Cardiff community call for Republic of Somaliland Recognition

Leading members of Cardiff’s Somali community are calling on the British and Welsh governments to recognize Somaliland as a country in its own right.

Speaking ahead of Somaliland Independence Day next week Eid Ali Ahmed, a founder member of Wales Refugee Council, and Abdikarim Abdi Adan, who runs Cardiff’s Somali Advice Centre, said recognizing Somaliland would give it the investment and help it needs to be a stable area in a troubled region.

Such a move could even help address the current migrant crisis as people from across Africa risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean for Europe, they said.

If it is recognized as a country it will have access to international aid and UN agencies and businesses will be more willing to invest,” said Mr Ahmed

“If the economy grows why would people need to come here?

“Migrants from across Africa coming from Libya to Italy are facing all these problems finding jobs. Western powers need to look at other ways to address this.

“We are building and investing in people in Somaliland but not getting the recognition to help us further our aims.” Read Full Article

The Surprising City Where Rape Victims Are Finding Justice

But a model for success is 450 miles away in the city of Hargeisa, the capital of a region of Somalia known as Somaliland. Mulvey has seen the one-stop system work there—she helped set it up. When Mulvey arrived in Hargeisa in 2007, as an adviser to the United Nations Development Programme’s Rule of Law program, she found herself in a country where the obstacles to prosecuting sexual assault were many, and resources she could apply to doing so were few. Somalia was in the midst of a civil war; sexual violence, as in Mogadishu today, was frequent, and punishment for such crimes was rare.

Sexual assaults were rarely even reported. Absent a straightforward legal mechanism for prosecuting cases, seeking justice falls to the survivor's family, which seeks restitution from the family of the perpetrator based on Xeer, a traditional legal system that dates back centuries. Read Full Article

Somaliland: Risking torture for a better life abroad

Hargeisa, Somaliland - Outside his two bedroom house made of tin in the heart of Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway Somaliland region, Kosar Dhool cuts an exhausted figure burdened with events far heavier than his slim frame can bear.

The father of five has been receiving phone calls from his son, Hamza, who has been captured and held for ransom by human smugglers in an unknown location in Libya.

"He called to say they are going to take out his kidneys and sell them for money if I don't pay the $2,100 ransom," Dhool told Al Jazeera, sitting on a plastic chair under a tree that barely provided shade from the boiling midday sun. 

Hamza, 18, is a bright high school student with much promise ahead of him. He is well-liked in his neighbourhood and everyone here is in a state of shock at his capture. 

For the past two years, Dhool had been working extra shifts to save up enough money to send Hamza to university in the hope he would then be able to help the family support his younger siblings. 

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