Head of the Department for the Fight Against Smuggling and Human Trafficking, Abdiwakil Abdullahi Mohamud told IPS that pointed out that it was not possible to control all Somalia's borders as they had limited resources available. Credit: Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

By Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar
MOGADISHU, May 28 2020 (IPS)

While simultaneously suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, flooding and a locust crisis, Somalia, could well see a rise in the number of people who are susceptible to human trafficking.

According to the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the rainy season in Gu resulted in twice the average rainfall, causing floods across this East African nation, affecting almost a million people and displacing over 400,000 people. 

“As more people find themselves in vulnerable circumstances as a result of displacement from floods, drought and conflict, it is assumed that some of them are likely to seek “greener pastures” it is anticipated that in this state of vulnerability they could become susceptible to human trafficking and exploitation,” Isaac Munyae, Programme Manager for Migrant Protection and Assistance at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Somalia, told IPS over email.

This Horn of Africa nation is considered a source, transit and destination country for trafficking in the region and each year a unknown number of migrants pass through the country’s borders. According to Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) officials, trafficking has been rampant in the country for decades.

“Many Somalis are trafficked across the borders and are often moving along the southern and northern routes through Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya. On the other hand there are some Somalis  and a lot of Ethiopians travelling to Yemen along the eastern route that pass through Somalia and also fall prey to exploitation,” Munyae said.

The IOM added that the COVID-19 outbreak — Somalia has some 1,711 confirmed cases as of May 27 — “poses an additional challenge in an already fragile context where it may further hinder access to basic services, leaving the population highly vulnerable”. 

• According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the country has some 2.6 million displaced people. 

• Since the start of this year, more than 220,000 Somalis were internally displaced because of drought and climate-related disasters, including 137,000 due to conflict.

• And in March and April, more than 50,000 people were forced to flee their homes as operations against the Islamic insurgent group, Al Shabab, resumed in Lower Shabelle.

With continued political and food insecurity, and the second-longest coastline in Africa after Madagascar (3,333 kilometres) which is difficult to patrol, the U.N.-backed FGS said it is doing its utmost to end human trafficking. 

“Somalia has a very long coastline and as I am speaking to you, we don’t have the capacity to control all of it, but our police maritime unit who have close cooperation with other forces in the country are always engaged in routine operations using speed boats, but to fully control such a long coastline needs much capacity than we currently have,” the head of the Department for the Fight Against Smuggling and Human Trafficking, Abdiwakil Abdullahi Mohamud, told IPS.

Mohamud and Somali parliament member Mohamed Ibrahim Abdi both lamented the lack of an existing human trafficking law.

“Human trafficking is a big problem which must be tackled, but I can confirm that Somali parliament hasn’t yet a human trafficking law. We recognise the importance of a law, but right now there is nothing on the table, I hope we will get the law in place in the future, I cannot say when,” Abdi, told IPS.

However, the federal state of Puntland has a human trafficking act in place, which requires enforcement. While in the breakaway region of Somaliland, “a referral mechanisms for supporting victims of human trafficking was developed and adopted this year,” said Munyae. 

In December, the FGS and IOM signed a cooperation agreement where “IOM proposes to work with the government in establishment of appropriate legal frameworks and referral mechanisms in collaboration with other UN and I/NGO partners,” Munyae told IPS.

There are no official figures of trafficking in Somalia.

• According to Mixed Migration Centre, in May 2019 there was an increase of 41 percent of the number of people migrating from Somalia to Yemen.
• Those migrants were from Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. The center said that in April 2019 alone some 18,904 Somali and Ethiopian migrants were recorded to have arrived in Yemen.

Mohamud said his department developed a close cooperation with the Department of Immigration and has so far been able to end the trafficking of people through airports and sea ports.

However, he pointed out that it was not possible to control all land borders as they had limited resources available.

