The UN independent expert on human rights, Ghanim Alnajjar, urged on Monday the international community to "remember those affected by the tsunami in the Puntland region of northeastern Somalia where more than 150 people were killed and about 50,000 people" have been affected. Noting that some emergency supplies had been distributed to hundreds of families affected by the 26 December tsunami, Alnajjar, in a statement, said: "Somali victims of the devastating tsunami may be in danger of being forgotten by the international community."

The Interim Somali government, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya, is continuing to plan its relocation to Somalia in early February despite the killing of a senior police officer in Mogadishu on Sunday, sources said. The cabinet met on Monday to discuss security and has agreed to continue with the relocation plan, the source added. It had initially resolved to start preparations for a return to Somalia during its first formal meeting on 15 January.

In what some may describe as adding insult to injury, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi has appointed just four women to the country’s new 91-member cabinet. This came after only 22 of the 275 seats in parliament were allocated to women. Somalia’s constitution states that 12 percent of all decision-making posts in government should be reserved for women, which means that at least 10 women should have been appointed to cabinet, and 33 women to parliament.

The tsunami triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean that struck the Horn of Africa coastline just over a week ago has affected about 18,000 households of varying sizes in Somalia, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. Many of those affected were living in small villages along the Somali coastline, particularly in the northeastern regions. OCHA, in a situation report released on Monday, estimated that 54,000 people were directly affected. In Jeriban and Eyl districts, 1,000 houses were either damaged or destroyed and around 1,200 boats ruined.

The declaration, in Kenya, of a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in October 2004 was heralded as a breakthrough in Somalia's protracted crisis of statelessness and civil strife. But the peace process has gone largely downhill since then. The Transitional Federal Parliament's choice for interim president, Colonel Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed, is divisive and controversial. To many Somalis, his election represents not a step toward peace but continuation of the war by other means. Yusuf and his partners need to use their political advantage to form a genuine government of national unity and the international community needs to make clear that only if this happens will the TFG get the recognition and support it desperately seeks, said the International Crisis Group in a report released late in 2004.

Somalia’s new leaders are to reconstitute their country's cabinet this week and then decide when to relocate their new administration from Nairobi to Somalia, a Kenyan minister said on Tuesday. "We met the Somali president [Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed] together with the prime minister [Ali Muhammad Gedi] and the speaker of the national assembly," John arap Koech, Kenya's minister for East Africa and Regional Cooperation, told a news conference in Nairobi. "They assured us that they will be appointing the cabinet this week.

Somalia's new President Abdullahi Yusuf has re-appointed his prime minister, just days after parliament passed a vote of no confidence in him. The move may placate the MPs, as they now have the opportunity to approve Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi. "The real crucial issue is the name should be first submitted to parliament," Bethwel Kiplagat, chief mediator for the Somalia talks, told the BBC's Focus on Africa.

With up to a quarter of all Somalis now living abroad and many more having fled their homes within the country, a new Somali saying goes: "We are now a nation of immigrants who depend on other immigrants." Some estimates say that some 23% of Somalia's income has been sent there by relatives now living abroad.

Plagued by violence and drought, Somalia is mired in a humanitarian crisis forgotten by most of the world, a top U.N. official said on Friday as he led the world body's first high-level visit in a decade. Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and humanitarian relief coordinator, started a three-day trip to raise awareness of Somalia's problems by visiting the capital of Somaliland, an autonomous enclave which is unrecognized internationally.

The interim prime minister of Somalia, Ali Muhammad Gedi, on Wednesday named a partial-government of 27 ministers who immediately took oath of office at a ceremony attended by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Gedi's director of communications, Hussein Jabiri, told IRIN that the full government would consist of 31 ministers, 31 vice-ministers and five state ministers.

As Somalia’s new government prepares to return and restore order after years of state collapse, the country’s 400,000 internally displaced people remain in a highly precarious situation, according to a new report by the Global IDP Project. Most of the displaced, some 250,000, live in the capital, Mogadishu, the most dangerous place in the country.

