NAIROBI, Jul 25 - By December this year, aid agencies estimate that the number of displaced and hungry people in need of life-saving aid in Somalia will swell to 3.5 million—nearly half the country’s population. Yet, as drought and conflict conspire to worsen the crisis, the humanitarian space to deliver food and other essential assistance in this conflict zone has all but vanished.
“At sea, ships carrying aid face the threat of piracy, on land (aid workers face) armed robbery and kidnapping,” says Abdullahi Musse, a Somali worker for an international humanitarian organisation. “Then, in the process of reaching our warehouses as well as on their way to the beneficiaries, the trucks cannot move without security escorts and have to pass through countless checkpoints which cannot be crossed without paying a ‘fee’ to a variety of armed groups.
“It is a high-risk activity with minimal guarantees of security,” says Musse.
Over the past few months, even this has become almost impossible to do. This year alone 20 aid workers, including foreigners, have been killed. Seventeen aid workers were freed after being kidnapped for ransom while 13 more are still in captivity.
All international aid workers and UN staff have been forced out by continuous fighting between Islamic insurgent groups and forces of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) backed by Ethiopian troops. Both sides accuse each other of attacks on aid workers and vow to protect them. Added to this are professional kidnapping rings, which have been encouraged by the large ransoms paid by foreigners to release ships taken by pirates.
The UN agencies and nine international organisations still maintain a presence in Mogadishu, but they rely exclusively on local staff. Musse told IPS over the phone from Mogadishu that Somali workers, too, are now being targeted and aid delivery has completely stalled.
There are 250 informal settlements of displaced people in Mogadishu and over 200 more along the road in Afogye. The UN says that as of June, 857,000 people had been displaced from Mogadishu and are reliant on international aid. Other agricultural regions in south-central Somalia, the main theatre of conflict, have been without rain this season and food shortage is acute.
“One of the reasons why many people had fled Mogadishu and set up camps in Afgoye (45 kilometres from the capital) was that it was more accessible for aid workers than the city itself,” he says. “Many families split to get the aid they couldn’t in Mogadishu. For the last two weeks people in the Afgoye corridor settlements have also been protesting in frustration over lack of aid delivery.”
If sufficient food and other humanitarian assistance cannot be scaled up in the coming months, Oxfam International sees a severe famine in the making: “Should these conditions continue and aid agencies are not able to deliver adequate assistance, then the situation could tip over into famine in several regions of Somalia later in the year.”
In his speech at the Security Council on July 23, the secretary-general’s special representative for Somalia, Ahmed Ould-Abdalla, urged international naval escorts for WFP’s aid-carrying ships and more security for aid workers.
“I sympathise with Somali nationals who constitute more than 95 percent of aid workers in south and central Somalia. They risk their lives daily and all too often have been the innocent victims of targeted killings,” Abdalla told the Security Council Wednesday.
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