More than 20 people have died in two days of heavy factional fighting in the Bay region of south-central Somalia, local sources in the regional capital, Baidoa, 240 km southwest of Mogadishu, told IRIN on Monday. About thirty others were wounded. The fighting broke out on Friday between the Dabare and Luway subclans of the larger Digil-Mirifle group. The clashes were concentrated in and around the town of Dinsoor, 90 km west of Baidoa, and in the surrounding villages, according to one source.

Environmental degradation resulting from a prolonged drought in northern and northeastern Somalia is threatening to destroy the livelihoods of an estimated 120,000 livestock rearers, a United Nations official said on Monday. "The livelihoods of 120,000 people are threatened and they have to find other means of livelihood," Robert Hauser, World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director for Somalia, told IRIN.

"To own Somalia's problems and eventually its solutions, we must take possession of our country, and everyone must return our property to us, and all interferences in our affairs must stop. But if our land remains someone else's playground, and we continue to be victims of everyone else's machinations, then we won't make the necessary link between our post-collapse and America's post-Sept. 11," writes author Nuruddin Farah in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

Local Somalian campaigners, backed by Amnesty International, have demanded that Somalia's new government, which is expected to be set up in weeks, formulate measures to ensure that warlords who have violated human rights since the fall of the Siad Barre in 1991 are brought to justice. One proposed measure is the formation of a South Africa-like truth commission.

The inauguration of Somalia's proposed transitional parliament has been postponed because some clans had not completed the process of nominating members, sources close to the Somali reconciliation conference said on Friday. The inauguration of the parliament has now been tentatively scheduled for 4 August, when it is hoped that all the clans would have handed in their lists of nominated MPs to the foreign ministers, who make up the IGAD Facilitation Committee steering the peace process.

Somalia's proposed transitional government must be committed to respecting human rights, ending abuses and bringing to book perpetrators of past crimes in a country wracked by factional warfare for more than a decade, Amnesty International (AI) said on Wednesday. The human rights watchdog's appeal came as the Somali National Reconciliation Conference drew close to creating a transitional federal government that is expected to end 13 years of anarchy and violence that have plagued Somalia since the collapse of the regime of former president Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1991.

A day after the deadline for all Somali groups to show mediators at a reconciliation conference how they would share seats in a proposed parliament, delegates from two of the country's four major clans were still haggling over how to distribute the posts, sources close to the mediators said. Foreign ministers of IGAD member states, who met in Nairobi on 15 and 16 July, had given all clans until 20 July to hand in their lists showing how the seats they had been allocated in the proposed 275-member Somali Transitional Federal Assembly would be distributed among their subclans.

Somalia's proposed transitional federal parliament will be inaugurated on 30 July in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, mediators announced, saying that all clans must complete the process of nominating their representatives by Tuesday. The foreign ministers of member states of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGAD), who met in Nairobi last Thursday and Friday, called for transparency in the process of distributing seats and selecting members of the proposed Somali Transitional Federal Assembly.

A new Somalia government would be formed in Nairobi by the end of this month, the Intergovernmental Authority and Development (Igad) technical committee has announced. And speaking in Nairobi at a joint Igad facilitating committee and international partners' meeting, Kenya's special envoy to Somalia Bethuel Kiplagat said an all-inclusive government of national unity for the war-torn country was possible by end month.

In Somalia as well as in Africa and other developing countries, women’s ideas are not valued and their initiatives do not carry as much weight as those of men. This becomes an issue when communities are given responsibility to decide how local resources will be managed and or how conflict will be resolved. If they cannot participate in decision-making, they may not engage in executing plans that will have a positive, long term benefit to preserving natural resources and peace. Women are fundamental to any lasting peace in Somalia, argues this article.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has closed a refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia where an estimated 250,000 Somali refugees once lived, after the last 719 inhabitants left the settlement to return home to the self-declared autonomous republic of Somaliland. The last refugees left Hartishek camp on 30 June in a convoy of UNHCR vehicles, heading for Hargeysa. They were being accommodated in a transit centre in Hargeysa while the authorities looked for an area to resettle them permanently, UNHCR said in a statement.