According to Mohamud, his department prevented thousands of young Somali men and women from being trafficked out of the country since it was established three years ago. But he is mindful that people previously saved from trafficking could once again become susceptible.

“We do not have the financial capacity to create jobs for them, but we teach them some skills and we then hand them over to their families. That is what we are able to do for them at the moment,” he said, adding that high unemployment meant young Somalis were vulnerable to human traffickers.

• According to a figure released by the International Labour Organisation in 2019, the youth unemployment rate in Somalia was 24.89 percent.

Munyae added that additional factors that resulted in susceptibility to human trafficking included, “poverty as a result of loss in livelihoods caused by displacements for whatever reason, family pressures, social factors such as child marriages and forced labour and customary practices and lack of appropriate legal frameworks for protecting the rights of mobile population”.

However, Muna Hassan Mohamed, the chairlady of Somali Youth Cluster, believes that many youth are risking their lives in the hands of human traffickers as they are promised dual nationality.

“Of course, the unemployment and insecurity are very big problems that we can’t deny, but the main factor that drives young Somalis to be exploited by human traffickers is what I can call [the passports].

“When I say passports, I mean European, American, Canadian or Australian passports, because if you are a citizen of any of these countries, then it is easier for you to be an MP, a minister or get a well-paid job in Somalia,” she told IPS, adding that most Somali parliament members, government ministers, general directors and other key staffers are all dual citizens.

“Almost every well-paid job in Somali government’s institutions has been taken by Somalis with foreign passports, while international NGO’s in the country do not have an equal opportunity policy when employing Somali nationals,” she said explaining that those Somalis with dual citizenship were paid more than locals. 

Meanwhile, Omar Ahmed Tahriib-diid, who irregularly migrated to Europe in 2014, wants to spare others the hardships he faced.

Tahriib-diid, who now lives in the relatively peaceful Puntland State northeast of Somalia, said he decided to return to his native region.

“Every day I witnessed people dying of hunger or being tortured to death by the cruel human traffickers. We always hear in the news that migrants drowned at sea, but the underreported thing is that many more die even before reaching the sea,” Tahriib-diid told IPS of what he experienced when he left the country, travelling through Sudan and Libya.

“In Sudan they dealt with us well, but I can say that there was a widespread brutality in Libya which I can describe as a hell on earth,” he said.

Eventually, he made his way to Germany where he tried for an entire year and had been unable to get a job. Upon his return to Somalia, he landed a job as the regional coordinator for Sanaag region at the Ministry of Justice in Puntland State.

Now he remains engaged in awareness programmes and “succeeded to prevent many young people from risking their lives. Some of them are now running their own business or secured jobs through my awareness campaigns with the help from the government”.

** Additional reporting by Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

By Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar
MOGADISHU, Feb 23 2012 (IPS)

With an international meeting aimed at resolving the political crisis in Somalia set to take place Thursday, the local media in this East African nation is awash with scepticism, referring to the efforts as a new system of re-colonising the country.

The country has been without an effective government since 1991. The meeting, hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron, will have representatives from global organsiations and over 40 governments, including Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Britain has also invited representatives of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), as well as the presidents of the breakaway Somaliland, Puntland, and Galmudug, and the non-militant Islamist group Ahlu Sunnah Waljama’a (ASWJ).

But one of the country’s most influential political leaders and future presidential candidate, Omar Abdirahman Mohamed, told IPS said that Britain wanted Somalia to have a “weak administration”.

“The U.K. doesn’t want Somalia to have its military reformed and it was the sole superpower that negated the lifting of the arms embargo on Somalia. This shows that the U.K. government is totally against the formation of a stable government and powerful military in Somalia,” said Mohamed, who heads the Mogadishu-based Midnimo Political Party.

In 2008 U.K. law implemented various statutory instruments to enforce the arms embargo on Somalia. The embargo was first implemented on the country by the United Nations in 1992 after civil war broke out. It was partially lifted in 2007 to allow the importation of arms by the African Union Mission in Somalia.

