People continue to be enslaved in northern Mali, according to Malian human rights organization Temedt, despite a widespread belief that slavery no longer exists in the country. "The government believes slavery ended with independence, when many of the people who had been living as slaves in the colonial period were freed," said Temedt president Mohammed Ag Akeratane, "but I would estimate there are still several thousand people living in slavery or slavery-like conditions in modern Mali."

The Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA) is pleased to call for applications for the position of Regional Coordinator, based in Bamako, in the Republic of Mali. The deadline for receipt of applications is 14 August 2008.

You can order a copy of from Progressio by clicking here.

In Mali the most important exams come last: the baccalaureate at the end of June. But this year, with secondary-school teachers in their seventh straight month of strikes, the exam risks going unmarked, meaning students may face a blank school year. That is making many of them angry.

A Nurse Education Specialist / CPD Coordinator is sought to deliver an 18 month programme of CPD for nurse teachers as well as develop, coordinate and implement CPD programmes for nurses and midwives in Somaliland. The postholder will play a key role in strengthening nursing and midwifery in Somaliland. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the development of human and institutional capacity, crucial for the rebuilding of the health system in Somaliland. Closing date for applications: 13th June 2008. Telephone interviews in the week beginning 16th June 2008.

Tuareg rebels attacked an army camp in north-eastern Mali where 17 rebels and 15 soldiers were killed in one of the bloodiest clashes to date in a revolt by the desert insurgents, the government said on Thursday. A Defence Ministry statement said an "armed band" assaulted the camp at Abebara, 150km from Kidal during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday in Mali's remote north-east, where Tuareg fighters have carried out a series of raids and ambushes.

‘Why write a book about Somaliland, a lightly populated region on the edge of Africa which, if the international community had its wish, would be reincorporated into a federal Somali state?’ The author, Mark Bradbury, answers his own question by filling an important gap in the literature on Somali studies. The book, written by someone who has been deeply engaged with the region for many years, provides a comprehensive and inspiring account of how people in Somaliland and its diaspora ‘debated, defined and created a new polity’ in the aftermath of war, and in so doing challenged normative assumptions about what states look like and how they are built.

The book tells the story of the process of state-building in Somaliland from the start of European colonisation in the early 19th century to the holding of multi-party elections in September 2005. Two notable characteristics of the political system that has taken shape in Somaliland since it declared its independence from Somalia on 18 May 1991 are its fusion of modern and traditional forms of political organisation and its strong roots in society.

The Somali National Movement (SNM), which fought against Siad Barre’s regime in the north-west during the 1980s, published its political manifesto in 1981. It proposed ‘a new political system built upon Somali cultural values of cooperation rather than coercion’. This challenged the political orthodoxy of the time, as the author explains, because the clan was then regarded as incompatible with a unified, modern state. From 1988 a council of clan elders, or guurti, acted as an advisory body to the SNM’s central committee. After the war this evolved into the upper house of a bicameral parliament thus, uniquely in Africa, incorporating a traditional institution within the formal structure of the state.

Somaliland’s lack of international recognition, and the west’s preoccupation with events in the south of Somalia after the fall of Siad Barre, forced Somalilanders back on their own resources. The succession of clan conferences in the first half of the 1990s which cemented the peace and fashioned the new state were led by elders and financed from domestic or diaspora sources. This strengthened their legitimacy, as did the use of customary processes of dialogue and consensus-building and the highly visible nature of the discussions. With the country’s limited access to external aid and finance, funds from the diaspora have been essential to the survival of many families. They have also underpinned the rebuilding of public institutions, from universities to hospitals, and the regeneration of key sectors such as telecommunications and housing.

