Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

I came across this well written essay at Dissident Voices, an anarchist-left compiliation blog. Its about Hong Kong, by Chohong Choi;Hong Kong’s “Free Market”: Someone Pays

Very lengthy, like some of the stuff I write here. But despite its length it's very informative. Well worth your time. I thought I would give you a flavour of it by presenting his conclusion.

And because Somalia is back in the news of late, and is the only 'real free market economy' with no government. I thought it was interesting that he concluded on that point as well. More on this at the end of Chohong Choi's missive.

Be Careful What You Wish for

Business always speculates on how much better it would be if government would just get out of the way and let free enterprise do its thing. It longs for some mythical time in the past when the businessman was on his own and things worked out fine. It sure hopes not. For it is the biggest user and beneficiary of public facilities like the courts, education, fire services, hospitals, infrastructure, the military, and the police. Not only does business rely on these resources, its employees and customers do too. Also, business utters nary a word when the government goes to bat for it by enacting favorable legislation and signing trade deals with foreign countries. It knows who hold the keys to power, and spares no effort to ingratiate itself with these movers and shakers, as well as to find as many backers as it can to represent its interests in the government.

It is not always a bad thing that Hong Kong’s economy is not as free as advertised. Its public facilities and regulations help ensure stability in the city and make it a livable and investable place. That is how a strong community is built. Hong Kong still suffers from crowdedness, pollution, stress, and a widening rich-poor gap, but its public sector, while not without fault, has succeeded more than it has failed. Even as Hong Kong’s business sector continues to preach the advantages of the “free market,” it is silently thankful for (just to name a few) its affordable public healthcare, which releases it from straining its resources to provide its employees with basic health coverage like employers in the U.S., and for its public safety measures, which spare it the expense of having to hire high-priced private security contractors to protect its assets à la post-Katrina New Orleans.

If Hong Kong was chosen as the site of the last WTO conference because it appeared to practice free trade and free market economics better than anyone else, then that makes sense. Free trade talks and deals are mostly razzle-dazzle anyway, as those players who can afford to flout the terms of any agreement do so with near impunity. Insiders and those at the short end of these pacts know better. Markets and trade are never free. Someone reaps the rewards, someone pays for the rewards, and someone certainly pays for its consequences.

If the closest thing to a truly free market is what you seek, then Hong Kong is not it. That place, according to one journalist, would more likely be Somalia. But there is no invisible hand at work in Somalia. If anything is invisible, it would be a functional national government, which has not been seen since 1991 (hence, no government regulations), as well as foreign aid (thus, no strings attached). Private enterprise exists in Somalia, and some of it works quite well given the circumstances. But even those in the private sector await the return of a working central government, which can help ensure stability and provide the framework for a smoother operation of society. Until then, rules are made by word of mouth and usually enforced at the point of a gun (the visible fist).

Any chance that the next WTO conference will be held in Mogadishu?

Heh, heh not likely eh. Recently some liberaltarians have been singing, or ringing, the praises of the free market in Somalia. Seriously, they have the largest cell/mobile phone system in the world. All set up amongst freely competing capitalists and their private armies, it make's the free (booty) marketers over at the Von Mises Institute drool. Unfortunately such anarchic capitalism is based on the primitive accumulation of capital, in otherwords brigandism and piracy. Gee just like the foundation of Hong Kong as the distribution centre of Opium into China, in the 19th Century.

Unfortunately the current minarchist capitalist free for all in Somalia while successful in producing a mobile phone business has not solved the problem of the current drought affecting the Horn of Africa. In fact the free market brigands and pirates have been detrimental to the attempts by the UN to get food to the starving masses.

Conflict and lawlessness in the Horn of Africa are making it far harder to get aid to those who need it. In particular, Somalia's pirates and warlords are disrupting shipping routes and delaying food deliveries.

The biggest security problems are in Somalia, which has had no central government for 15 years.

