Ainashe.net

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

Acute malnutrition is a chronic emergency all over the country. Families who have been displaced for years due to the political conflict require urgent assistance. Pastoralists in some areas have lost half of their herds. In southern Somalia, historically the country’s breadbasket, production of staple foods (such as sorghum and maize) has fallen by up to 50 percent because of the protracted drought.

With a $3 million CERF allocation, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is treating acute malnutrition in displaced children under five and vulnerable host Populations by handing out Plumpy’doz (a compound of vegetable fat, peanut paste, sugar, skimmed milk powder, malto-dextrine, and complex vitamins and minerals) every two months at distribution sites. It is also providing emergency nutrition supplementary food and technical support to 122,000 children in the Shabelle and Bossaso IDP camps.

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The African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) says:

At least 1.4 million people are facing a humanitarian emergency in southern and central Somalia and if sufficient food and water is not provided urgently, there is risk of an all out famine. The failure of both rainy seasons in 2005 has led to minimal harvests and acute lack of water and pasture. This, combined with ongoing civil strife for more than 15 years, has led to the worst food security situation the country has ever faced. One of the most affected regions is Gedo in the south of the country, where the African and Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) works. Cattle carcasses are strewn along the roadsides and on the edge of villages, and it is estimated that 80% of the cattle will perish by April. This is particularly disturbing, as more than half of the population are nomadic cattle herders.

Click here for full report on the AMREF website.

According to AGI; a special news service on behalf of the Italian Prime Minister’s office:   

Famine is having devastating effects in Somalia. Over one thousand people, half of which are women and children, died in the last four months as a result of the draught that hit the African Region. The numbers gathered in two weeks of the investigation begun by administrative authorities come from the elders of the Sheppard communities in the entire territory. “There is an elevated level of malnutrition that we can’t quantify with precision, we’re meeting with the district leaders, the women’s organizations, and the local communities to organize the emergency, but no physical aid has arrived as yet.” This was stated by Misna, Mohamed Ahmed Ali, the Deputy Commissioner of the Southern Region of Gedo, one of the worst hit locals in all of Somalia. The main problem, he underlines, “is the lack of water, there isn’t any or it’s not drinkable.” Ahmed Ali da Belet Hawa added, “The river that runs towards the ‘Giuba’ region is about ten kilometres away from the head village of the same district at the confines between Kenya and Ethiopia. The relief provided by FAO’s Local Health Authority confirmed the seriousness of the situation in the Gedo region, above all in the Northern district of Belet Hawa, Luuq and Garbaharey.   

Click here for the full report on AGI. 

Think about this! There is a starving wife with small and hungry children in her care with no food to feed her dying children. Luckily the WFP is trying to rescue this unfortunate family with the needed food that could keep those children alive. Unfortunately, her husband, the father of the children is a member of the tribal militia that is preventing the food to reach that family! Can any anyone understand the twisted logic of the apparent destructive tribalism on display here? This mad and rather cruel father seems to be prepared to kill his own children! For what? 

This is how the story is reported by the the Reuters’ news agency.   

When Habiba Hassan’s food ran out, she fed her four children on boiled bones and aran, a bitter leaf that grows in Somalia. She blamed her husband for the family’s plight, and not just because he abandoned her. Hassan said her husband was with a militia group manning a roadblock near the Wajid refugee camp where she lives in a small shack made from plastic bags, dirty rags and pieces of cardboard box since fleeing fighting in southern Baidoa.  “He is with the militia who are holding the (World Food Program) food aid that was coming our way,” she said last month. “He does not care about us.” The 14-truck aid convoy was the first in years to risk the land route from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to Wajid, a town in barren and dangerous south-central Somalia. The United Nations’ food agency was forced back onto Somalia’s potholed and perilous roads after pirates hijacked two of its ships last year, complicating efforts to get food aid to people hit by years of conflict and a severe drought.   

Click here to view the full dispatch on the Reuters news agency.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released its monthly report for December and paints a grim picture about the looming hunger and starvation facing the Somali Nation.