“All Somalis are carefully watching the London conference and its outcome. Let the conference not be a conspiracy against the sovereignty of Somalia,” Mohamed said.

An alleged “leaked” communiqué, apparently written for release after the talks, has been circulating here, fuelling speculation in this East African nation about the negative outcome of these talks.

One controversial point on the document, which is available online, refers to allegedly passing on the functions of government to a caretaker authority until the constitutional discussions are concluded. However, the point further explains that the country’s constitution must be endorsed through a referendum or elected parliament.

The radio station Voice of the Peace said in its editorials that the U.K. was not looking for a lasting solution for Somalia.

Most newspapers including Kulmiye News and Xog-ogaal highlighted stories of locals who were concerned over Somalia becoming a colony once more.

One well-known elder, Ahmed Diriye, told local Radio Daljir he did not believe that the London conference would have positive results for Somalia. “We know that Kenya (does not have a) powerful military and that was (because of the) U.K., and I am afraid that it wants Somalia to have only a police force,” Diriye said.

The country’s President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed denied this saying media reports were “rumours and baseless propaganda” intended to mislead the views of Somalis.

Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed (c) said that the international community was committed to putting an end to the lawlessness in the country. Credit: Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

“There is no cause for concern over the sovereignty of the country. I can assure the Somali people that the London conference will focus on the interest of Somalia and how the world community can help the country out of its long-existing hardships,” Ahmed said Friday.

He was speaking in Garowe, a town in the breakaway state of Puntland, where the Somali government, regional autonomies, civil society, and ASWJ met to sign a deal outlining the composition of the country’s new parliament when the transitional period ends this August.

Ahmed said that the international community was committed to putting an end to the lawlessness in Somalia.

The British Ambassador to Somalia Matt Baugh told IPS from his Nairobi office that the conference is aimed at delivering a new international approach to Somalia and would form the basis for coordinated and sustained international leadership.

He added said that while the five-hour conference would not solve all the problems in Somalia, Britain wanted it to be “the catalyst for more international engagement in Somalia and more effective Somali leadership.”

He denied local media reports that the London conference will pave the way for a colony in Somalia and said that the British government and the international community wanted to help Somalia emerge from its problems.

“There are no options for colonising Somalia,” the ambassador insisted.

“We are holding this conference now because enough is enough. The suffering during the famine was a wake up call for the international community.  It’s time to arrest Somalia’s relentless decline – and make the most of the opportunities in front of us. We have an opportunity to support a more inclusive and representative political process when the transitional period ends in August,” he said.

However, the extremist group Al-Shabaab, which recently announced a merger with international terrorist group Al-Qaeda, denounced the conference saying that it intends to destroy the existence of Islam in Somalia.

“The U.K. has already colonised many Muslim countries and it wants to have colonies in Somalia again. Christian governments and their puppets are meeting there in London and they will tell the so-called TFG something to implement in the country, but that will not really work,” Al-Shabaab’s main preacher, Sheik Fu’ad Mohamed Qalaf, told the group’s radio station on Tuesday.

Many Somalis are hopeful that the conference will bring lasting peace to their country.

“The path of reconciliation, forgiveness and tolerance is needed so the wounds of your homeland may be healed and the plight of your people may come to an end,” the Imam of Somalia’s Al-Azhar Mosque, Dr. Sheik Ahmed El Tayyeb, said of the conference.

His comments helped some change their negative views of the talks.

“The Imam knows more than we do, so from now on I am very hopeful of the London conference and I am calling all Somalis to help the government implement the conference outcomes on the ground,” Abdi Abdulle Ahmed, a former schoolteacher, told IPS.

Meanwhile, other locals have high expectations of the conference. Well-known Somali folklore dancer Ahmed Abokar Abuna said he hopes that it will bring stability to the country.