Twelve members of an arbitration committee to resolve any disputes that might arise during the nomination of the 275 members of Somalia's proposed Transitional Federal Parliament were on Tuesday sworn into office in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The committee members who were named at the end of a meeting of IGAD (the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development) regional foreign ministers, were nominated by delegates to the ongoing Somali National Reconciliation Conference (SNRC). Five clans each nominated three members to the committee, but one clan, the Dir, failed to present its nominees to the IGAD ministerial team because of a dispute over who was to represent the clan.

Delegates attending the Somali peace talks in Kenya have nominated members to a committee that will oversee the setting up of a parliament for the strife-torn country. The parliament will in turn elect the president. The committee would ensure that the process of selecting members of parliament was fair and serve as an arbitration forum to settle potential disputes over the distribution of seats, sources close to the talks told IRIN on Tuesday.

Amnesty International has expressed extreme concern at news reports that the UK government has begun forcibly returning failed Somali asylum-seekers to the Somali capital Mogadishu, despite widespread violence in the city that continues to claim hundreds of civilian lives. In a little-publicised policy change, the government has been forcibly returning male Somalis to Mogadishu since 31 March 2004, with six people known to have been sent there by early June.

Nearly 60 people have been killed in clashes between rival clans in the southwestern town of Bulo Hawa, humanitarian sources said. About 2,500 families had been displaced in and around the town while another 2,000 people had fled to Mandera in neighbouring Kenya, they added. Relief workers in Bulo Hawa, Gedo Region, told IRIN by telephone that the latest round of fighting, which took place on Tuesday, was "a continuation of tension between rival clans that had built [up] since May" over control of the local administration.

A third and final round of peace talks for East Africa’s most beleaguered country - Somalia - is scheduled to begin on May 20 amidst funding shortfalls and frustration at the antics of faction leaders. The talks, to be held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, are taking place under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a five-member regional organisation. Somalia is currently the only country in the world without a central government, having been ruled by faction leaders since January 1991 when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled.

Heavy fighting which erupted in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, over the weekend has escalated, leaving an indeterminate number of people dead or wounded, a local journalist told IRIN on Wednesday. He said the fighting was sparked off by a disagreement between two militias of the same clan who were loyal to two business people. It involved forces guarding the Global Hotel in the northern district of Behani, and those loyal to a local businessman from the Warsangeli clan, who reportedly attacked the hotel, which belongs to a businesswoman from the Wabudan clan.
Related Link:
* Faction leaders expected to rejoin talks
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40981

Despite hopes raised by the ceasefire signed in October 2002, Somalis continue to flee a war which has continued for over ten years. Some 375,000 people are internally displaced, about five per cent of the population of a country which has been in a state of collapse longer than any other. Internally displaced people (IDPs) in Somalia are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable as they have lost all their assets and are subject to multiple human rights violations. They lack access to protection from clan affiliation; the de facto authorities throughout Somalia do not protect them and often divert humanitarian assistance. Most displaced are from southern minority groups and continue to suffer political and economic discrimination.

Over thirteen years after the collapse of the Siad Barre regime, Somalia remains the only country in the world without a government, a classic example of the humanitarian, economic and political repercussions of state collapse, including a governance vacuum that terrorist groups can take advantage of for safe haven and logistical purposes. The International Crisis Group warns in its latest report that if peace is to be attainable, the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) must end its own internal divisions. "The U.S. and EU need to provide more active support to heal the regional rivalries or they will continue to fuel a low-intensity conflict and ensure that no functioning government comes to power," said the ICG.

Preparations for the third and final phase of the Somali peace talks were proceeding smoothly on Friday, according to an Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) source involved in the proceedings. He told IRIN that the organisers of the talks, which are being held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, under the auspices of IGAD, were pleased with "the way things were moving". "We have already started bringing in traditional elders from Somalia," he said.