Tag: Somalia

While supporting the New Deal process and welcoming of the donors’ engagement, Somaliland has  chosen not to participate in the Conference as the country’s national needs and priorities are very different to Somalia’s, writes Mohamed Behi Yonis.

Somali journalists are under assault. Not only is the country one of the deadliest places for media workers, the year-old government is weighing a restrictive media law. The European Union, one of the African’s country’s most important supporters, needs to be more forceful in ensuring a free media environment in Somalia, writes Alison Bethel McKenzie.

By fostering regional development projects, IGAD, the organisation of the eight countries in the Horn of Africa, is seeking to project a more positive image of a region known mainly for its natural disasters and conflicts. But the European Commission says a key country for the region, Somalia, still lacks political stability.

Starving children stare at us from newspaper pages every day now in wide-eyed, mute appeal. Somalia is again in the grip of a humanitarian disaster, the world's largest at this time. When we visited the region in the last weeks, we were both shocked by the suffering and impressed by the resilience of the Somalis in the face of the worst hardships imaginable.