“I believe the world is now struggling to solve Somalia’s problems so that Somalis and the whole world will be rescued from the danger of terrorists who have bases in Somalia,” he told IPS while walking along the Via Liberia Road in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab control large parts of southern Somalia and until last year controlled large portions of the country’s capital.

Sahro Moalim, a 22-year-old university student in Mogadishu, said that she had never experienced peace in Somalia and she hoped it would be an outcome of the conference.

Eyni Ahmed, a political analyst and the chairwomen of Somali Youth League, a group that aided with the disarmament of hundreds of former Al-Shabaab child soldiers, told IPS that the situation on the ground in Somalia is currently dangerous and the conference needed to find a resolution for the political turmoil.

“If it continues like this, if lawlessness and killings continue, it will have a bad impact on the country’s existence … so there will come a time when the world will say: ‘There was a country called Somalia once upon time,’” Eyni told IPS.

(END/2012)

As Somalia’s transitional government and various stakeholders meet Wednesday to discuss the inclusion of the country’s clans in the new government, women politicians have called for a greater role in the leadership of this East African nation.

Most Somali women have to provide for their families as the country’s female politicians call for greater representation in parliament. Credit: Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

The Somali government, regional autonomies, civil society, and the non-militant Islamist group Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a will meet in Garowe, Puntland state from Feb. 15 to 16 to discuss the composition of the country’s new parliament as the transitional period ends this August.

In exclusive interviews with IPS, the Minister for Women’s Development and Family Care, Dr. Mariam Aweis Jama, and the director for Women’s Affairs at the Presidential Palace, Malyun Sheik Heidar, said it was time that Somali women played a key part in the country’s leadership.

Jama said that in Somalia women are denied access to leadership and accused Somali men of not respecting women and preventing them from having a greater role in politics.

A woman has only ever held the ministerial post for Women’s Development and Family Care, and no woman has been appointed to other ministerial roles.

“As I remember, in the country’s history only the Ministry of Women’s (Development and Family Care) was always given to the Somali women. But that time was passed and we are going to have an equal share in the future cabinet,” Heidar said.

Both Jama and Heidar said they want to see more women in various ministerial posts and in the country’s other top leadership positions.

Heidar said that it was shameful that there is no regional female governor in the country, which consists of 18 regions and nearly 100 districts. “We only have one female district commissioner in Mogadishu, and that is unacceptable to us,” she said referring to Deqo Abdulkader, the commissioner of Wardhigley district in Mogadishu.

“Women are about 70 percent of the people and that is why Islam allowed that a man can marry four wives, so it is misfortune to neglect the role of women who are a majority in every community. We need (to be part of the) Presidency, we need a woman to become Prime Minister or Speaker of Parliament,” Jama said adding that Somali women are also lobbying to lead diplomatic missions abroad.

Jama said that according to Article 29 of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Charter, drawn up during the Somali National Reconciliation Conference in Kenya in 2004, women must comprise 12 percent of the transitional parliament. However, she feels they were cheated and not given enough posts in the current government.

Only 41 out of the 550-member Somali parliament are women – a mere seven percent. The Human Rights Committee is the only one of 27 parliamentary sub-committees chaired by a woman, Hawa Abdullahi Qayad.

However, women’s representation in the country’s 20 political parties has grown from five percent to at least 11 percent since 2004, although women mostly work in public relations and women’s affairs.

Women’s representation in parliament is also set to increase to 30 percent when the transitional period ends in August.

At a conference mapping out the country’s new constitution in Djibouti from Jan. 6 to 12, participants unanimously accepted a motion that 30 percent of the next parliament’s seats would to go to women. Somali lawmaker Sheik Jama Hajji Hussein, a moderate religious man and a long-time politician, said he had made the recommendation.

“In the era of Prophet Mohamed … women were teaching at Islamic schools, also the prophet’s wives used to teach some of his companions. So learning from this, women may have a big role in the community and it does not matter if they serve as politicians or a woman becomes the Somali Prime Minister or Speaker of Parliament,” Hussein said.