The report states:

Children, women and vulnerable communities in Somalia face a serious food shortage in the coming months. With people already suffering from the effects of poor health and insecurity, a food crisis will compound their anguish further.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO’s) Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU), with information verified by numerous agencies operating in Somalia, asserts that the humanitarian situation is steadily worsening and that poor rains have dramatically affected food availability. FSAU estimates, released on 20 December 2005, put at two million the number of people vulnerable to humanitarian emergency and/or acute food and livelihood crisis in Somalia with 1.7million of them being in Central/Southern Somalia. In the worst affected regions of Gedo, Bakool, Bay and Middle and Lower Jubba, agencies are already reporting increased admissions at feeding centres and a rise in cases of diarrhoea in certain areas. There is urgent need for interventions in the health, water, nutrition and other sectors to ensure livelihood to avert a major crisis.

Click here for the full report on the ReliefWeb .

You may also like to click here for UNICEF’s Somalia page.

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) published its annual list of the 10 most under-reported humanitarian emergencies. Needless to say, Somalia is on the list.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says:

Since 1991, Somalia has been a state without a functioning central government. Fourteen years of conflict has precipitated the collapse of public health structures and a total absence of health care services. In most parts of the country, clinics and hospitals have been looted or seriously damaged by armed groups, while the UN estimates that there are only four doctors and 28 nurses or midwives for every 100,000 people. Sometimes, people travel 500 miles just to reach one of the few existing health centers. The result of this situation has been catastrophic, with malnutrition, extreme poverty, and drought just some of the many scourges faced by Somalis.

Médecins Sans Frontières went on by saying:

Last year’s lack of rain - one of the worst droughts to hit the country in twelve years - may expose nearly two million people in the south to acute food shortages in the next six months. Few aid agencies, though, choose to work in Somalia because violence is so widespread and the country’s clan structure so complex, yet with no state medical services, there is a desperate need for assistance. MSF has been working in the country since 1986, and provides emergency assistance in the worst-affected areas in south and central Somalia.

Click here to view the full list on MSF’s website.

Trócaire; the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland says:

Health workers in Somalia are dealing with the worst cases of malnutrition for years, because of inadequate rains and the continuing insecurity in the country. The worst-affected region is Gedo in the south west of the country where, in some districts, entire crops have failed. This has had a disastrous effect on the population who are predominately agro-pastoralists, dependent on a few crops, including sorghum and maize. Cross-border fighting, leading to disruptions in trade and an influx of displaced people from El Waq, near the Kenyan border, has exacerbated the situation.

Click here for the full dispatch on Trócaire website.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa release its annual “Economic Report on Africa” for 2005. The report paints bleak economic outlook for Africa. The reports begins with the following statement:

With the highest incidence of poverty in the world, Africa urgently needs to create more employment and thus tackle the scourge of hunger, malnutrition and the overall low living standards the continent continues to witness. Indeed, unemployment is one of the greatest challenges to Africa’s development, with an estimated 10.9 per cent and 10.4 per cent of job seekers unemployed in 2003 in Sub-Saharan and North Africa, respectively. These are respectively the second and third highest unemployment rates in the world, with the Middle East region experiencing the highest rate.

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Oxfam Unwrapped allows people in the rich nations to send Christmas Gift to the poor in the developing world. You could, for instance, send a camel, a Donkey or a tree as a gift to poor farmers in Africa.

I think this is great idea…. I will have my Donkey!

For the record, I am NOT a big fan of Christmas at all. Indeed, in my student days at the University of Oslo, my friends and I used to seek refugee in the “Julefri” restaurants in Oslo. And at the time, there were not many such establishments in the city. Here in the United States, Bill O’Reilly and his Ultra-Religious-Conservatives want to force everyone to say, “Merry Christmas” to everyone else! I will not accept that! I guess I will stick with my “happy Holidays” greetings!

No disrespect to the religious folks, but we must remember that Christmas is actually a pagan tradition. Christians adopted it when they realized that they could not persuade Christians not to practice this pagan tradition!

Happy Holidays!

