Somali youth still adamant about crossing into Europ

Zamzan, Somaliland Finance Minister, Cracksdown Loopholines in the Government Budget

Six Somalis arrested for conspiring to join ISIS

Fewer arrests but fear still lingers for Somaliland's press

Conditions for the press in the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland may, on the surface, appear to be improving. But without a functioning media law to lend protection, and pending legislative elections, journalists remain wary of state harassment.
Authorities have, for instance, decreased the rate and duration of arbitrary detentions of journalists, Mohamoud Abdi Jama, chairman of the Somaliland Journalists Association (SOLJA), told me during a U.N.-led trip in March to meet officials, journalists, and civil society actors in the capital, Hargeisa. The purpose of the visit by U.N. agencies and media-related non-profit organisations was to assess the needs and conditions of the press in Somaliland. In 2012, when CPJ last visited Hargeisa, hardly a week would pass without authorities detaining journalists for unfavourable coverage. According to the association's chairman, between January and April 1 nine journalists were detained: half of what CPJ recorded over the same period in 2012.
Both Deputy-Minister of Information Shukri Harir Ismail and Mohamoud told me the flurry of arrests reduced due to greater interaction and negotiation with authorities. "This has also led to less long-term detentions," Mohamoud said, to the point where in "most cases journalists are held for a few hours."
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South Africa’s Anti-foreigner Violence

Yemen conflict affects Somaliland & nearby countries

People displaced by the civil war in Yemen are taking speedboats and ferries across the Gulf of Aden to reach neighboring African countries where refugee camps are already stretched thin, raising fears that prolonged fighting could strain humanitarian resources. Somaliland, a self-declared country in northern Somalia, has received 270 migrants from Yemen. A further 389 people have arrived in Puntland, another Somali breakaway state, according to the IOM. Djibouti, Somaliland and Puntland already host tens of thousands of refugees, according to the UNHCR. Djibouti is home to about 24,000 refugees, while Somaliland hosts roughly 9,000 displaced people. Somaliland’s foreign minister, Mohamed Yonis, said he is expecting to receive up to 2,000 Yemeni refugees and is in talks with the EU and USAid about providing assistance for them. “It will be a challenge – we have a lot of Ethiopian refugees in Somaliland, we have a lot of internally displaced people. But we hope the international community will come to the rescue,” said Yonis. Read More

Somaliland to Harvard: How this student beat the odds

He credits the dramatic change in his fortunes to Somaliland's Abaarso School, a very small boarding school he attended, which was founded in 2009 by an American hedge fund manager.

"I'm not the smartest kid in Somaliland but I've had [the] opportunity [to attend Abaarso]," said Adan, who received his Harvard acceptance letter, along with a full scholarship, this month and will begin his undergraduate studies in September.
The Abaarso boarding school has become something of a feeder school for elite universities. Adan, 20, is among a small number of underprivileged students who are increasingly getting accepted into the most prestigious American universities, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown.
Abaarso's founder, Jonathan Starr, is a former American hedge fund manager turned headmaster, who left his job in finance because he wanted to do something different.
A family connection led him to launch the school in Somaliland, a self-declared independent state in Somalia that is still recovering from decades of civil war and a severe drought. Read More

The deadlock of Somaliland and Somalia talks

Somaliland and Somalia were under British and Italian rule, respectively, before they gained independence separately and entered into union in 1^st July 1960[i]. The union formed Somali Republic. The main idea of the union was to bring all Somalis in the Horn of Africa under one government to obliterate colonial legacy that divided Somali people into five, namely Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti, Northern Frontier District (now in Kenya) and Hawd and Reserved Area (now in Ethiopia). As a result, Somali Republic went war with Ethiopia twice. However, it failed to change colonial borders recognized by the world as intact.

From 1960 to 1969 Somali Republic was administered by civilian governments elected by the people. Unfortunately, on 21^st October 1969, the civilian government was overthrown by military who ruled the country in 21 years. Thousands of civilian people were massacred by the military in Somaliland. The military regime was toppled in 1991 by popular struggle. Read More

Somali President Reluctant to admit another failure

WHEN the British and Swedish ambassadors to Somalia recently queued up to meet a new member of the government appointed by the third prime minister in 18 months, the man they met was so new to Somali politics that a government adviser was unsure of his name. But it was not long before Mohamed Omar Arte, the incoming deputy prime minister, found himself in the midst of the bloody turmoil that remains a grim hallmark of politics in Somalia. On February 20th, two days after he met the Western envoys, he narrowly escaped with his life when suicide-bombers from the Shabab, Somalia’s extreme Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, attacked a hotel in Mogadishu, the capital, during Friday prayers, killing 25 people (plus both bombers). On March 27th gunmen hit another Mogadishu hotel popular with politicians, killing at least 17 people.

Meanwhile, strife within the government continues to damage President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. After his election in 2012 he was greeted as a breath of fresh air. Respected for his record as a human-rights enthusiast, he was free of the blood and murk that stained so many of Somalia’s more seasoned politicians. He was chosen by a 275-strong parliament whose members were nominated by elders from a cross-section of clans. Though it was a flawed method, with plenty of vote-buying and little direct say for ordinary Somalis, it was better than what had gone before.  Read Full Article