Hargeysa, Somaliland, July 14, 2007 (SL Times) – Somaliland National Youth Organization (SONYO Umbrella) concluded a National Youth Peer `Trainers of Trainees' (TOT ) on last Thursday. The week-long training workshop was attended by 21 young people from the six regions of Somaliland.
The executive director of the umbrella organisation, Mr. Mustafe M. Khaire, who addressed the closing ceremony, mentioned that the training is one of the most important workshops facilitated by SONYO.He said, "This is one of the largest training workshops we have ever conducted. We trained 21 Youth Peer trainers for the six regions of Somaliland. These trainers will provide Youth Peer education sessions in the villages and towns of the six regions of Somaliland".
Text of report in English by Ethiopian radio on 11 July
President Girma Woldegiorgis held discussions with mayors of Addis Ababa and Hargeysa cities on the ways of building capacity of Hargeysa, capital [City] of the Somaliland.
While receiving the mayor of Hargeysa City, Eng Husayn Muhammad Dahir, at his office yesterday, President Girma appreciated the visit of the Somalian delegation to exchange views to enhance relations between Addis Ababa and Hargeysa.
Accra, Ghana, July 2, 2007 – It has been submitted that the non-recognition of Somaliland by the African Union (AU) is undermining the principles of peace and stability of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
"The principles of NEPAD demand that African States should promote peace and stability, and this is exactly what Somaliland has achieved and consolidated. Consequently, the non-recognition of Somaliland by the AU is undermining the NEPAD," declared Dr. Iqbal Jhazbhay of the University of South Africa, Pretoria at a symposium on "The African Union and Somaliland in the Horn of Africa".
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NAIROBI, Kenya, July 13, 2007 - Somali opposition members based in Eritrea said Wednesday they will hold a parallel peace conference in direct competition with the Somali government, which is planning to hold peace talks in Mogadishu.
The aim of the opposition conference, to be held in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on Sept. 1, is to “form a coalition whose objective is to liberate the country” from Ethiopia, which is defending the current government, the group said in a statement.
New York, July 9, 2007 - A prominent broadcaster covering public reaction to a large-scale government security crackdown in the commercial district of the capital, Mogadishu, was raided four times over the weekend by Somali government troops, according to news reports and the National Union of Somali Journalists.
In four separate raids since Friday, troops searched the offices of Radio Shabelle, a leading independent station, according to the same sources. Troops searched for weapons, threatened staff at gunpoint, and disrupted live broadcasts, but the searches did not yield any weapons, journalists at the station told CPJ. Last month, authorities confiscated guns carried by the station’s security personnel after conducting a search, according to CPJ research.
LONDON 10 July 2007 – The heads of two United Nations agencies today made a joint call for concerted and coordinated international action to address the threat of piracy and armed robbery against ships in waters off the coast of Somalia, amid growing concern about the perils it poses for commercial shipping, fishing and other vessels and the delivery of humanitarian assistance needed by hundreds of thousands of Somali men, women and children.
The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Efthimios E. Mitropoulos, and the Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), Josette Sheeran, warned that the actions of pirates operating in the waters off Somalia threaten the sea lanes in the region and could endanger the fragile supply line for food assistance to Somalis whose lives have been shattered by more than 15 years of civil conflict, political instability and recurring natural disasters.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, July 13, 2007 - The former Ethiopian Defence Minster and member of parliament, Siye Abrha, who was found guilty of corruption was released on Wednesday after the Ethiopian supreme court sentenced him to five years imprisonment and a fine of 500 birr [USD; 1 USD = 8.9 birr].
Siye and his four family members were charged with 13 cases of corruption. Siye was released as he had already spent six years in prison during his trial and thus had already served out his prison time. Among the charges brought against the former defence minister include using his power to help his younger brother illegally buy vehicles with unfair price.
Nairobi, July 10, 2007 – THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING and devising possible solutions to the 16-year-old Somali conflict is in tackling the complex clan rivalry that reigns supreme.
A brief background is necessary. Before the Berlin Conference that sliced Africa into zones of colonial occupation, the Somali territory was vast, for it stretched from what is today Djibouti, the Ogaden province of Ethiopia, whatever is now called Somalia, and the North-Eastern Province of Kenya.
BBC MONITORING INTERNATIONAL REPORTS
Excerpt from report by Somaliland independent daily newspaper Haatuf on 8 July
Three high ranking Ethiopian military officials have in the past few days been visiting Somaliland police camps.