Support for the path Somaliland has taken is by no means universal, even within Somaliland. Despite his evident respect for what has been achieved, the author also makes an honest assessment of the shortcomings and challenges. The government’s detention of its critics, restrictions on the media, and use of emergency laws to prohibit public debate on sensitive issues (such as the prospects of reunification with Somalia) have been widely criticised both within and outside the country. Its writ barely extends over the eastern regions of Sool and Sanaag. Its finances remain highly dependent on tariffs on a single export (livestock). Neither the clan-based system of political representation nor the multi-party system which replaced it has so far shown much concern for the rights of women and minority groups. And what were once some of the system’s strengths are now showing signs of weakness: the moral authority of the guurti, for example, has been undermined by being institutionalised within government, leaving elders vulnerable to accusations of having a vested interest in the regime’s survival.

Nevertheless, throughout the 17 years since Somaliland revoked the 1960 Act of Union, its people have shown a remarkable level of political maturity. Three elections have been held since 2002: district, presidential and parliamentary. All were found by external observers to be reasonably free and fair, while power passed peacefully on the death of one president to another, even of a different clan. The ruling party won the presidential elections in April 2003 by a whisker – just 80 votes – and yet the party which was narrowly beaten into second place chose to contest the results (and eventually accept them) using constitutional means. The multi-party parliamentary elections in 2005 created a situation in which – uniquely in Africa, according to the author – the ruling party does not control the legislature. Although Somaliland slipped back into civil war between 1994 and 1996, on the whole the preference has been to resolve problems through dialogue rather than violence. Time and time again, religious leaders, civil society activists, elders, poets and businessmen have joined together to mediate between conflicting parties when the political system has reached an impasse. These achievements are rightly given their due recognition in this book.

The literature on the state often draws a distinction between juridical and empirical statehood. In the case of Somalia, it is the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu – the product of an externally driven process of negotiation, and now surviving only with the military support of Ethiopia and the West – that enjoys juridical statehood in the eyes of the international community. But it is Somaliland, unrecognised under international law, which has achieved the greater degree of empirical statehood, and it has done it with only a fraction of the resources that have been directed in search of peace and stability in the south. The comparison may not be entirely fair, given the differences in context, but as Mark Bradbury points out, the West’s line on Somalia – that the solution to its problems must lie with Somalis themselves (including the resolution of Somaliland’s current ‘diplomatic limbo’) – is rather undermined by its heavy-handed intervention against the Union of Islamic Courts. Bradbury does not use the word, but a fair degree of humbug has for a long time characterised the West’s dealings with Somalia/Somaliland.

In a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, two staff from the International Crisis Group commented on the distorted priorities of those crafting resolutions at the UN, seemingly more concerned with piracy off the Somali coast than with the suffering taking place on land. ‘Strange how an African country can be moving from prolonged chaos to violent collapse and no one in the world notices until a couple of European boats get seized by armed gunmen,’ they wrote. All too often the good news out of Africa receives similarly short shrift. The world is starting to wake up to what has been happening in Somaliland and to what its people have achieved on their own terms. This book will make a major contribution to that process of enlightenment.

Bradbury, M. (2008) 'Becoming Somaliland'. Progressio, in association with James Currey, Indiana University Press, Jacana Media, Fountain Publishers and East African Educational Publishers. Softback, 271 pages.

*Izzy Birch works for Fahamu

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

After years of delays the Mali national cotton company, Malian Company for Textile Development (CMDT), is on the verge of privatisation with bids for tender just sent out, but the World Bank which backs the privatisation is worried none of the right conditions are in place to make it work.

In 2000 the Malian government signed up to UN Education for All goals to help 50 percent more adults become literate by 2015, but eight years on still only 30 percent of Malian adults can read or write, and the government is yet to outline its strategy to address the problem.

The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors today approved International Development Association (IDA) funding in the amount of US$42 million for Mali's Second Poverty Reduction Support Credit (PRSC II). "We hope that with continued implementation of the reforms already under way, which the Government has pledged to continue, Mali with improve further its public management performance and effectiveness, to the benefit of its people”, said Agnès Soucat, World Bank Task Team Leader of the project.

A young Somali refugee has been honoured with a prestigious United States government award for her courageous work in fighting for the rights of women and girls in a Kenyan refugee camp. Farhiyo Ibrahim Farah is one of 10 recipients of this year's International Women of Courage Award. The 25-year-old is recognized for her work in Dadaab refugee camp, where she promotes an end to forced marriages and female genital mutilation, better treatment for rape victims and more education for Somali girls in her highly conservative and patriarchal society.