Even in the best of times in Somalia, when there's plenty of rain, warlords often wage battles. But in a time of drought, specialists warn that the stresses of survival will further unravel local power structures, creating new opportunities for havoc from freelance bandits, militias, and perhaps Islamic extremists aligned with Al Qaeda.

''Somalia has been an extraordinarily difficult country for the last 15 years," Christian Balslev Olesen, UNICEF's Somalia representative, said in an interview in Nairobi. ''We've had flooding, drought, conflict, war, and general insecurity. But we haven't seen anything like this drought for the past 25 years. . . . The worst scenario is that we might be going into huge drought with some kind of high-scale conflict. And bringing food into a security situation like Somalia for 2 million people is going to be a nightmare."

Last year, pirates hijacked two World Food Program ships carrying donated food. US Navy ships now patrol off the coast, but most shipping companies have refused to deliver to ports in Somalia. That means it takes up to a week longer for each shipment of food to come from the port in Mombasa, Kenya, and then be trucked to south and central Somalia

A woman and a girl stood in a field outside Wajid, Somalia, that has not produced a crop of sorghum, a grassy grain that is one of the foundations of the Somali diet, in two years. (John Donnelly/ Globe Staff)

Somalia is an excellent example of Anarcho-Capitalism in action. That is the theory that all state services could be privatized, including having private armies and police forces. Well that's Somalia. Look there for the future of this flawed ideology.

You see capitalism needs a State to function properly, as does business. Without the State, capitalism returns to its original state; fuedalism in decay. As Yemen has shown as well as Somalia.

Today, Yemen itself is on a dagger's edge, precariously balanced between forces of modernization and the pull of powerful traditionalists. In the West, Yemen may be best known for its recent history of tribal kidnappings of tourists, the 2000 al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, and the ubiquitous chewing of khat, a mildly narcotic leaf. But the government has helped roll up several al Qaeda cells and, at least until a recent prison break, generally allayed western fears that terrorists would find sanctuary in the large tracts of lawless, tribal lands.
In deep denial. These days, though, Yemen is facing its own crisis, the result of deepening poverty and a government in denial about the depth of reforms needed to survive. In the past year, the United States and the World Bank have slashed their modest aid programs to Yemen, increasingly fed up with a bureaucracy that is one of the most corrupt in the world. "Yemen is teetering on the edge of failed statehood," warns one U.S. official. "It will either become a Somalia or get serious about transforming." For a nation awash in guns and crisscrossed by well-worn smuggling routes, the threat is grave.

And the capitalist state is not just any kind of government, it is a specific kind of government that regulates the market in favour of stability for the creation of monopolies. As the history of Hong Kong and of course British and American capitalism shows. This is the history that the right wing of course has always revised, whether it is the Heritage Foudation or the Von Mises Institute.

For as Herr Dr. Marx said the history of the world is the history of class struggle which the right has interpreted as the history of the world is the history of people clashing with the state. Which is only partially true, for in this assessment of the world, they forget people have developed self-government and that the masses revolutionary struggles have not been just over what kind of government should exist, but how the social relations of society should function.

In other words its not enough to just Smash the State in a fuedalistic society or a capitalist one. It is essential to change the means of production and distribution. The apologists for capitalism, see Somalia as a free market. It maybe, but it is not a self governing market, it is far from a society of Liberty, Equality and Solidarity.

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UN says Somalia faces a `dire hunger emergency' but aid has been cut over lack of funding


 Nunay Mohamed, 25, who fled the drought-stricken Lower Shabelle area, holds her one-year old malnourished child at a makeshift camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia on June 30, 2022. Two U.N. agencies are warning of rising food emergencies including starvation in Sudan due to the outbreak of war and in Haiti, Burkina Faso and Mali due to restricted movements of people and goods. The four countries join Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen at the highest alert levels.

 (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File) 

EDITH M. LEDERER
Thu, June 22, 2023

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Somalia’s “dire hunger emergency” is spiraling upward with one-third of the population expected to face crisis or worse levels of food needs, but the U.N. has been forced to drastically cut food assistance because of a lack of funding, the head of the World Food Program said Thursday.

