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Somaliland elections: Observers welcome progress towards setting date for poll

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HARGEISA, 8 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – As part of the UK-based team coordinating election observers for the much-delayed presidential elections in the internationally unrecognised Republic of Somaliland, Progressio today welcomes recent progress made to resolve the Somaliland voter registration process – a key sticking point – and calls on all parties to push ahead and set a date for the poll.

Progressio, the Development Planning Unit at University College London (UCL) and Somaliland Focus UK say in a joint statement: “Since September 2009 we have seen a marked improvement in the situation, when all three of Somaliland’s political parties signed a six-point agreement by which the government guaranteed that a further extension of office would not be sought and that the disputed and delayed process of agreeing a voter register would be recommenced. The agreement was subsequently approved by Somaliland’s upper house, the Guurti (House of Elders).”

The statement continues: “This development was quickly followed by improvements in the relationship and renewed understanding between the country’s National Electoral Commission (NEC) and the donors who are providing funding and technology for the voter registration process and the election itself. We are heartened by this progress, and look forward to completion of necessary processes (namely, agreement on a voter register) to allow an actual date to be announced. Indeed, as election observers, it is impossible for us to proceed with making plans for our mission until a date is set.”

It concludes: “Despite lack of international recognition of its claim to official statehood, Somaliland – “Africa’s best-kept secret” – has been characterised by many as a beacon of democratisation in Africa in contrast to the chaos in neighbouring Somalia. However, the delaying of the presidential poll is causing severe damage to Somaliland’s reputation. We therefore urge all stakeholders to do their utmost to maintain the positive momentum to ensure the poll is carried out, with as little delay as possible. This must include genuine commitment from all players and a realistic approach to the time needed to ensure a smooth and proper political process.”

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The UK-based team, along with FOPAG (Forum for Peace and Governance) in Somaliland, was invited to lead the election observation mission by the Somaliland National Electoral Commission in January 2009. The team has been tasked with coordinating international election observers from four continents and preparing a report on the conduct of the campaign and poll following the vote. Support for the mission is being provided by the UK government.

Somaliland Focus (UK) Chair, Michael Walls, said: “While Somaliland’s progress since 1991 has been remarkable, the next election marks a significant new step in establishing a legitimate system of national government. We applaud recent successes and look forward keenly to agreement on a voter register and the announcement of a viable election date with genuine cross-party support in the near future. Without those steps, the genuine achievements of the past 19 years will be dealt a profound blow”.

Source: Progressio

Female religious leaders lead the fight against AIDS.

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Monday Feb 08 (SomalilandPress)-Female religious leaders have taken a central role in the fight against AIDS in Somalia. This follows a series of trainings recently conducted by local organizations, with support from UNDP.

In Somaliland, UNDP supported four training events for female religious leaders in Hargeisa, Borama, Berbera and Buroa, in collaboration with the Somaliland HIV/AIDS Network and the Somaliland AIDS Commission. These trainings increased their knowledge on HIV and AIDS and placed female religious leaders at the forefront of community-based advocacy and awareness raising. Using the Compassion in Action toolkit developed by UNDP’s HIV/AIDS Regional Programme in the Arab States, the female religious leaders were sensitized about key issues: misconceptions that increase the chances of contracting HIV; stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV; and the important role that religious leaders and community members play in helping to reduce the number of new HIV infections and caring for the sick. They were also equipped with messages from the Koran that support the fight against HIV and AIDS.

These trainings helped to develop common messages on prevention, treatment, care and support for people living with HIV, which will be disseminated during Friday prayer meetings.

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Tradition and religion are strongly linked in the Somali community. Therefore, religious leaders have a great responsibility in leading the fight against HIV/AIDS and advocating for shared communal responsibility in addressing the primary socio-cultural and behavioural risks associated with the spread of HIV. Their open interaction with their congregations can enable them to inform and educate members and encourage positive change regarding sensitive issues related to sexuality, which are often not discussed by the community members.

The trainings were attended by over 100 female religious Leaders drawn from different parts of Somaliland.

Training in South Central Somalia was conducted towards the end of 2009 and sensitized participants on the basic principles of Behaviour Change Communication. The trainings also brought together religious leaders and participants who had been trained under the Behaviour Change Communication Peer Educator project. The aim is to strengthen community outreach work among the various groups in the region.

By December 2009, over 800 religious leaders had been trained using a specific toolkit designed to equip religious leaders to become ‘agents of change’ in the response to HIV and AIDS. In addition, 240 religious leaders were trained using the Behaviour Change Communication toolkit.

source: reliefweb.com

Ethiopian troops cross into Somalia

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MOGADISHU (Somalilandpress) — Ethiopian troops have crossed back into the northern regions of Bakool and Hiiraan in Somalia on Sunday, local residents confirm.