But Jama said that a 30 percent representation is not enough.

“We are not satisfied with 30 percent and I am telling you with a loud voice that after the transitional period ends we want 50 percent of parliament’s seats to go to women,” Jama said.

“There are thousands of educated women, including hundreds who have specialised in policy, so I am confident that Somali women currently have the knowledge and the power to lead,” she added.

For her part, Heidar wants to be chief of the country’s cabinet. “From now on nothing can prevent us from taking high posts in the country’s leadership and in the future I want to become Somalia’s Prime Minister.” The Prime Minister is the 2nd highest-ranking person in Somalia, after the President.

“In the years to come I will run for Parliamentary Speaker … I am sure someday that a Somali woman will lead parliament, or the whole country,” Heidar said of her plan to occupy one of the top jobs in Somalia.

However, women here still face resistance as Somali men have different views on women’s role in government. Most do not accept that women have a role in policy development or governance. Here, in this Horn of Africa country, religious and cultural zealots preach that women should not play a role in politics.

“Our Islamic religion tells us that those who are led by women will fail, so in accordance with Islam women must refrain from their ambition of leading a country and having representation in policy,” Ugas Abokar Islow Hassan, a well-known Somali tribal leader told IPS, adding that women must refrain from aspiring to political posts.

Sheik Farah Yusuf Mohamed, a fundamentalist preacher and Imam at Al-Huda Mosque in the capital, believes that a “woman’s mind is incomplete to lead a country” and that, according to Islam, they are only allowed to care for their homes.

But Ali Mohammed Nuh, the leader of the United Somali Republican Party believes that Somali women must be allowed to play a role in politics.

“In my party the representation of women has been expanded and I am prioritising that women have more membership in political parties—in my party we have a female deputy chairperson for public affairs,” Nuh said.

“Now women make up about 10 percent of our party’s members and I am very hopeful that the number of women in the United Somali Republican Party will increase in the years to come,” he added.

Doctors in Mogadishu are warning that famine victims in internally displaced camps have become vulnerable to contagious diseases like cholera and measles, as conditions here are ripe for an outbreak. This comes as internally displaced persons complain that relief aid to some camps has dwindled or stopped.

A four-year-old girl with meningitis sleeps in a makeshift tent in Sigale camp. Her parents left her to go beg for aid. Credit: Shafi'i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

The leader of a group of Somali volunteer doctors aiding the famine victims living in camps outside of Mogadishu, Dr. Abdi Ibrahim Ahmed, told IPS that sanitation in the camps was of concern and that many did not have access to clean drinking water.

“Conditions in the camps are very ripe for killer diseases. Doctors are ready to contribute their time, knowledge and energy, but we call on the Somali government to take our warnings seriously,” Ahmed told IPS.

He said people at IDP camps have contracted various diseases including upper and lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria and meningitis.

Ahmed said that standby medical units need to be established in the camps, adding that improved sanitation was needed to help prevent the spread of disease.

“If torrential rains fall and there are no mobile teams operating at the camps, I am afraid that contagious diseases will kill many,” the doctor told IPS.

While international aid continues to be delivered to Somalia, relief efforts at some camps have dwindled or stopped.

The Sigale camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu holds more than 3,000 people, according to the camp chairman Mohamed Hassan Sheik Abdi. However, they have not received relief aid since early August.

“We received our last food assistance from Qatar in the early days of Ramadan. Since then no one has come to us. We only heard on the radio that assistance from the international community is coming daily and that food distribution is continuing at some IDP camps,” Abdi told IPS.

He said that every morning mothers and fathers from the camp go to the city where they beg for food and charity.

“They return with what they get in the evening and feed their children who don’t eat all day,” he added.

The living conditions here are deteriorating rapidly.