Cindy McCain told the U.N. Security Council the latest food security data show that over 6.6 million Somalis desperately need assistance including 40,000 “fighting for survival in famine-like conditions.”

But she said WFP was forced to cut monthly food assistance, which had reached a record 4.7 million people in December, to just 3 million people at the end of April – “and without an immediate cash injection, we’ll have to cut our distribution lists again in July to just 1.8 million per month.”

McCain, who visited Somalia last month, said she saw “how conflict and climate change are conspiring to destroy the lives and livelihoods of millions of Somalis.” She said the country’s longest drought on record, which killed millions of livestock and decimated crops, recently gave way to disastrous flash floods in the south.

Urging donors to be as generous as they were and hauling Somalia “back from the abyss of famine in 2022,” McCain warned that the survival of millions of Somalis is at stake.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited Somalia in April “to ring the alarm” and appealed for “massive international support” for Somalia.

But the results of a high-level donors’ conference for three Horn of Africa countries – Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya – on May 24 were very disappointing. It raised less than $1 billion of the more than $5 billion organizers were hoping for to help over 30 million people.

Only in the past few years has Somalia begun to find its footing after three decades of chaos from warlords to the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group and the emergence of Islamic State-linked extremist groups. Last May, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who served as Somalia’s president between 2012 and 2017, was returned to the top office by legislators after a protracted contest.

Somalia has faced numerous attacks from al-Shabab and recently the government embarked on what has been described as the most significant offensive against the extremist group in more than a decade.

Catriona Laing, the new U.N. special representative for Somalia, told the council that the government’s operations have degraded al-Shabab militarily and dislodged its fighters from a number of areas which is “a notable achievement."

But Laing said al-Shabab remains a significant threat,” pointing to “a recent resurgence in the scale, tempo and geographic distribution" of its attacks including a June 9 attack on the Pearl Beach Hotel in the capital Mogadishu that killed nine people.

The African Union has a force in Somalia providing support to government forces battling al-Shabab. Last year, the Security Council unanimously approved a new AU transition mission known as ATMIS, to support the Somalis until their forces take full responsibility for the country’s security at the end of 2024.

Laing said the drawdown of ATMIS and handover are proceeding, but her initial assessment “is that the complexity, the constraints, and pace of the transition process presents risks, (and) this will be challenging.”

 

As Tensions Rise in Horn of Africa, Somalia Signs Defense Pact with Turkey

Somalia and Ethiopia are at loggerheads over a transport deal between the Ethiopian government and quasi-independent Somaliland, home to the Port of Berbera (DP World file image)

PUBLISHED FEB 25, 2024 7:31 PM BY BRIAN GICHERU KINYUA

 

 

As the world watches the Houthi maritime insurgency in the Red Sea, a new geopolitical alignment that could determine the region’s stability is taking shape to the south. Last week, Somalia’s government signed a 10-year defense and economic cooperation pact with Turkey, amidst growing tensions between Mogadishu and Ethiopia on the use of the Port of Berbera.

A month ago, Ethiopia signed an initial agreement with Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland to gain rights for access to the Red Sea Port of Berbera. In return, Somaliland would get a stake in state-owned Ethiopian Airlines and recognition of its sovereignty.

However, this deal ignited a stern response from Mogadishu, which accused Ethiopia of interfering with its internal affairs. Although Somaliland has enjoyed autonomy since 1991, Somalia still considers it to be part of its own territory.

In an interview last week, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said that his country would defend itself if Ethiopia goes ahead with its deal in Somaliland.

“If Ethiopia insists, Somalia will resist and will refuse. If they come into the country, Somalia will do everything that it can to defend itself,” Mohamud told Reuters, without giving further details.

According to Mohamud, the defense agreement with Turkey is meant for capacity-building purposes for the Somali army.

“We asked for their support, not to fight Ethiopia or invade another country. It is to support us in defending our country. That is the origin of the agreement we have entered with Turkey,” added Mohamud.