Ethiopian troops return comes as Somali government launches a fresh offensive against Islamist insurgents in the south of the country vowing to drive them out.

Residents in Elbarde and Yeed said that they saw a convey of Ethiopian troops accompanied by hundreds of Somali military personnel who are said to be trained in Ethiopia on Sunday.

Ethiopian troops seized the family of a wanted man, who they accuse of having links with Al-Shabab insurgents, Reuters reported. Residents said troops went to El Barde and Yeed on Saturday seeking the man.

“The man escaped, but they took with them his wife and three children. They also took the escaped man’s brother and family. The troops have now gone but I understand they are in the outskirts of the town,” a town resident, Hussein Ronow, told Reuters.

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Another residents in the Sariirale, a town on the Ethiopian-Somali border said that hundreds of Ethiopian troops have entered the town as well searching houses.

Ethiopian officials could not be reached for comment but Ethiopia denies frequently that it’s troops are on Somali soil.

Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 to help oust Islamist forces from the capital Mogadishu but withdrew under a UN-backed peace deal.

Ethiopia already made it clear that did still reserve the right to intervene in Somalia if it’s interests were directly threatened. Somali government has not commented about the latest development in the war-torn nation.

Muhudin Ahmed Roble
Somalilandpress, 8 February 2010
muhudin01@gmail.com

Fighting kills 9 civilians in Somalia

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MOGADISHU (Somalilandpress) — At least 9 civilians were killed and 14 others wounded in clashes between Somali government troops and insurgents in Mogadishu on Thursday and Friday, Human rights group said.

The heavy fighting erupted late on Thursday and continued into Friday morning in the capital in one of the bloodiest days in recent weeks.

A Mogadishu based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization said “casualties are from the overnight shelling,” and added that they were still monitoring Monday’s casualties.

“We saw al Shabaab carrying their dead and injured in a minibus. But we do not know the exact figure of the deaths,” Hassan Nur, a resident, told Reuters.

“The government shells almost leveled houses that housed local and foreign Al-Shabab fighters,” he added.

Government officials could not be reached for comment about the casualties.
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Somali government are battling with Al-Qaeda inspired Al-shabab fighters who run most of southern Somalia while the government controls few areas in the capital backed by Ugandan and Burundi troops.

The fighting in Somalia has killed over 19,000 Somalis since 2007 and displaced another 1.5 million. Somalia is one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.

Somalia has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Muhudin Ahmed Roble
Somalilandpress, 8 February 2010
muhudin01@gmail.com

Ten die on drifting Gulf of Aden migrant boat

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HARGEISA, 8 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – At least 10 migrants died and 30 went missing when the boat smuggling them from Somalia to Yemen suffered an engine failure in the Gulf of Aden, officials said Sunday.

Seventy people, mostly Ethiopians, were rescued when the coastguard in the northern breakaway state of Somaliland’s Sanag region spotted the boat drifting towards the shore.

“The rescued passengers told us that the boat was carrying around 110 migrants when it left,” Said Ige Mohamed, the head of immigration for Sanag province, told AFP by phone.

“Unfortunately, 10 were confirmed dead and 30 others are still missing in the sea,” he said.

Mohamed explained that the migrants presumably spent several days huddled inside the small boat with nothing to eat or drink and apparently jumped into the water upon seeing the coast.

Two were found already dead on the boat but at least eight others drowned as they attempted to swim to the shore, Mohamed explained.

“We don’t have many details. I don’t know how many days they spent on the boat but the survivors told us they were headed to Yemen and left from Bosasso” in the neighbouring semi-autonomous state of Puntland,” he said.

“Most of them are in serious condition and risk not making it if they don’t receive urgent medical attention,” the official said.

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Abdullahi Awale, a security official in the Somaliland capital Hargeysa, said the incident was being investigated.

According to the UN refugee agency, the number of migrants fleeing the unstable Horn of Africa and arriving in Yemen rose by 50 percent in 2009, reaching a record high of 74,000.

The number of Ethiopians making the journey across the Gulf of Aden or Red Sea — a route described by the UN as “the busiest and deadliest in the world” — doubled in 2009, while the number of Somalis remained steady.

More than 300 people drowned or did not survive the trip last year.

Source: AFP

Why Should I Send My Daughter to School?

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Nimo was an 18 year old orphan girl born into a poor family, she lived with her mother in the Sheikh Nour village in the outskirts of Hargeisa. As many other young people in this area, she can not afford to continue her higher education. She completed 26 June Secondary school last year and according to her examination results, she became first female student with the highest score in Somaliland’s whole Secondary Schools education.

