Central African Republic crisis ‘breaks my heart’ says senior UN aid official (29.05.2018)

The already serious humanitarian situation in Central African Republic (CAR) has worsened amid a spike in violence which threatens to overtake almost every area of the country, a top UN aid official said on Monday.

NEW YORK, United States of America, May 29, 2018 –  One in four people has been displaced, according to Najat Rochdi, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for CAR, who said that this included areas that were formerly peaceful, such as the north and central zones.

Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Ms. Rochdi warned that severe acute malnutrition in six administrative regions is higher than 15 per cent – the emergency threshold – and infant mortality is at 18 per cent.

And amid severe funding shortages which have meant aid cut-backs, she told journalists in French: “It breaks my heart every time a child comes to me and says I’m hungry.”

Speaking later in English, she said: “Where you have kids, those little girls and little boys coming to you and looking at you and telling, ‘I’m hungry, I’m starving,’ it’s horrible, really horrible. Unfortunately the situation has worsened because we had in one year’s time an increase of 70 per cent of the internally displaced people. Meaning more children, more little girls and more little boys, meaning also that it’s a whole generation that is sacrificed because they are not going to school.”

She said it was very important to keep providing them with humanitarian assistance, which meant going beyond food distribution, beyond the access to water, beyond the access to health. “It’s just access to hope.”

Of the more than $515 million aid requirement needed in CAR for 1.9 million people, less than 20 per cent has been provided so far this year.

Fighting between the mostly Christian anti-Balaka militia and the mainly Muslim Séléka rebel coalition has plunged the CAR into civil conflict since 2012. A peace agreement was reached in January 2013, but rebels seized the capital, Bangui, in March of that year, forcing President François Bozizé to flee.

Concerned with the security, humanitarian, human rights and political crisis in the CAR and its regional implications, the Security Council authorized the deployment of a UN stabilization mission, known by its French acronym, MINUSCA, in 2014 with the protection of civilians as its utmost priority.

The humanitarian community distributed high-energy biscuits to 1,500 children and debilitated adults who suffered from starvation and thirst for more than 72 hours during an outbreak of violence in Mbomou Prefecture, Central African Republic in May 2017.

The country’s huge natural wealth – in the form of diamonds, gold and uranium – continues to fuel the fighting, Ms. Rochdi explained, adding that there was “absolutely no problem” in areas “where you don’t have that much to steal.”

The violence reached the capital, Bangui, at the beginning of the month after almost a year of relative stability.

In that incident, 70 people were killed in clashes between security forces and armed militia, and thousands were displaced.

Ms. Rochdi said that UN troops had to intervene after Muslims were denied healthcare access.

The town of Bambari has also seen armed groups return, despite becoming a “safe haven for all communities” since last year, the UN official added.

The militia aimed to put pressure on the government to grant them an amnesty but this would be a “disaster” for the country, Ms. Rochdi insisted, before adding that efforts to prevent impunity had been stepped up and had resulted in a Special Criminal Court, which is due to start work in CAR next week.

Some of its “first clients” would be “high-profile leaders of armed groups,” Ms. Rochdi said, adding that CAR was one of the most dangerous places on earth for humanitarians, with six people killed this year and attacks on aid workers and looting happening on a “regular” basis.

Yet despite the instability and fact that funding levels in 2017 were only 40 per cent of what was requested, she maintained that it still made a substantial difference on the ground and had helped to prepare communities to withstand future shocks too.

It meant that more than one million people had access to water, that 7,000 tonnes of humanitarian assistance were delivered and more than 60,000 children were given an education.

In addition, the aid ensured that more than 70,000 farming families received a vital seed allocation, helping them to become more self-sufficient.

More than 17,000 children from six to 59 months suffering from severe acute malnutrition were also given support.

The most important thing was that the people of CAR had some sense that they had a future, Mrs Rochdi said, adding that humanitarian assistance “is making the difference between life and death”.

Aid is also “the best way for all of us to sustain peace in CAR”, she added, since the funding gave communities hope.

Communique on the meeting between the Chairperson of the African Union Commission and the Prime Minister of Somalia (27.05.2018)

Somalia: Somaliland letter to Ethiopian PM Dr. Abiy Ahmed asked to mediate between Somaliland and Puntland (15.05.3028)

Somalia: Puntland – Statement in Response to Falsehoods by the Secessionist Entity of Somaliland (18.05.2018)

Opinion: Is the launch of Somali Shillings (SOS) – A IMF sponsored Bond-Notes?

“S-O-S, please someone help me

It’s not healthy for me to feel this

Y-O-U are making this hard”Rihanna on ‘SOS’ released 14. February 2006

This is what it seems like, it doesn’t seem like economic viable effort or worth enterprise, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) needs to loan and get donor aid valued $41 million United States Dollars, it seems more like quick rich scheme, than anything else. Borrowing funds to print currency never seems like a good idea, especially when the state has itself 300 external stakeholders keeping this in order and fragile alliances all over. You can wonder who will benefit from the Somali Shillings (SoS).

Out of the measure of doing so, 26 million will go to procurement and printing the shillings, the 4 denominations they are put in. This all is done in measure against counterfeit, but nearly none of the loaned or donor-funded money will go to that, only 0.06 million US Dollars. Meaning a measly and insignificant amount money will actually go to stop the counterfeit currency floating around.