The pact was first approved by the Somali Cabinet and later endorsed by the two houses of Somalia’s Parliament in a majority vote. The deal includes a maritime security component as well.

“Turkey will build, train and equip the Somali navy as part of the government’s plan to fight terrorism, piracy, illegal fishing, toxic waste dumping and any external violations or threats to Somalia’s sea coast,” said Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry confirmed the cooperation deal with Mogadishu, saying that for almost a decade, Turkey has been providing support to Somalia to reorganize its army and bolster fight against terrorism.

“Upon Somalia’s request, we will provide support in the field of maritime security, as we did in the field of fight against terrorism. Hence, we will help Somalia develop its capacity and capabilities to combat illegal and irregular activities in its territorial waters,” a Turkish Defense Ministry official told reporters.

Somalia has the longest coastline in Africa, covering nearly 1,900 miles Unfortunately, years of civil war in the country have left it with limited capacity to patrol and administer its extensive coastline.

In 2011, Turkey re-established its diplomatic relations with Somalia, and since then the two countries have cooperated on defense and economic matters. This saw Turkey set up its biggest overseas military base in Mogadishu in 2017. The base has a capacity to train 1500 soldiers at a time and its initial goal was to train 10,000 Somali troops.

These initiatives have been interpreted in the light of Turkey’s foreign policy agenda, which includes ambitions of projecting Turkish power in Africa, especially in the Red Sea region. This is consistent with a wider trend by other Middle Eastern powers, which have operational presence in the Red Sea. Israel has a naval base in its Red Sea town of Eilat. Egypt, which has one of the most powerful militaries in the Arab world, maintains four Red Sea bases. The UAE had a naval base in Eritrea until 2021 and still has an operational base in Yemen’s Socotra Archipelago. Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal Naval Base is also found in the country’s Red Sea City of Jeddah.

Somalia faces severe humanitarian crisis aggravated by climate change, warns UN envoy

Horn of Africa country urgently needs donations at this critical time, says UN's James Swan

News Service March 17, 2022

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General 

and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia : James Swan

Somalia faces a severe humanitarian crisis that has been aggravated by climate change, the UN envoy to the country told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview.

“Somalia has had chronic humanitarian challenges. They are currently being aggravated further by the impact of climate change in a very fragile environment,” James Swan said on the sidelines of Turkiye’s three-day Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF), with Anadolu Agency as the global communications partner.

The year 2022 is particularly critical as it is the fourth consecutive year of below-average rainfall and harvest, Swan added, noting that over half of the country’s population of 15 million is in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

Against this background, Somalia and the UN prepared a joint action plan to address this severe crisis, stressed Swan, a former US diplomat with extensive experience in Africa.

The plan, he said, includes “an appeal to the donor community to support Somalia. Donors have historically been very generous in Somalia, and we count on their continuing generosity to help people in need in Somalia.”

- Improvements, yet more still needed

Reiterating that the country urgently needs donations at this critical time, Swan said some $1.45 billion is being sought to cover Somalis’ pressing need for food, shelter, and other kinds of aid.

He added that over 20 UN agencies – including the World Food Program (WHO), UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – have been working not only to respond to the humanitarian needs of the population but also to advance the development agenda and build a democratic and stable country.

To this end, the UN is keeping in constant touch with the Turkish ambassador and other ambassadors and friends of Somalia, Swan said.

Ties between Turkiye and Somalia have grown stronger in recent years, helped along by cooperation on issues such as security and considerable aid to the Horn of Africa country.

Citing, in particular, the country’s security apparatus, Swan praised recent improvements in Somalia.

“Somalia has made great progress in recent decades, and particularly over the last 12 years or so, in being able to have institutions that function (including) federal member states that have been created over the last decade, as well as increasingly functional ministries and other administrative services,” he said.

He cautioned, however, that a great deal more institution building and political reform still has to happen, including the conclusion of elections as early as possible, referring to parliamentary elections that started last November and were set to end this month.