While the United Nations Children’s Fund built a few toilets in Sigale and other IDP camps, they are not sufficient to meet the needs of the increasing population of these camps. While adults form long queues to use the few toilets at Sigale, children opt to defecate outside.

Also, there is a severe lack of water and women are forced to walk vast distances to find water.

It is no wonder that the drinking water is contaminated and has led to a number of watery diarrhoea cases, now one of the main causes of death at the camps.

According to Abdi, 10 persons, mostly children under the age of five, died from watery diarrhoea, whooping cough and diphtheria at Sigale since late September.

Since August, at least 38 people from Sigale and four other surrounding IDP camps have died from watery diarrhoea and other diseases.

The non-governmental relief organisation Qatar Charity was one of the first agencies to arrive in Somalia with aid for famine and drought victims. The drought has been described as the worst in the East African region in over 60 years.

Duran Ahmed Farah, Qatar Charity country director for Somalia, told IPS said that his agency has provided food aid to thousands of Somalis and now intends to tackle sanitation and health issues at the camps.

“We first tried to do a life-saving campaign because people were dying of hunger and wanted something to eat. Now we are going to establish mobile medical teams that will be responsible for health care at IDP camps,” Farah told IPS.

He added that aid agencies had not stopped their relief efforts but were feeding the new arrivals to Mogadishu.

“The huge need here cannot be met within a short time,” he said.

Meanwhile, the relief organisation Usmani Community Centre has started digging wells at some camps.

“We dug the wells at two camps in Hamar-Weyne and Abdel Aziz districts. In January we intend to dig wells at the seven camps that have the highest number of IDPs in Mogadishu,” Abdulaahi Mohamed Saneey, the Somali representative of the charity, told IPS.

The Somali government’s Mogadishu spokesman Mohamed Abdullahi Arig told IPS that the government needed help to prevent a possible cholera outbreak and to prevent other communicable diseases from spreading in the camps.

“The government is more vigilant, but our capacity is too little. We need the international community’s assistance in this sector,” Arig said.

When Al-Shabaab militants called the Somali national women’s basketball team captain, Suweys Ali Jama, and told her she had two options: to be killed or to stop playing basketball, she decided that neither was really an option at all.

The Somali national women's basketball team is in training for the Arab Games in Qatar. Credit: Shafi'i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

“I will only die when my life runs out – no one can kill me but Allah … I will never stop my profession while I am still alive,” Jama told IPS.

“Now, I am a player, but even if I retire I hope to be a coach – I will stop basketball only when I perish,” Jama said.

The Al-Qaeda-linked military group controls large parts of Somalia and occupied almost half of the country’s capital, Mogadishu, until its surprise withdrawal on Aug. 6. However, the group’s presence in the city remains as Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on the capital on Oct. 4, which killed at least 70 people.

Now Jama and members of her team have received death threats from the Islamic militant group, which views women’s participation in sport as “un-Islamic”.

In August 2006 the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a group of Sharia courts, issued an order banning Somali women from playing sport calling it the “heritage of old Christian cultures.” At the time the ICU controlled Mogadishu, but lost control of the city in December 2006.

Al-Shabaab, which was the armed wing of the ICU, has not altered their stance on women playing sport.

Aisha Mohamed, the deputy captain of the national women’s basketball team, said the militants also threatened her.

“‘You are twice guilty. First, you are a woman and you are playing sports, which the Islamic rule has banned. Second, you are representing the military club who are puppets for the infidels. So we are targeting you wherever you are,’ Islamists warned me during phone calls. But I am still clinging to my profession,” Mohamed told IPS.

Mohamed is one of the prominent national team members who belong to the Somali military sports club, Horseed. Mohamed’s mother is a former member of the women’s national team and she has been playing the sport since she was a child.

Basketball is the second-most popular sport in Somalia after football and, aside from handball, is the only other sport that Somali women play. However, women earn meager salaries as professional basketball players.

“I am a human being and I fear, but I know that only Allah can kill me,” 21-year-old Mohamed said echoing Jama’s sentiments.

