Somali Political Leaders Urged to Support Peace

December 25, 2004

The UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, has urged Somali political leaders to encourage a peaceful resolution of conflict in the war-ravaged, Horn of Africa country.

"They have to stop their old practises of fighting each other every time they have a problem," Egeland, who visited Somalia from 3 to 5 December, told IRIN in the capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, Hargeysa. "They have to learn peaceful conflict resolution."

Describing the conditions in Somali returnee camps as "really bad", Egeland called for more international assistance to the returnees.

"Somaliland and Somalia at large have been receiving hundreds of thousands of returnees that they had to accommodate with very small resources," he said. "I think the biggest challenge for Somalia has been the sense that it is a hopeless case of incomprehensible internal conflicts and there is nothing we can do. I think Somalia is turning a corner."

Urging the new Somali transitional government to reach out to other faction leaders, he said the UN was willing to help Somalia recover from more than a decade of conflict and lack of a functioning state.

"The UN is ready and we hope the donors are ready to help us help the Somalis," he said. "We need to have one comprehensive international effort and I think that can come in the light of a possible donor conference in Rome."

In Hargeysa, Egeland met UN agencies and NGOs working in the region and congratulated them for their commitment to serving vulnerable people there. He met Somaliland authorities before going to Puntland, where he also met relief agencies and authorities.

Somalia ceased to function as a modern state in 1991, following the overthrow of Mohammed Siyad Barre, precipitating a ruinous civil war that saw numerous warlords and their militias divide the country into fiefdoms.

In October, a members of the transitional federal parliament sitting in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, elected a new president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, at the end of a two-year reconciliation conference sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development that brought together representatives from various clans and factions. A cabinet has since been named.

On Monday, the UN and other relief agencies launched an appeal for about US $164 million to, among other things, provide urgently needed aid and services to hundreds of thousands of conflict and drought-affected people in the war-ravaged nation.

The Somalia 2005 Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) also targets the promotion of human rights, access to basic services, support for good governance and building the capacity of the Somali civil society.

"Somalia's estimated 6.8 million people live in extremely poor and underdeveloped conditions," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in the CAP. Out of the total population, five percent - at least 400,000 - were internally displaced. Another five percent were living as refugees, it noted.

OCHA said the country was at "a crossroads as the conclusion of the latest peace talks leads to the formation of a new transitional government that promises to end years of political instability and violence".

"The situation is further aggravated by four consecutive years of severe drought conditions that have now spread from the northern regions to the central parts," OCHA dded. "Pastoralists in the Sool plateau have lost more than 80 percent of their livestock, resulting in a livelihood crisis, indebtedness and general economic stagnation in the affected regions."