These officials arrived in the country on Thursday. They also visited Berbera, the provincial town of Saaxil Region. In Saaxil Region the Ethiopian officials visited Maandheera police training school.
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The refugees are part of a group of 4,000 Somali refugees who have recently been granted refugee status by UNHCR and the government's Authority for Refugees and Returnees Affairs (ARRA). An estimated 7,000 additional Somalis who also claim to have fled fighting and insecurity in Somalia, are waiting to be screened at other sites in eastern Ethiopia.
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2007 - For some, everything that could go wrong for Somalia has now come to pass. For others, considering how rapidly Mogadishu is turning into Baghdad, the worst - both for the country and the region - is yet to come. However, there is no disputing that, with each passing day, it is becoming more and more evident that Somalia's Ethiopian occupation is neither paving the road toward a reconciliation, nor forging a way forward.
Seven months after disrupting what was widely recognized as a "semblance of peace" that enabled Mogadishu to experience glimpses of normalcy, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) that rode into the Somali capital on Ethiopian tanks is continuing on its brutal and self-sabotaging path.
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US navy has unofficially `blockaded' all sea going traffic destined for the port of Berbera |
The Yemeni registered vessel, `MV. Al-Hamsa Hodieda' at Berbera port 13/07/07 |
Berbera, Somaliland, July 14, 2007 (SL Times) – Somaliland National Security Service (SLNSS) impounded a Yemeni registered livestock vessel when it docked at Berbera port on Thursday. The vessel, `MV. Al-Hamsa Hodieda' sailed from Yemen to collect livestock from Berbera and had no cargo when it docked at Berbera port, the regional capital of Sahil region.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, July 14, 2007 (SL Times) – The lower house of Somaliland parliament began last Sunday a debate on making changes to the ‘local-government election law bill’. The debate on the new proposed bill amendment will cover articles relating to the voting system, quotas for women and minority groups in local authority assemblies, candidate registration fee deposits and voter registration criteria.
Twenty three MPs submitted their signatories to the house chair committee for this proposed bill amendment to the ‘local-government election law bill’.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, July 14, 2007 (SL Times) – A delegation of ‘Qaran’ party officials were prevented last Sunday by the Gebile district local police from holding a meeting in the conference hall of Askar hotel in Gebiley town, 50km west of Hargeysa.
The delegation was led by veteran Somaliland national Movement (SNM) activist and co-founder, Muhammad Hashi Elmi and included Muhammad Abdi Daud, co-member party founder and Abdirahman Haji Hiirey, the party spokesman.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, July 14, 2007 (SL Times) – The government owned State National TV (SLNTV) Director General, Muhammad Muse Deria, held a press conference, two weeks ago, at the Hargeysa `Zambezi restaurant’ to tackle a number of contentious issues relating to the opposition, parliament and the legal status of a new political party which the government says is illegal.
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11 July 2007 - For 16 years since Somaliland declared self-independence and broke up from anarchic Somalia, this tiny nation has been pleading for international recognition as a sovereign State.
This plea has been largely ignored, even as the world powers today acknowledge that while Somalia is a failed State, this breakaway enclave remains a model that demonstrates how this troubled Horn of Africa could be fixed.
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Nairobi, July 13 2007 - The Chinese state oil giant, CNOOC, has won permission to search for oil in part of Somalia, underlining China’s willingness to brave Africa’s most volatile regions in its hunt for natural resources.
Somalia has been a no-go area for US oil companies since it descended into anarchy in the early 1990s. This year the capital, Mogadishu, has seen its worst violence in 16 years as insurgents seek to topple a fragile interim government.
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Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed (R) talks to the chairman of the Hawiye council of elders, Haji Abdi Iman at the presidential palace in Mogadishu July 12, 2007. The two leaders held a joint news conference vowing that a widely national reconciliation conference will be held undeterred. |
MOGADISHU, 13 Jul 2007 - Delegates from across Somalia are pouring into Mogadishu for a major reconciliation meeting on Sunday, seen as the government's last hope at securing peace and strengthening its legitimacy in the Horn of Africa nation.
11 Juy 2007
Few new states have come into being since the fall of the Soviet Union. In this List, FP looks at six regions and territories that are craving international recognition. Each has its own government—even its own flag—but lacks independent status at the United Nations. Who will be next to win this coveted prize?