The UN Security Council on Friday re-affirmed its full support for the peace process in Somalia and the UN's commitment to help regional and sub-regional organisations working to restore stability in the Horn-of-Africa country, which has lacked an effective government for more than a decade. "The Council welcomes the progress made in the Somalia national reconciliation process - in particular the establishment of the Transitional Federal Parliament, the election of the speaker of the parliament, the president and the appointment of the prime minister, which provides a sound and solid framework to achieve a comprehensive and lasting solution to the situation," the Council said in a statement adopted on the last day of a two-day meeting in Nairobi.

The government of Somaliland and the Administration of Puntland should out an immediate end to hostilities and the spread of hostility, forbid the movement of armies and any form of military action, make a concerted effort to search for a political solution that will terminate conflict and stop the propaganda and the dissemination of hatred based on clan affiliation and clan animosity. This is according to a statement by a coalition of civil society organisations opposed to war in the region. Read the full statement by clicking on the link below.

Fourteen years of war have resulted in both loss and horrific violence for Somali women. A book from the Catholic Institute for International Relations presents the harrowing testimonies of war-affected Somali women. Many have lost their male relatives and have witnessed their murders. Despite this discouraging scenario, there are some signs of hope. Local human rights organisations have emerged where none existed a decade ago and some are addressing sexual violence; In the refugee camps of northern Kenya sexual assaults on women no longer go unpunished; In the northern mini-state of Somaliland democratic elections have been held and two female cabinet ministers have been appointed and; Women in the diaspora are able to take advantage of new opportunities for education and training.

The former prime minister of Somalia, now a resident of Virginia, was sued last Thursday for allegedly allowing war crimes and other human rights abuses to be committed in the 1980s. A similar lawsuit was filed against a former Somali Army battalion commander who allegedly carried out and supervised killings, torture and beatings. He also lives in Virginia. Mohamed Ali Samatar was Barre's defense minister from 1980 to 1987 and prime minister from 1987 to 1990, and therefore exerted control over the country's armed forces, according to the lawsuit.

Rights groups are sceptical of the ability of the proposed Somali government to address the thorny issues of human rights abuses which have been at the heart of the collapse of Somalia since 1991. Rights groups and women parliamentarians want the international community to help the proposed government to address the human rights violations, particularly rape. The groups have asked the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to appoint a Special Rapporteur on violence against women to lead a mission to Somalia, to establish the magnitude of violation of human rights.

Somalia’s newly elected president said on Monday his administration would not remain in exile, but would return to the war-ravaged country before security was completely restored. President Abdullahi Yusuf said once his cabinet was selected they would return – although they would initially establish themselves outside the capital, Mogadishu. He rejected calls for the new government to return only when security is restored.

On 24 October 2004, Zamzam Abdullahi Abdi, a member of the Somalia Women Journalists Association's (Sowja) governing board, was abducted and detained overnight by unidentified armed individuals in Mogadishu before being released on 25 October. "We welcome the fact that Abdi was released safe and sound, but her abduction reinforces the urgent need to rebuild a state in Somalia. We call on President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, as part of his new duties, to do justice to press freedom activists like her by heeding their struggle and their message," Reporters sans frontières (RSF), said.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned an attack by militiamen working for businessman and self-proclaimed president Abdinur Ahmed Darman, who slapped, threatened and then fired on radio reporter Abdullahi Yassin Jama in Mogadishu on 16 October, after he and another journalist interviewed the inhabitants of a refugee camp. Jama, who works for Radio Banadir, and Zeynab Abukar Mohammed, a journalist with HornAfrik Radio, had been interviewing civilian refugees in "Camp Bosnia" in Mogadishu whose homes had been devastated by heavy rain.

A call for peacekeepers by Somalia's new president last week revived memories of the ill-fated intervention in the 1990s, when Black Hawk helicopters were shot out of the sky and the bloodied corpses of U.S. servicemen dragged through the anarchic streets of Mogadishu. Few leaders in the world need more help to restore order in their countries than Abdullahi Yusuf, who was sworn in last week. But bruised by the memory of the failed U.S. peacekeeping mission in 1993 that forced Washington and later the United Nations to quit Somalia, the international community will treat Yusuf's appeal for engagement with caution, seeking guarantees before committing to help, analysts say.