Somaliland Human Rights Organisations' Network (SHURO-Net)has learned, with delight that the government of Somaliland released from Mandhera Prison the three political prisoners Dr. Mohamed Abdi Gaboose, Eng. Mohamed Hashi Elmi and Jamal Aydid Ibrahim, the leaders of the newly formed but unregistered Political Party called Qaran, who were imprisoned on 27 August 2007 at 8 a.m. in Hargeisa after the Somaliland government accused them the engaging in an illegitimate political activities because they have established an unlawful political party.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged Somaliland authorities to withdraw their decision to expel 24 Somali journalists who fled the violence in Mogadishu over allegations that they are endangering the "security and stability” of the region.

Some 30 Somali refugees held at Nairobi airport awaiting deportation have gone on hunger strike, a rights group says. Their protest comes one day after Kenya flew 18 Somalis back to Mogadishu, despite pleas that they were fleeing the fighting there.

Shuro-Net is a Somaliland Human rights network comprising 38 separate organisations including women's groups, human rights defenders, youth groups etc.

SHURO-NET PUBLIC STATEMENT

Governmentally-backed illegal extraordinary general assembly

An illegally conducted extraordinary general assembly claiming to represent Somaliland Human Rights Organisations Network (SHURO-net) was conducted on Thursday 24th October in Ambassador Hotel.

Somaliland Focus (UK), an organisation set up by returned election observers and members of the diaspora, is concerned about reports that the government in Hargeisa is attempting to silence or subvert the independent human rights network SHURO Net. Reports are that the Somaliland government, particularly the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, and the Human Rights Commission, organised an extraordinary AGM inviting some Shuro-Net members from the regions.

The meeting was held on 24th October and a new Board of Directors were elected by the participants. We are not yet sure how many member organisations participated but according to Zamzam Abdi, the SHURO Net chairperson, the government is trying to get rid of the current BOD and administration and put in their place one selected by the government. The chairperson also informed us that the SHURO Net members in the regions were threatened by the Mayors of their regions that if they did not participate in the extraordinary meeting in Hargeisa, they would not be allowed to work in their regions. Those who refused made their way to Hargeisa and reported the case to SHURO Net office.

The chairperson elected by yesterday's meeting is the head of the programmes at the government-controlled Radio Hargeisa, a civil servant, who is not a member of SHURO Net. The Somaliland Journalist Association (SOLJA) declared that he did not represent them.

It is believed that SHURO Net was targeted by the government because of their calls to abolish the Emeregency Law, and for appealing for the release of prisoners including political prisoners and journalists. The heads of the 30 member organisations of SHURO Net have signed a letter declaring yesterday's meeting illegal.

Somaliland Focus (UK) is concerned that these reports mirror other recent occasions where the government has shown authoritarian tendencies contrary to its push for democratisation which we and others have been so keen to highlight. It does not make the work of organisations such as ourselves who pride ourselves on being international friends of Somaliland an easy one.

The government in the West African state of Mali plans to abolish the death penalty, three decades after it carried out its last execution, it said on Thursday. A Cabinet meeting on Wednesday adopted a Bill that "stipulated that the death penalty be abolished and ... that it is replaced by life imprisonment", said a statement.

Reporters Without Borders calls for the release of reporter Ahmed Aadan Dhere, who was arrested four days ago in the city of Berbera, in the east of the northern breakaway state of Somaliland, and has been held ever since at Berbera police headquarters. Dhere is the correspondent of Haatuf, a privately-owned daily based in the Somaliland capital of Hargeisa.

This International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) report provides insight into the local management of conflict over natural resources between herders and farmers in north-western Mali. The study finds that social, economic and environmental change within the region has led to growing pressure on natural resources and a marked deterioration in relations between farmers and herders. The paper warns that because this conflict is based on ethnicity, there is potential for serious escalation.