“We're at a critical moment in Somalia as it nears the conclusion of its electoral process. It is important that that be completed soon and with a high degree of credibility,” Swan urged.

“It's important for Somalia's leaders to complete this political process and returned to the urgent business of addressing the key priorities of the Somali people in the coming years.”

OUTSOURCING WAR

Kenya paid $17m for Somalia security mission

SUNDAY OCTOBER 08 2023


Soldiers in action during training at the Kenya Defence Forces School of Infantry in Isiolo, Kenya on October 7, 2020. 

PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NMGADVERTISEMENT

By MARY WAMBUI
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Kenya has received Ksh2.5 billion ($17 million) in the past five years for its contribution to the Somalia peacekeeping mission (now known as the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia) whose mandate is set to end in December next year.

Defence Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale told parliament this week that the money was sent to the National Treasury in tranches of Ksh500 million ($3.3 million) annually.


In October 2011, Kenya Defence Forces moved into Somalia to pursue Al Shabaab following a series of kidnappings along the Kenya-Somalia border.

Read: Kenya delays reopening border with Somalia

The following year, the troops were formally integrated into the African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom) under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2036. Amisom would later be converted into Atmis with a drawdown plan till December 2024.

Mr Duale further said compensation for dead soldiers in Somalia is settled within 30 days.

Kenya gets $199m for refugee transition plan

“If the officer was serving within the country, they immediately get Ksh4 million ($26, 881) above his pension which has a component called death gratuity. If he was serving under Atmis like in Somalia, apart from the Ksh4 million the AU and the UN give that family Ksh5 million ($33,602),” Duale told the National Assembly without revealing how many soldiers and officers who have died in Somalia.

In their decade’s stay in Somalia, KDF have come under at least three heavy attacks from Al Shabaab, the worst remains the January 2016 attack at a KDF Forward Operating Base in El Adde.
tack

Another attempt was made the following year in Kulbiyow with less casualties and yet another in 2012 at Hoosingo also with less casualties.

The troops have over the years not only destroyed terrorists' cells in Somalia that would have otherwise been used to plan attacks in Kenya but also trained Somali forces, secure the locals and provided medicine, water and educated women on alternative sources of income.

This week, Duale said more than 4,000 KDF troops will be leaving Somalia as scheduled by the UN in spite of the recent request by Somalia to delay scheduled September drawdowns by three months.

Somalis Are Going Hungry. Their Government Isn’t Calling It a Famine.

Humanitarian groups say Somalia’s leaders are resisting a formal declaration of famine that could unlock aid and save lives.

In Baidoa, Somalia, an area gripped by hunger, Rahma Ali Ibrahim held her malnourished 1-year-old son, Zakaria Bashir, while they waited for medicine at the Horseed Health Center on Thursday.

Credit...Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

By Abdi Latif Dahir
Nov. 6, 2022

NAIROBI, Kenya — A severely malnourished child is admitted to a clinic in Somalia on average every minute of every day. With crops and animals decimated in the worst drought to blanket the nation in four decades, millions of Somalis stand on the brink of starvation in an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

Despite the crisis, the Somali government has for months been reluctant to declare that the country faces a famine, according to interviews with government officials, aid workers and analysts familiar with internal government discussions.

Such an announcement, aid workers said, would allow far more aid to flow — as happened during a 2011 famine — and muster the attention of Western donors who are currently more focused on responding to the fallout from the war in Ukraine.

The government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, which came to power in May, has resisted the designation for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the fledgling government fears it would undermine the public good will it now enjoys, and play into the hands of the terrorist group Al Shabab, just as the military has launched a large-scale offensive against the insurgents, who have plagued the country for decades and are still launching devastating attacks


The Somali government also worries that a famine declaration would spur an exodus of people from affected areas into major cities and towns, stretching already meager resources and fueling a rise in crime.

And they are concerned that a declaration of famine would deter investors and shift international aid money toward the emergency response — instead of long-term development money to fund health care, education and climate resilience programs.

