DEVELOPMENT-SOMALIA: Plagues Replace Wars

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul 11 2001 (IPS) - Somalia’s political climate is showing signs of stability for the first time in a decade, but the withdrawal of donor countries has prevented an improvement of the social and humanitarian country that is being thrashed by diseases.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns that emergency funds are essential to attend to the population’s needs for health and education services, and for water.

The specialised agency of the UN is calling on the international community to provide 700,000 dollars for preventive and curative health efforts in Somalia, where diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria cause half of all deaths among children.

Just 30 percent of the population is covered by immunisations and measles outbreaks have caused numerous deaths.

Cholera is endemic in this African nation, which also figures among the countries with highest concentrations of people with tuberculosis.

All of the plans drawn up by the UN for these areas have been postponed due to the severely limited financial resources available for a country where the most recent institutionally created government disappeared in early 1991.

The previous request for funds presented by UNICEF called for more than 23 million dollars. The donor countries met just nine percent of that total.

The greatest risk lies in the potential for food shortage by the end of this year, said Gianfranco Rotigliano, UNICEF representative in Somalia who is in Geneva this week to put pressure on diplomats from potential donor countries.

Among the most pressing needs, according to UNICEF, is 800,000 dollars to ensure supplies of water to the regions of Gedo, Bakol, Bay and Hiran, located in southern Somalia.

These areas risk losing their harvests because of drought, and food reserves have already begun to disappear. The drought- stricken regions are characterised by their high rates of persistent malnutrition.

UNICEF is also urgently requesting another consignment – for 600,000 dollars – to cover the costs of an education programme designed especially for children in communities that have been traumatized by armed conflict.

Somalia, a nation of nearly seven million people, is beginning to see an end to the chaos that reigned here since 1991, precipitated by clashes between bands headed by “warlords” that frustrated UN-led armed interventions with United States troops.

But institutionality made a return in the past year with the creation of the Transitional National Government (TNG) as the culmination of the so-called Arta peace process, named for the small city where the accord was reached between the warring factions.

The process led to the election of the Parliament, the ratification of the Constitution and the naming of the TNG, which was then set up in Mogadishu, the country’s former capital.

The process of extending peace throughout the entire country is slow, acknowledged UNICEF official Rotigliano. Much of the rest of the country remains divided, he said.

“There are two political entities coexisting in the north. One of them, known as the Republic of Somaliland, is in the northwest (bordering Djibouti). It is relatively peaceful and (political leaders) hold relative control over the territory,” explained Rotigliano.

East of Somaliland, the Puntland State of Somalia has been established. “They are not claiming independence, and they see themselves as the basis for a future federal reunification of Somalia.”

Somaliland, in contrast, rules out any effort to return to the previous situation, despite the fact that the new state, founded four years ago, has yet to receive diplomatic recognition from any country.

In the central and southern regions of Somalia, home to two- thirds of the population, the situation is still complicated because, alongside the TNG, the traditional warlords still hold power.

In the country’s central zone, another group is active – the Somalia Reconstruction Rehabilitation Council (SRRC) – with backing from the chiefs of some of the clans in that region.

Rotigliano pointed out that international officials face dangers, citing the kidnapping last March of six UN representatives and three members of the Paris-based humanitarian organisation Doctors without Borders.

All nine were eventually released, but the incident “certainly complicated the possibilities of working in Mogadishu,” commented the Italian-born UNICEF official.