The Virtual Activism has a “WebWorks Program” that “has helped place over 68 nonprofit organizations and campaigns on the Web, even as they operate without funding and only through volunteers. Services are provided free of charge to eligible NGOs.”

You may like to click here to read eligibility requirements.

Great service! Ainashe.net urges low budget Somali NGOs to apply for this free service.

The Danish Institute for International Studies published recently a paper titled “Opportunities and Pitfalls in the Migration-Development Nexus: Somaliland and Beyond.”

The paper outlines current discussions around the links between migration, development and conflict. It also considers the complex nature of ‘mixed flows’, the difficulties in distinguishing between forced/political and voluntary/economic migration, and the links to development from these various – and often overlapping – types of flows. The paper uses migration from Somalia/Somaliland as the main example. This case – like the cases of most other sending countries - is of course specific. Still lessons can be drawn that are useful in other contexts, and may provide a basis for constructive discussion of potential opportunities in the current migration and international cooperation regimes.

The paper is bit old (2004) but it will certainty be useful to those who want to get greater understanding of the “push” and “pull” factors of Somali migration to Denmark.

Click here to view or download the paper in its entirety.

The following Network Paper published by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) describes:

An emergency cash relief programme carried out by Horn Relief and Norwegian People’s Aid in the Sool Plateau in Somalia in 2003-2004. The programme distributed $691,500 to 13,830 drought-affected households, making it the largest cash response ever mounted in Somalia. The paper explores the motivations and objectives that underpinned the programme, the context in which it was delivered, the problems it encountered and the effects it had on the targeted community. The paper concludes that, even in areas of political instability, cash relief can be an effective and viable alternative. There can be no ‘blueprint’ for the use of cash across all emergencies and in all circumstances. However, evidence is growing to suggest that, where circumstances are amenable, there is scope for increasing the use of cash as an instrument in humanitarian response.

Click here to view the full paper on ODI’s website.

The World Health Organization (WHO) released its annual “The World Health Report 2005 – Make Every Mother and Child Count” and says:

(….) this year almost 11 million children under five years of age will die from causes that are largely preventable. Among them are 4 million babies who will not survive the first month of life. At the same time, more than half a million women will die in pregnancy, childbirth or soon after. The report says that reducing this toll in line with the Millennium Development Goals depends largely on every mother and every child having the right to access to health care from pregnancy through childbirth, the neonatal period and childhood.

I am sure Yalaxow, Qanyare and the other destructive warlords could not care less about this but the child mortality rate in Somalia is 222 per 1000 for males and 228 per 1000 for females; one of the highest in the world. The sad thing is that the tragic demographic changes in Somalia continues unabated while the warlords are bickering endlessly among themselves. We need leadership with vision for our country and people not wolfes succking the blood out of their own!

Click here to view the full WHO World Health Report for 2005. The statistical health annex is here.

You may also like to click here and then select somalia from the list for more health statistics for somalia.

Civiblog is a one-stop-site for global civil society, devoted to providing an avenue to broaden the discourse of global issues. You can create your own blog free of charge and fully hosted. It is also easy to set up and maintain.

Check it out by clicking here.

On Open Democracy website, Elisabeth Porter writes:

To translate Resolution 1325 into reality, we must understand that there are gendered and cultural views on security, and include women in formal political processes.

Mr. Porter continued by asking the following question:

Does it really matter if women are present at negotiating tables or in formal peace processes?

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Thoraya Ahmed Obaid; Executive Director of the UNFPA was quoted as saying:

I am here today to say that world leaders will not make poverty history until they make gender discrimination history. (…..) We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls. We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic and political rights.

She went on by saying:

Many leaders call for free trade to spur economic growth. It is time to call for action to free women of the discrimination, violence and poor health they face in their daily lives. (…..)And I can assure you that women all over the world are tired of promises, promises, and promises. The time has come; we have the means, we have the commitment. Now we need action.

Click here to view the full article on UNFPA website. You may also like to click here to view the view full on “The Promise of Equality: Gender Equity, Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals”.