Nimo was brilliant student who completed her four-years secondary school education after walking 5-kilometers walk from her home each day. She comes from a female-household and her mother was really disappointed with her staying at home. She said, my daughter was a good student and showed a lot of potential and interest in education but unfortunately, she insisted the family can not pay for her higher education fees. “So as far as I know this, why should I send my daughter to school?” she said.

Culturally, parents sent their sons to schools instead of daughters, only few families encourage their daughters to attend schools. Therefore, it was primitive believes saying that educated women only work while the ideal women in our society should look after her children, fetch water, clean and cook when her mother goes to the market. Others believe that women are possible to neglect their domestic duties and disobeying their parents due to the higher education they might have achieved. But those days are exhausted and invalid today.

For that reason, it was unbelievable that girls in Somaliland especially at Hargeisa are more advanced than boys in education; today our society are more comprehensive and ignoring all primitive ideas towards female communities and different sectors of society as a whole. Girls have taken up a positive role in our society in development and no area is more evident than education, as they are more sincere than boys.

Today, if you look up around the streets in Hargeisa in the afternoons girls spent their luxury time going in the private schools. Six out of ten persons you pass on the streets were young girls who are carrying hand bags full of books.

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Me, as a youth I believe that women deserve to be given a chance to educate same as men. As result of that, it’s quite comprehensive that the educated mother builds up the society from the base and teaches her children good habits such as kindness, honesty, telling the truth and respect. Really educated mother is an industry of constructive society she develops the child physically, mentally, and spiritually. Similarly, encourages her children in doing good things and also helps them with their studies by checking all their homework and preparing them a program to follow. But not all the mothers.

Apart from all of the above, she does so many other jobs. Educated women are very aware of the part she has to play in their society. She understands her responsibilities towards her self, her family and her country and that is how Islam believes as their right.

Do you know the history of the women’s struggle in the west? In 9th century French experts and philosophers held a conference which titled “is the soul in the women human or animal” they finally agreed that she is human but the objective in life is to serve for the man and make him happy. My sisters in faith, is that people believe like that told us today women’s rights.

Islam respects, venerates and honors our mothers and sisters. We have good examples in the Qur’an like Maryam, Balgisa and etc. Islam also absolutely rejects every thing that is against human rights. Let’s live with a life full of rights, respect, love and cooperation.

Written by: Farhan Abdi Suleiman (Oday)
Email: oday1999@yahoo.com
Tell: 4401132

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Ethiopia Gets Microsoft Software In Amharic

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Addis Ababa, 7 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – US software giant Microsoft has launched Windows Vista in Amharic, the first operating system in the national language of Ethiopia, the official news agency said Saturday.

“Launching the Amharic version software is a major step forward for Amharic to be a language of technology,” Director of the Ethiopian ICT Development Agency, Debretsion Gebremichael was quoted as saying by the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA).

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He said 40 scholars from the Addis Ababa University had taken part in the translation of the software and added that plans were being drafted for translation into some of the nation’s other languages.

“Ethiopia as a country of over 80 million people, has its own language and alphabet, and it is Microsoft?s desire to let this huge country use its Amharic service pack,” ENA quoted Microsoft’s Africa boss Cheick Modibo Diarra as saying.

Source: AFP

The Mourning Tree: an autobiography and a memoir of prison by Mohamed Barud Ali (update)

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Book Launch: The Mourning Tree – the autobiography of Mohamed Barud Ali
Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 4pm
Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH

The Mourning Tree: an autobiography and a memoir of prison, by Mohamed Barud Ali
Ponte Invisibile Ed (redsea-online), February 2010, 256 pp – 13x20cm (soft cover)

Kayd Somali Arts and Culture in collaboration with redsea-online.com is proudly inviting you to the presentation of new book: ‘Weerane’ (The Mourning Tree), autobiography by Mohamed Barud Ali. Join us to discuss this new autobiography with the author and also mark and commemorate with us, the students protest ( 20 Feb 1982, erupted 28 years ago in Hargeysa) demanding justice and the release of UFO members. We expect you on Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010 at 4pm at Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH.