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By Scott A Morgan
The voices that are crying out for peace in the long suffering country of Somalia are in danger of being drowned out by the Sabers that are rattling in both Ethiopia and Eritrea. And sadly the world is not paying attention to either problem.
The on again off again efforts to hold peace talks in Somalia have taken a unique twist with both factions the Governing Transitional National Authority and the main armed Opposition the Union of Islamic Courts planning on having their own separate peace talks. The TNG will have their talks in Mogadishu meanwhile the UIC has announced that their efforts will take place in Eritrea.
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Thursday, 12 July 2007 International Development Somalia : Overseas Aid Jim Cunningham (PPS (Mr Mike O'Brien, Minister of State), Department for Work and Pensions, Coventry South, Labour) To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what proportion of UK aid to Somalia is (a) agricultural and (b) medical in nature.
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AU council asks for appropriate time to discuss matter
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, July 13, 2007 - Fresh from attending the 9th AU summit in Accra, Ghana Abdillahi Duale, Somaliland’s foreign minister in an exclusive interview with Sub Saharan Informer slammed the African union and member states in their reluctance towards granting recognition to the sixteen- year- old Horn of African country.
The reluctance of the African Union and African states has kept us [Somaliland] hostage to a ghost state for 16 years … we have a legal right and Africa has a moral duty to grant us recognition,” said Duale commenting on the continued links being made between Somaliland’s recognition and the situation in Somalia.
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Djibouti's president, Ismael Omar Guelleh |
Paris, 13 July 2007 - Recently released classified documents suggest that France covered up the murder of one of its own judges in the tiny African state of Djibouti in 1995. The so-called "Affaire Borrel" threatens to explode into a far-ranging political and diplomatic scandal, engulfing, among others, the former president, Jacques Chirac.
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Zheng Xiaoyu (centre), head of China's State Food and Drug Administration from 1998 to 2005, reacts to his death sentence at the Supreme People's Court in Beijing. |
Beijing, 10 July 2007 - China's former drug and food safety watchdog chief was executed on Tuesday after being found guilty of corruption and dereliction of duty, Xinhua news agency said. The Supreme People's Court approved the death sentence against Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, who was convicted of taking bribes worth some 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) from eight companies.
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The Russian-speaking media in the United States was too dexterous to announce that the results of the recent meeting between Vladimir Putin and George W.Bush were of but little significance, but within the 24 hours that followed the media made an about-face. On July 2, Gusinsky’s RTVi, the only TV channel representing the “Russian America” in Kennebunkport was still savouring gastronomic peculiarities of the events on the sidelines of the meeting, calling it “the lobster summit.”
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PARIS, July 12, 2007 - French judges investigating the 1995 death of a French judge in Djibouti have searched the homes of a former presidential adviser on Africa, a source close to the case said Wednesday.
The judges this week searched residences in Paris and in the southern town of Lamanon belonging to Michel de Bonnecorse, who was head of the Africa department in former president Jacques Chirac's office.
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by Stephen Gowans
July 9, 2007
When Africa scholar Mahmoud Mandani looks at the slaughter and displacement of civilians in Darfur he notices something odd. The mass death of civilians in Darfur has been called a genocide, but slaughters of civilians of similar magnitude in Iraq and on a larger scale in Congo have not.
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On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 a delegation mostly from the European countries, led by the EU’s Special Envoy to Somalia Georges-Marc Andre, arrived in Mogadishu. The purpose of their visit was ostensibly to check on the progress of preparations for yet another one of Somalia’s interminable and fruitless reconciliation conferences.
After spending a few hours in Mogadishu and conferring mostly with members of the so-called Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG), the European delegation expressed satisfaction with the level of preparations for the meeting that was to take place in four days. When asked about the strong opposition to the conference among the Hawiye clan, Mr Georges-Marc Andre replied, "They have arguments but these arguments are not definite arguments.”
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In November 2005, the Centre for Human Rights began investigating the possibility of a third destination for the LLM field trip. The reasons for increasing the number of field trip destinations to include Somaliland include the following:
Somaliland is a state in the making; it would be ideal for students on the programme to have a first hand experience of this.
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By Abdullahi Dool
These are testing times. Not everyone can assess situations. But we all know that the situation in Somalia is far from normal. We know many Somalis have perished and the lives of many more have been seriously affected. Every situation is different and every crisis has its remedy. When we say we should not resort to violence cynics may think that we are borrowing time for the Transitional Federal Government. To call for sanity does not necessarily mean to appease or to be an apologist.