The president acknowledged the dilemma in September, saying, “The risk is very high to announce a famine.”

Such a declaration, he said, “does not affect the famine victims only, but halts the development and changes the perspectives and everything.”

Over the past several weeks, frustrated aid workers have insisted the threshold for famine has already been reached in some areas and have pushed the government in several meetings to declare a famine to bring attention to the crisis.

The hunger emergency is affecting not only Somalia, which has a population of 16 million, but an estimated 37 million people in the Horn of Africa. One of the main drivers of the crisis is climate change, which is the focus of the climate summit known as COP27, starting on Sunday in Egypt.

A small farming village on the outskirts of Baidoa in southwest Somalia is surrounded by dry land where crops cannot grow.

Credit...Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

Aid workers in Somalia fear a repeat of what happened in 2011, when more than half the nearly 260,000 people who died in the famine did so before it was officially declared.

“The government is afraid of the F-word — famine, that is,” said an aid worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “But the situation is catastrophic and the longer they wait, the worse it gets.”

Abdirahman Abdishakur, the president’s envoy for drought response, acknowledged that aid agencies had been pushing the government to declare a famine, but denied that the government was hesitant to do so. He said there was no concrete evidence the thresholds for such a crisis had been passed. He also said rich nations should honor their commitments to help poor nations like Somalia deal with the effects of the climate crisis.

“The issue is not paying charity or giving out to Somalia,” Mr. Abdishakur, who has been touring Western capitals to raise awareness of the situation, said in a phone interview. “It is also about justice.”

An expert group that assesses famine conditions has made a determination on Somalia but has not declared a famine.

A famine can be designated if 20 percent of households in an area face an extreme lack of food, if 30 percent of children there are suffering from acute malnutrition, and if two adults or four children out of every 10,000 are dying every day from starvation. While experts can classify a famine and humanitarian organizations can warn of it, the decision to eventually declare a famine lies with a country’s government and U.N. agencies.

Somalis from a camp for internally displaced people, in Baidoa, wait for water at a well. There are about 750,000 displaced people living in camps around Baidoa, the mayor said.

Credit...Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

By pushing back against a famine declaration, Somali officials aim to buy time, and hope that much-needed funding will ultimately materialize anyway, said Mohamed Husein Gaas, the director of the Raad Peace Research Institute in Mogadishu, the capital.

“But that is not a good policy,” Mr. Gaas said. “We need to move fast and save lives.”

Nimo Hassan, the director of the Somali Nongovernmental Organizations Consortium, said technical definitions of famine shouldn’t be an excuse for inaction.

“The situation is outpacing the resources, and you are trying to drip-feed somebody who needs to drink water quickly,” she added.

The last review of Somalia’s situation, published in September, projected that famine would occur in two districts in the southern Bay region between October and December, and that the severe drought conditions would persist into early next year.

In severely impacted areas in Somalia, famine could soon be declared. Experts with the United Nations have just finished collecting data on the drought situation and are currently analyzing it before publishing their results in mid-November — a move that could spur authorities to make a formal famine declaration.

Almost a million Somalis live in inaccessible areas — including under the authority of the terrorist group Al Shabab — and those who conducted the review estimated that conditions there were similar if not worse than in areas where data was collected.

The Shabab’s control of vast swathes of southern Somalia exacerbated the 2011 famine, and in late October, the United Nations implored the group to allow aid agencies unfettered access to help drought-stricken Somalis.

Aid agencies say that since September, when the United Nations said that famine was “at the door” in Somalia, international funding has increased, particularly from the United States. But experts said fund-raising efforts aren’t growing as fast as needed and that donors should have responded to last year’s early warnings to prevent large-scale deaths and displacement now.

“The question we should all be asking ourselves is about the extent of the loss of human life, not whether we are an inch short or an inch over some thresholds,” said Daniel Maxwell, a professor of food security at Tufts University and a member of Somalia’s Famine Review Committee. “The calls to respond now are as clear as they are ever going to be.”