So the team is training for December’s Arab Games in Qatar inside the safety of the bullet-ridden walls of the Somali police academy’s basketball court.

On a day with a clear blue sky overhead the women, dressed in loose fitting tracksuits and T-shirts and wearing headscarves, sprint from one end of the court to another amid the presence of hundreds of policemen.

When they are done they line up to take shots at the basketball hoop. All week they train for two hours a day here and only take off on Thursdays and Fridays – the Muslim weekend.

In the evening when the women leave the safety of the training base they swap their training gear for the anonymity of the traditional Islamic dress and veil. They also wear a Yashmak, a small piece of cloth to cover their faces.

Somalia’s first women’s national basketball team was formed in 1970 and participated in African and regional competitions over the years despite never winning a tournament, according to the National Olympic Committee President Aden Hajji Yeberow.

But the 2006 ban on women playing sports halted the growth of women’s basketball in this East African nation said Somali Basketball Federation Deputy Secretary-General Abdi Abdulle Ahmed.

“The Islamist ban led to some women (quitting the sport), because of fear,” Ahmed told IPS.

President of the Somali Basketball Federation Hussein Ibrahim Ali said that whenever women’s involvement in basketball grows, something occurs to set the sport back.

The 2006 Islamist ban, which lead to nearly two hundred women quitting the sport because of fear of reprisals, was one such incident. The two decades of civil war in the country, was another. Since mid- July a severe drought has affected the country, with famine declared in regions of southern Somalia.

Ali added that lack of sponsorship and insecurity were the biggest killers of sport in Somalia.

“So when the world knows that Somalia has undergone such hardships and our women are playing in an international tournament, this would really be great publicity for the whole country and, in particular, for the basketball federation,” Ali said.

The women’s coach Ali Sheik Muktar said that he is hopeful that his team will be successful in the upcoming Arab Games.

“To have a women’s team means a lot to Somalia,” Ali said.

Masses of food meant for famine victims in Somalia are being stolen, an investigation has revealed.

Mothers and their babies queue for food aid at the Raghe Ugas School in Waberi, Mogadishu. Credit: Shafi'i Mohyaddin Abokar

“There is widespread food aid corruption, that is why I am calling for the establishment of a special food aid monitoring group — this must include Somalis and the foreigners themselves,” Somali member of parliament Prof. Ali Mahmoud Nur told IPS.

The Somali government intends to fire all of Mogadishu’s 16 district commissioners amidst reports of food aid theft and insecurity. The government is planning to set up a special police force tasked with providing security during food aid distribution.

These measures were revealed as there have been recent reports of rioting and killings during food distribution at camps for famine victims. But it may not be enough to prevent the theft of food aid and there have been calls for government to set up a food aid corruption prevention unit.

Each day tonnes of food aid arrives in Mogadishu from across the world for the famine victims.

At least five cargo flights from Turkey and Kuwait arrive daily and other countries like Djibouti, Sudan, and Iran have also sent aid. Mercy USA, Diakonie Emergency Aid Bread for the World – Germany and the United Nations Refugee Agency are among the agencies distributing aid in the capital.

But Nur says the theft of food aid is so widespread that a special food aid monitoring group needs to be formed. Nur, a Somali-born U.S. citizen, has close ties with both the country’s Speaker of Parliament Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden and President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed. He told IPS that he has personally investigated reports of aid corruption.

Over 100,000 people have fled the drought and famine in southern Somalia to the country’s capital in search of food and aid in the last few months. Many walked for weeks on foot, without food or even water, losing loved ones and children too weak or malnourished to survive the arduous journey. And those who survived arrived at the capital weak and malnourished. The U.N. estimates that the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Mogadishu is currently around 470,000.

But their hope of finding aid in Mogadishu has diminished as officials are now involved in the theft of food aid. “It is very clear that some officials are involved in food aid corruption here — I am calling on them to stop such bad behaviour or otherwise they will damage their dignity,” Nur said.

