Life and opportunity in the world's biggest refugee camp

Dadaab (Kenya) (AFP) - Soon after dawn Bashir Bilal sat outside on his usual plastic jerry can surrounded by young girls and boys chanting Koranic verses.

Each child clutched a worn plank of wood instead of an exercise book, writing on it in Arabic script with ink made from charcoal and water.

In Somalia the Islamic madrassa is often the only education on offer, but here in the Dadaab refugee camps it is just the start. Later in the day the children are able to attend, for free, primary and even secondary school while scholarships are available for college education.

Uprooted and dispossessed, life as a refugee is tough. But for the Somalis who have for years, or even decades, called Dadaab home there are opportunities too.

Bilal, 47, used to live in Afgoye, a breadbasket town 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of the capital Mogadishu. When he came to Dadaab five years ago he found better schooling options than at home where fees were high and children would often spend their days helping out on the family farm.  Read Full Article

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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