By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Feb 19 2003 (IPS)

Despite the slow progress at peace talks aimed at ending more than a decade of anarchy in Somalia, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is optimistic about the future – even if the war continues.

Steven Lauwerier was UNICEF’s project officer based in Baidoa, in southern Somalia, until fighting broke out there late last year. Now, he is constantly on the move, sleeping in whichever town is safest at the time.

Despite such difficulties, he says progress is being made because UNICEF are now investing in people rather than infrastructure.

The conflict in Baidoa has not stopped UNICEF’s child vaccination or education programmes.

”When there was a week of no fighting, we had a polio vaccination round. Which before would not have been possible but now there is that commitment from the community to do that. Schools reopened, we were able to deliver the textbooks,” he says.

Speaking at the end of a two-day strategy meeting on UNICEF’s 2004 to 2008 five-year programme this week, Jesper Morch, UNICEF Somalia Representative emphasised that it is wrong to write Somalia off as a basket case.

”We acknowledge that we are likely to spend a lot of our time, energy and resources on emergency response, but we also do it with a strong sense of optimism. Impressive results have been achieved in the midst of so much suffering and agony,” he said.

UNICEF has had to work from a near vacuum. There has been no central government in Somalia since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.

Almost a whole generation of teenagers have grown up without attending school.

The lack of even a basic education structure forced UNICEF to start at the very beginning – by creating a curriculum and standardised textbooks for primary schools.

In 2002, these textbooks were distributed to more than 1,100 schools. Over 6,500 primary school teachers also received training.

Some 265,000 students are now enrolled in Somali schools, a 75 percent increase on 1999.

The health sector continues to dominate much of UNICEF’s work in Somalia. Infant, child and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world. Somalia is one of the few countries in the world where polio has not been eradicated.

Working together with the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF has carried out a successful polio vaccination campaign. The disease is likely to be eradicated in the next three years, if no new cases of wild polio are reported.

In the next five years, UNICEF intends to devote much more attention to the problem of HIV/AIDS. The prevalence rate in Somalia is one of the lowest in Africa – estimated at between one and three percent.

This offers a great opportunity to learn from past mistakes, and successes, in other African countries to make sure that HIV/AIDS does not decimate Somalia in the same way.

”In Somalia we have a unique opportunity – starting aggressive and full-scale response towards HIV/AIDS when the prevalence is still low,” says Mira Inhalainen, UNICEF’s HIV/AIDS project officer.

A lot of studies show it is easier to contain a low prevalence than do damage control later when the negative impacts of the pandemic start accumulating.

UNICEF also sees hope on the political front.

Peace talks aimed at re-establishing a central national government in Somalia have been dragging on for four months. The talks were moved from the Kenyan town of Eldoret to the national capital Nairobi last week.

Although progress is slow, Somalis are confident that the talks will produce results.

”During the past months I’ve seen more hope than there was before. And certainly talking to leaders as well as local authorities, I get the indication that there’s far more clearer prospect for peace than there was before,” says Lauwerier.

”Also people who come from the Eldoret conference say it will come out to something, to some kind of a peace deal. What it will be, how it will be, when it will be, that is the question that nobody can answer at this moment,” he shrugs.

Although fighting still continues in Somalia, UNICEF officials say it has become much more localised and short-lived than before.

The current phase of the Nairobi talks, which involves drawing up recommendations in six key areas, like landownership and demobilisation, is expected to last another three weeks. After that, the delegates will move on to the final and most difficult phase – working out a transitional federal government for Somalia.

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