JEDDAH, 4 September 2004 — UN officials working in Somalia have appealed to international donors to increase their funding drastically, a statement said yesterday.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Maxwell Gaylard, said that about a million people were facing acute food shortage in the country.
According to the UN News Center, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has received less than $35 million so far of the $119 million it needs to deal with the mounting demands for relief from Somalis suffering from what is widely considered to be the worst drought there in 30 years.
The drought affects most of the country but is worst in the north and northeast, where livestock are dying at enormous rates — including 80 percent of camels — and the rangelands have become badly degraded by the lack of rain.
Some areas in the north have not had any rainfall for four years, and the northern regions of Somaliland and Puntland have both declared an emergency in their territories. Gaylard said that Somalis in the north are in desperate need of help.
OCHA Humanitarian Affairs Officer Olla Hassan said the croplands and agricultural districts in Somalia’s central and southern regions are also affected.
Cereal production has slumped, further damaging the country’s fragile economy.
“Somalia’s security situation makes aid distribution more difficult, but the key problem remained the lack of funds. There is capacity on the ground to provide assistance but there are just no resources,” Olla said. In November last year OCHA appealed for $110 million for all of Somalia’s needs, a total later increased to $119 million. Yet less than 30 percent of that amount has been donated so far.
The Somali business community has supported the current regional initiative aimed at halting 13 years of anarchy and bloodshed in Somalia, a UN Development Program statement said.
“The businessmen have thrown their weight behind the peace process after holding consultations with members of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development in Djibouti in July.
The Somali business community pledged to support and participate in a peaceful and economic reconstruction of Somalia,” it said, adding that the businessmen had also resolved to form a Somali Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“The private sector has sustained Somalia for the last 14 years in the absence of a functional central government. For UNDP, this is a clear indication of the Somali business community’s resolve to be a part of the reconstruction effort in Somalia,” UNDP said.
A bitter fight for the control of the Somali peace process between two Kenyan ministries has threatened to derail delicate negotiations for the war-torn country, East African Standard said yesterday.
The feud, between the Foreign Affairs and East Africa and Regional Co-operation ministries, also involves a tug-of-war over Kenya’s representation in IGAD — an East African body which is sponsoring the Somali peace talks in Kenya.
A letter by the Head of the Civil Service and secretary to the Cabinet, Ambassador Francis Muthaura placed the IGAD docket — and thereby the peace talks — in the newly created Regional Development ministry and away from Foreign Affairs.
The letter, dated Aug. 17, was written to Environment minister Kalonzo Musyoka (who until the June Cabinet reshuffle headed the Foreign Affairs Ministry) and copied to his replacement at the Foreign Ministry.
It read in part: “John Koech, the Minister for East Africa and Regional Cooperation will, with immediate effect, take over full responsibility of the two peace process (including Sudan) in his capacity as the minister responsible for IGAD under whose mandate the peace process fall.”
But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has written back to Muthaura challenging the legality of his directives. By placing IGAD and the peace process under Koech, he was actually breaching the IGAD charter, the letter said.