That is why I am suspicious, if they are just thinking of printing them, and dropping them in the markets in Mogadishu, how will this benefit the citizens and the Federal Republic itself?

Because it seems like another piece of Bond-Notes, where the funding of the enterprise is bound on foreign currency and foreign bound loans, which makes it an extra debt on the state. As the IMF is co-sponsor and the one behind the enterprise, they are securing as a foreign entity, the national and federal currency. Which happens to be SOS. All of that should send the smoke-signals and the tapping on the floor. Send the signal “SOS”.

Because they state: “This letter provides IMF staff’s assessment on the readiness of the Central Bank of Somalia (CBS) to issue a new national currency under Phase I which will be limited to exchanging the counterfeit Somali shilling notes currently in circulation with new currency” (IMF, 11.05.2018). That is why I question it too, since so little of the funding for the project goes to counterfeit operations, will it be successful? Do they think the magic wand of new paper-money will compensate for the one that is counterfeit right now? How will they go about the exchange from old to new, and will they do that with all currency or will they accept the old-counterfeit to get rid off all fake currency floating around?

Seemingly, it seems like borrowing more money, to print a new line of SOS, which is an SOS to the world. Also, where the IMF needs a huge sum of money, to procure and print them, while the state only get scraps and no direct plan to really eradicate the counterfeits. Because they are only putting up a Counterfeiting Framework, but not initially working against it. Meaning, it is just borrowing and printing new shillings, without any purpose of actually combatting the problem itself. Which is rare thing to do.

Let see how this goes, but I hope this is not a IMF sponsored Bond-Notes project, because that is how it seems like, borrowing funds and donor funding to get new currency floating. Not a good idea, more issues as I see it. That is just me though. Peace

Somalia: Council of Interstate Coooperation (CIC) – Communique 13-16 May, 2018, Baidoa

Somalia: Puntland – Statement on the Unproven Acts of Aggression of Somaliland (15.05.2018)

Statement by the Oromo Democratic Front (ODF) on talks with the Ethiopian Government (13.05.2018)

Somalia: Somali National Armed Forces Letter of Agreement to Red Four Security Group (26.04.2018)

ONLF: The Lynching of 24 years old Ms Taysir Omar Food- the Beginning of the END of TPLF regime and its killing squads in the Somali Territory (12.05.2018)

On the Morning of May 10, 2018 the killing squads created by TPLF in the Somali Territory code named Liyu-police in order to terrorise them as special police abducted Ms Taysir Omar Food, a twenty four year old unmarried girl and Lynched her at the Qabridaharre police station in Ogaden. After two ours they called the relatives of the extra-judicially killed girl and asked them to sign a disclosure claiming that she killed herself. The relatives who immediately took the picture of the girl with marks of the wire used for lynching and nail scratch during her struggle, refused to sign the paper and run crying to the town centre.

After hearing what happened the town’s folk took to the streets and started an impromptu demonstration. The Ethiopian army and security forces tried to frighten the demonstrators firing life bullets. Later the head of security and army in Qabridaharre called the elders and asked them to calm the people but the elders refused. Hundreds of people were detained and the town was put under Curfew.

The Ethiopian Army and Liyu-police has been committing massive violations of human rights in the Somali territory under Ethiopia for the last twenty five years and has made the Somali territory(Ogaden) hell on Earth. Although the Somali people resisted and paid a heavy price for struggle for their right to self-determination, the new upheavals that started in other parts of Ethiopia has brought a measure of hope that at least the new Prime Minister will take action against the TPLF right hand henchman in Ogaden, who was the main instrument of TPLF pogrom in Ogaden, Abdi Ilay. However, after the status quo in Ogaden was kept as before, despite changes in the Ethiopia, the Somali people started agitating peacefully for their rights. Activists in Europe and America intensified their propagation of the crimes committed in Ogaden and demonstrations started in Siti (Shinile)Region, then spread to Fafan(Jigjiga) and parts of Degahbur, Godey and in the Whole of the Ogaden where the people started expressing the need for change and lifting of the undeclared marshall law in Ogaden that was imposed since 1994, when ONLF was banned and the territory put under undeclared military administration, using the Somali regional administration as proxy.

The Killing of Taysir by lynching is reminiscent of the lynching of Ms Ridwan by the Ethiopian army in 2007, is a new catalyst for the insurrection of Somali people to get rid of TPLF special rule that is based on war economy, using the Ogaden as cash cow to rebuilt Tigray region.

ONLF Categorically condemns the Ethiopian regime that allows the criminals in Ogaden to terrorise a whole nation and commit such heinous crimes as befell Taysir to continue and calls the Somali people to unite and stand together in order to liberate the Somali people from this criminal regime and achieve genuine self-determination.

ONLF calls upon the international community to pressure the Ethiopian government to stop the crimes it is coming against the Somali people using such people as Abdi Ilay and allow the Somali people to exercise their right to self-determination.

ONLF supports and stands by the Somali people in their struggle against occupation and tyranny.

Unity, Perseverance, Self-reliance and Victory to the People