This prison memoir will not only give first-hand information of the experience of the brutalities of Siyad Barre’s Somalia but also of the life of a nomad child who is brought to the city to live with his aunt because there was no work for him due to the fact that his father did not own any camels to be looked after. In the city while growing up, hunger was never far away. That motivated Mahamed to perform well at school which gave him the opportunity to go to the United Kingdom.  After he earned his university degree, he went back to his home town Hargeysa where he met young professionals’ like him. They decided to volunteer for their community, what became to be known by the international community as Hargeysa Self-help group and locally as UFO. For their noble acts, Mahamed and his colleagues were imprisoned and what followed were eight long lonely years, where the studying of insects was the main entertainment of the day.  The reasons why they were freed, while at the same time the rest of their community had been destroyed, were as strange and surprising as the reasons why they were jailed in the first place were bizarre. There was no time in Mohamed’s life to get depressed or discouraged when he and his group were freed as the reconstruction of the country had to start immediately.
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The other speakers are Jama Musse Jama; director of Red Sea online (publisher of ‘The Mourning Tree’), Rashiid Sheikh Abdullahi; Author  and expert on Somali culture,  Martin Hill; the former director of Amnesty International Somalia desk and researcher who was involved in this case, Judith Gardner; author Somalia–the Untold Story: The War through the Eyes of Somali Women,  Adan Warsame Said; the author’s friend and fellow prisoner, Fawzia Yousuf H Adam; The Director of Raad, I.M Lewis; Emeritus  professor at The London School of Economics and Political Science (TBC) and others

The Mourning Tree: an autobiography and a memoir of prison, by Mohamed Barud Ali is the first of “Rag & Dumar” series, which is a selected list of biography books, published and distributed by Ponte Invisibile Ed. (redsea-online.com)

Mahamed Barud Ali is civil right activist, Hero to some, the prisoner of conscience under the brutal regime of Somalia; he lives in Hargeisa, with his wife and children and works on issues relating to human rights and civil liberties. ‘

Join us to discuss this new autobiography with the author and also mark and commemorate with us on Saturday, 20 Feb. 2010, 4pm at Oxford House, Derby Shire Street, E2 6GH.

For more information call 07903712949 or Email:

ayan_mahamoud@kayd.org
Website: www.kayd.org

SOMALIA: Islamist insurgents pour into Mogadishu

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NAIROBI (Somalilandpress) — An influx of fighters from Islamist insurgents have filled the streets of the capital of the wartorn nation of Somalia as the government announces fresh offensive against Islamist rebel, residents and witnesses told Somalilandpress.

A local journalist has said on conditions of anonymity that heavily armed Al-Shabab fighters arriving from the town of Baidoa have filled the streets of Mogadishu on Friday and Saturday in an attempt to hold their positions.

The journalist also said hundreds of Somali government forces have been deployed into the front line areas currently under control of Islamist insurgents.

Somali president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has confirmed that his government was ready to mount a fresh offensive against the rebel mostly in the capital Mogadishu.

He added that his troops were ready to take strategic towns in southern Somalia including Baidoa, Kismayu and Merka, curently under the control of Al-Shabaab and Hisbul-Islam.

A large number of African Union troops have approached Merka and Baraawe ports assisting the Somali government, Press TV based in Iran reported.

There are 5000 AU troops in the country mainly from Uganda and Burundi, the Somali government has repeatedly requested at least 8000 in order to flash-out the rebels.
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The reporter has confirmed to Somalilandpress that civilians have fled their homes in Mogadishu’s southern districts of Hodan, Wardhigley and Howl-Wadag.

Some of the civilians are reported to have fled to Elsha, 15 Km (9 miles) southwest of Mogadishu where at least one-quarter of a million Somalis are already based, displaced by the war.

Al-Shabab hardliners, who openly admitted their links with Al-Qaeda control most of southern Somalia while the weak Somali government backed by Western countries are confined to small pockets of the country.

The fighting in Somalia has killed over 19,000 Somalis since 2007 and has further displaced 1.5 million people inside the country while another 560,000 civilians have registered as refugees in neighboring countries. Somalia is one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies and was ranked the most corrupted country in 2009.

The Horn of Africa nation has not had an effective government since warlords overthrew longtime dictator Maj. General Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Picture: Hard-line Islamist Al Shabab fighters conduct military exercise in northern Mogadishu’s Suqaholaha neighborhood, Somalia, Friday Jan. 1, 2010. The group’s senior official said the young fighters have recently completed training to join what they said to be a global war against the enemy of Allah. (AP Photo/ Farah Abdi Warsameh)

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble
Nairobi – Kenya

Somalilandpress, 6 February 2010

Somaliland: Two Died As Demonstrations Rock Lasanod

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Lasanod, 6 February 2010 (Somalilandpress) – A violent demonstration rock Lasanod today as tens of people burned tires and were throwing stones against the security forces in the city.

The demonstrations took place as the police arrested teachers at Islamic madrasas in the town in connection with the recent bomb attacks.

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The demonstrators were chanting statements against Somaliland government requesting an immediate release of the prisoners.

At least two people died when the police fired at the crowds who are throwing stones and burning tires in the main roads. Others are also wounded.

This comes when a number of Somaliland ministers and other officials are visiting the town to enforce the ongoing investigations of the recent bomb attacks in the city. Somaliland officials believe that Alshabab is behind the attacks but nobody claimed the responsibility.

Somalilandpress