somalia claiming lives — of mostly women and children: http://wrld.bg/AZuv30a85ob

@Qaranjire: Developing our nation comes through enabling private sector to grow more under regulators let’s build trust btn sides. #Somalia

@IlyaGridneff : DoD Press Briefing on @USAfricaCommand by General Waldhauser #somalia

@Zoe_Flood: Major vaccination campaign launched against cholera in #Somalia as drought bites, ppl forced to drink unsafe water:

@Qaranjire: #Somalia is a country with a beautiful places to tour #CountryOfTheWeek @YALINetwork @YALIRLCEA

@UNSomalia: Emergency medical supplies are being sent to villages hard hit by #drought in #Somalia’s South West. Read more: http://bit.ly/2npBx8A

@Abdi_AlSheikh : Confusion surrounds Somalia pirate group – TradeWinds (subscription) http://dlvr.it/Nl1FrX #Somalia

@HassanIstiila: #BREAKING Pro-ISIS in #Somalia claims for the first to have killed a somali intelligence officer in #Mogadishu .

Follow the conversation →

IMAGE OF THE DAY

A visiting 24-member delegation of the African Union Peace and Security Council has commended the remarkable progress in the stabilization efforts in Jubbaland state.

Photo: AMISOM