Somalia is on the brink of major disaster as conflict spirals out of control in Mogadishu and donors fail to respond to humanitarian emergencies in the lawless nation, a senior United Nations envoy said on Tuesday.
Already beset with drought, lawlessness and crushing poverty, the people of the anarchic Horn of Africa nation have been further hit by the fighting that has engulfed the capital, yet attracted little international attention, he said.
“We need a combined approach to the problem of Somalia now,” said Dennis McNamara, the UN special adviser on displacement. “It has been one of the black spots that we have collectively ignored for too long and we cannot afford to do that.
“If this conflict is not contained quickly, we may well face a new crisis, which the world will be reluctant to respond to,” he told reporters in Nairobi. “We have a small-scale humanitarian disaster. It will be a big disaster.”
In addition to more than one million drought victims, Somalia is home to 400 000 displaced people, 250 000 of whom are living in squalid settlements in Mogadishu, which has been wracked by heavy fighting since February.
Access to them is virtually impossible, relief shipments by sea complicated by increasingly brazen pirates off the un-patrolled coast and donors have fallen far short in meeting urgent appeals for assistance, McNamara said.
Of the $326-million appealed for in 2006, donors have delivered only 40%, half of which is for food, he said.
“That is not adequate, we can’t function on 20% funding,” McNamara said, adding that some elements of the appeal, notably for agriculture and shelter, have attracted zero donor-dollars.
“That is a desperately bad situation and the donors have a responsibility to increase their support for these programmes if we [have] to address these problems adequately,” he said.
Somalia, a nation of 10-million people, has been without a functioning central authority since 1991 when the ousting of strongman Mohammed Siad Barre plunged the country into chaos with warlords controlling disparate fiefdoms.
The recent emergence of Islamic courts, providing a semblance of law and order in parts of the capital, has sparked new fierce fighting with Islamist militia battling a United States-backed warlord alliance for control of the city.
At least 300 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in fighting since February, with more than 1 500 wounded and many thousands displaced, adding to dire humanitarian conditions.
A transitional government, formed in 2004 and currently based in provincial town of Baidoa, about 250km west of Mogadishu, has been wracked with infighting and unable to exert control over much of the country. — AFP