Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a Senegalese aviation expert, a Norwegian Red Cross official, and a US-Dutch weapons expert to monitor a 10-year-old arms embargo on war-torn Somalia.
UN representative Fred Eckhard said on Wednesday the panel of experts will be based in Nairobi for six months.
Last month, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution to establish the panel to generate independent information on violations of the arms embargo on Somalia and to recommend possible measures to implement it.
The three members appointed by Annan are aviation engineer Mohamed Abdoulaye M’Backe, a consultant to Senegal’s civil aviation authority; Brynjulf Mugaas of Norway, the deputy director of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ UN observer mission; and Ernst Jan Hogendoorn, a research assistant at Princeton University’s program on science and global security who has dual US and Dutch citizenship and previously worked for Human Rights Watch’s arms division.
A UN arms embargo imposed on Somalia in 1992 has been widely ignored, and continuing instability and clan-based fighting has kept the United Nations from opening an office in the capital.
Weapons are openly sold in markets in Mogadishu and most Somalis own a firearm.
Somalia has been without an effective government since opposition leaders united to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The opposition leaders then fought with each other, turning the nation of 7 million into battling fiefdoms ruled by clan-based factions.
A transitional government, led by President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan, was elected at a peace conference in neighbouring Djibouti in August 2000. But it has little influence outside the capital, Mogadishu, and faces opposition from a number of faction leaders.
The three-member panel is expected to work similarly to other panels monitoring arms embargoes on countries such as Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia. They are expected to travel in the region, meet with human rights groups, other organisations, and political leaders, and study the best ways to enforce the arms embargo.
The panel’s composition was announced as Ghanim Alnajjar, the independent expert on human rights in Somalia who was appointed by Annan, arrived in Somalia for his second annual visit.
During his stay until September 2, Alnajjar and his three-member team will look into a variety of human rights issues including the state of the judicial system, law enforcement and prison conditions, the challenges of demobilising combatants and of child soldiers, the status of women and the plight of tens of thousands of internally displaced people, Eckhard said.
”I am concerned that, since my last visit one year ago, there has been an escalation of violence in parts of Somalia and a deterioration in security, which is having an impact on the human rights of thousands of ordinary people,” Alnajjar said in a statement. ”It is vital that peace and human rights are respected and protected.” – Sapa-AP