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THE WEAKEST LINK
By Abdi Haji
Imagine a soccer match with no referees, or worst yet imagine if the referee is siding with one of the teams. What are the chances of the other team winning with constant off sides, yellow cards, red cards and penalty kicks called against them? Wouldn’t you say the outcome of such a game is very much decided before the game even started? This scenario takes place in Somaliland today with the stakes much hire than a mere game. A constitutional democracy system of governess needs a strong and impartial Supreme Court to interpret the constitution, preserve the separation of powers and protect the rights and liberties of the individual.
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Comments on today's BBC news
By Jama Mohamed Ghalib
According to BBC News today, Wednesday 11 July 2007, an international delegation led by the European representative for Somalia visited Mogadishu. Under pressure from the United States, the international community seems poised to support the holding of a so-called reconciliation conference by the Ethiopian foisted and dictated TFG entity in Somalia. The delegation included representative(s) of the United Nations who were reported carrying handbag (s) containing cash in US$ not only for financing that bogus conference, but also possibly to bribe people for their participation.
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By Abukar Sanei
This piece is just a response to an article entitled "The Naked Hypocrisy of TFG Bashers," which was published in mid June this year. Of course, there are TFG bashers, and any Somali patriot has to countervail the TFG, but I am not sure if a patriot person is hypocrite for just his bash against the group of traitors called TFG. The question that we need to ask before we criticize the TFG bashers is, why do they bash the TFG?
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By Ayaanle Mohamed Omar
Kampala I. University,
Uganda
Although human being in this world has started with the same level of development or underdevelopment in terms of education, life expectancy, standard of living, poverty etc but today it seems that there is big difference among the people in this world.
Some people in this world today are enjoying with high living standard characterized by high life expectancy, literacy, medical care provision, political stability etc while others are under circles of poverty, illiteracy, diseases, conflicts and wars, and has been exploited heavily by the other people in this world.
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Ghanaian Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo and Chair of the African Union Ministerial Executive Council seen here with Dr. Jhazbhay at his office |
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UNISA's College of Human Sciences was, once again, under focus for its theoretical and applied research. The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, West Africa's premier institution for Conflict Prevention and Peace Studies, on the occasion of the African Union Summit, invited UNISA's Iqbal Jhazbhay to present his recent 400-page study on Somaliland: Post-War Nation Building and International Relations.
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14 July 2007 - On Saturday, the new Seven Wonders of the World were announced in a star-studded ceremony attended by 50,000 people in Lisbon, Portugal. In the largest online poll ever, around 100 million internet users voted for their favourtite site from a shortlist of 21. Monuments that lost out included Stonehenge, the Acroplis in Athens and New York's Statue of Liberty. Here are the seven that did make the grade, along with the Great Pyramid at Giza, the only surviving structure from the original seven wonders of the ancient world, which received honorary status.
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July 11, 2007
Operations are usually performed on girls aged four to 13
The Metropolitan Police is offering a £20,000 reward for information which would bring to justice anyone involved in female genital mutilation.
The campaign is being launched at the start of the summer holidays, during which young girls - mainly from African communities - are thought most at risk.
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Somalis on quarterdeck of HMS Venus at Singapore |
The Somalis are one of the oldest African communities in Britain. They have communities in the port cities of Cardiff, Liverpool, Hull, South Shields and London.
Despite their long association with Britain, very little is known or has been written about the Somali community in Britain.
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Court urged to disregard prosecutor’s request for death penalty for four journalists
13 July 2007
Reporters Without Borders appealed today to the federal high court to show clemency towards 38 government opponents, including four journalists, for whom prosecutor Abraha Tetemke requested the death penalty on 9 July. The court is to pass sentence on 16 July.
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By Noah Arre
Have you surfed Somaliland websites lately? Have you scanned the internet services that mushroom everywhere thanks to modern technology? And have you read and followed other media outlets plenty of which are out there? If so, it is possible that you may have noticed how the mercury barometer is rising wildly!
It is strange but it is true that many Somalilanders including some politicians know nothing more than playing the tribal cards. It is strange that some are fomenting only hate. It is true that some are driving a wedge between the few clans that are left to support internationally isolated Somaliland. And it is strange that many Somaliland political commentators are posting wildly opinionated articles in their websites with no respect for the views of others.
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