By Fatima Ahmed Yussuf Dualeh

I recently received an email about a petition that would be presented to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The purpose of the petition is to urge the Prime Minister to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state. I was overcome with emotion and excitement after reading about the petition. It made me proud that we as Somalilanders were showing our support to our country by designing this petition. I went onto the website to sign the petition and was astonished when I saw that here were only 350 signatures on the petition. On top of that, I found out that the petition was created in November 2006. The feeling of being proud and excited turned into sadness.

I am very disappointed that we as Somalilanders have this great opportunity to show our support in getting our Motherland international recognition but we are failing to make use of it. How do we expect other countries to take us serious, if we are not taken the matter serious ourselves? How do we expect to get Somaliland on the map, if we are not willing to fight for it?

Why aren't we showing our support in thousands? Why are we not sacrificing two minutes of our time to get our country international recognition? Why are we failing to unite to get our country recognition?

The lack of signatures is mainly due to the lack of advertising of the petition. There are thousands of Somalilanders in the United Kingdom, yet we are struggling to get the signatures on the petition. I personally found out about the petition from my father, who received an email from his cousin. To me it seems that the majority of people who signed the petition found out about it by chance. At the moment there are just over 1000 signatures on the petition and the deadline is on 21st March 2007. I am sure that all of us want Somaliland to be internationally recognized and now is the time to show our unity and have our voices heard.

There are only 30 days left to the deadline of the petition and the only way to get as many signatures as possible is by giving the petition exposure. A number of ways to achieve this is by displaying the petition link on all the major Somaliland websites such as Somaliland Org, Jamhuuriya, Haatuf and so on. Imagine the exposure the petition would get from this as thousands of Somalilanders access those websites on a daily basis. The only website that I have seen with a link to the petition is SDWO's website and I would like to say a massive thank you to them for reaching out to people.

As you all might be aware, there is a demonstration in White Hall on Thursday 22nd February 2007 at 12.00 – 17.00. Why not make use of this opportunity to spread the word about the petition.

I have designed a handout with the petition link, which my father will be handing out at Thursday's demonstration. This is my way of reaching out to as many people as possible. Any one of you who have another way of reaching out to people should put it into action.

I hope that we unite as Somalilanders because at the end of the day, we are fighting for the future of the generations still to come. Let’s all show that we believe in our country. We have come a long way since 1991 but there is still a long way to go and in order to reach the top of the mountain we need to come together, we need to show our support to our country and show the world our unity. This is the only way we will be recognized internationally.

The petition link is as follows: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Somaliland

Somaliland Ha Noolaato (AMIIN)

fay_dualeh@hotmail.co.uk