Addressing a peaceful demonstration in Mogadishu on Aug. 23, Somali Prime Minister Abdi Weli Mohamed Ali and the region’s governor, Mahmoud Ahmed Nur, admitted that food aid was being stolen in some areas in the capital and promised to address this.

One government official, who demanded anonymity, told IPS that the government intends to fire all Mogadishu’s 16 district commissioners.

The district commissioners have been accused of numerous crimes including colluding with the foremen of the refugee camps to steal aid. However, no one has been officially charged yet.

In Mogadishu the district commissioners are powerful former clan militiamen appointed by the government for their standing among the local clans.

They are a law unto themselves. On Sep. 3 in the district of Bulohubey, in Mogadishu, the local district commissioner Ahmed Adow Anshur’s (better known as Ahmed Daai) militia clashed with the Transitional Federal Government soldiers. Three government soldiers were killed. Sources say that it seems highly unlikely that the country’s transitional government will be able to fire the district commissioners as some are ‘powerful warlords’.

But Abdullahi Mohamed Shirwa, who heads the Somali government’s Disaster Management Agency (DMA), which is tasked to coordinate aid efforts in Mogadishu, believes that the food aid is properly managed.

Most international aid agencies distribute the aid themselves while the DMA manages the food donated by various international governments.

“There were a few tonnes of food assistance from Kuwait which was delivered to the IDPs through my agency — I can confirm to you that we have managed it well and made sure that it got into the hands of the really needy people,” he said, adding that the food aid coming to Somalia can only meet about 10 percent of the country’s needs.

But he acknowledged that mistakes were made at some IDP camps in Mogadishu.

On Aug. 22 three famine victims were killed at an IDP camp in Waberi district in Mogadishu, while four others were wounded as government forces fired on them during food aid distribution. Waberi is the first port of call in Mogadishu for refugees fleeing their homes in the drought-stricken south. But it is not the first incidence where people were killed during a food riot. Ten people were killed on Aug. 5 during a riot at Badbaado camp – the city’s largest camp for refugees.

Shirwa admitted that there were reports of looting and theft of food aid at some camps in Mogadishu, but he believes that about 95 percent of the food aid has been properly managed.

And he said those issues will be resolved soon as the Somali government has established a special security police force whose responsibility will be to tighten the security of food aid at the camps.

The food security forces will start their operations as soon as possible, said Shirwa. But he could not give IPS a date when this would happen. He added that food security forces would work both day and night in routine operations around the IDP camps and streets in the capital to ensure the smooth continuation of humanitarian operations.

Soldiers are currently stationed around the aid distribution centres, but gangs, and even some government forces, have been accused of stealing food aid from famine refugees despite this security.

Amina Yusuf, a mother of four who lives at the Waberi district IDP camp, told IPS that armed men always rob them of their food.

“Robbing of food aid occurs here at least two times a week — we don’t know what to do,” Amina said.

But it is not just in Mogadishu that food is not reaching people in need. The Somali government’s relief inspector for Mogadishu and two of the worst drought-hit southern regions, Lower Shabelle and Middle Shabelle, Mahmoud Dahir Farah, said that his office had gathered evidence that food aid is not being properly managed.

Farah, who is appointed by the Somali government to coordinate the relief operations in these regions, said unfortunately people in need were not receiving food aid as intended.

“I am calling on the top Somali leaders to tackle this problem, because the food aid distribution is corrupted by the administrators in Mogadishu districts – this is a great problem, which has to be solved as soon as possible,” he said.

He also demanded that the government soldiers who killed IDPs at the Badbaado camp early this month and in Waberi district on Aug. 22 be brought before a court.

The U.N. has estimated that more than 3.6 million people in Somalia are currently in need of emergency humanitarian assistance as the region is in the midst of the worst drought in 60 years.