Extreme weather events, some linked to climate change, have devastated Somalia in recent years, leading to recurrent droughts, hunger, poverty and internal displacement. The country is set to face a historic fifth straight poor rainy season, limiting farmers’ abilities to raise livestock or grow crops.

Women lining up with their children to be registered at a nutrition center in Baidoa run by Save the Children on Wednesday.

Credit...Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

Crop failures, supply disruptions from the pandemic and the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have more than tripled the cost of some staple foods in some areas. And because the drought has lasted longer and affected more people and areas than in 2011, experts also worry that more people could die over time.

Across Somalia, clinics and hospitals treating malnourished children are reporting double or triple the number of cases compared with last year, even as the price of the peanut-based paste used to fight malnutrition has increased by 23 percent, according to the U.N. children’s agency. More than half a million children are at risk of death, the United Nations has warned, “a pending nightmare” unlike any seen this century.

As the drought tightens its grip on Somalia, the authorities have also declared an all-out war on Al Shabab with the backing of local clan militias. Some critics say that the authorities should have focused on saving lives first and that the latest offensive will only create more displacement.

But Mr. Abdishakur, the envoy, defended the government’s military operation, saying Al Shabab was contributing to the suffering by blowing up wells and extorting and taxing civilians.

For now, aid workers say they are racing against time so that more Somalis do not die on their watch as they did in 2011.

“One child dying is far too many, let alone hundreds,” Ms. Hassan, the Somali N.G.O. leader, said.

Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

Udugow Mohamed holding her 10-month-old-son, Yazeed Osman, while the thickness of his upper arm was measured by doctors in Baidoa on Thursday.

Credit...Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

Looming Famine in Somalia

‘Famine Is at the Door’ in Somalia, U.N. Warns
Sept. 5, 2022

‘We Buried Him and Kept Walking’: Children Die as Somalis Flee Hunger
June 11, 2022

Saving Somalia’s Starving Babies

Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent. He joined The Times in 2019 after covering East Africa for Quartz for three years. He lives in Nairobi, Kenya. @Lattif

Over one million people displaced in four months in Somalia: UN

Hillary ORINDE
Wed, May 24, 2023 

Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya have been suffering the worst drought in four decades

More than a million Somalis have been displaced within their own country in just over four months through a "toxic" mix of drought, conflict and floods, humanitarian agencies said Wednesday.

Around 433,000 people were forced from their homes between January 1 and May 10 as a grinding Islamist insurgency raged and clashes broke out in the breakaway Somaliland region, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said.

in addition, "over 408,000 people were displaced by floods sweeping across their villages and another 312,000 people were displaced by ravaging drought," they said in a joint statement.

Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya have been suffering the worst drought in four decades after five failed rainy seasons that have left millions of people in need and decimated crops and livestock.

UN chief Antonio Guterres and world governments are meeting in New York on Wednesday at a conference to seek funding of $7 billion to help those in need across the region.

Over 408,000 people have been displaced by floods in Somalia since the start of the year, the UNHCR and NRC say © Hassan Ali ELMI / AFP

At least 43.3 million people require lifesaving and life-sustaining assistance in the Horn of Africa, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said last week.

The number of people displaced within Somalia's borders now stands at 3.8 million, with 6.7 million people struggling to find food, according to the UNHCR and NRC.

More than half a million children are severely malnourished, they added.

"These are alarming figures of some of the most vulnerable people forced to abandon the little that they had to head for the unknown," said Mohamed Abdi, the NRC's country director in Somalia.

"We can only fear the worst in the coming months as all the ingredients of this catastrophe are boiling in Somalia."

Most of the families have fled the Hiraan region in central Somalia and Gedo in the south of the country of 17 million people and are arriving in overcrowded urban areas, putting a strain on already stretched resources.

- 'Human tragedy' -

The agencies called for urgent and greater investment to combat the crises "otherwise we will never see the end of this unfolding human tragedy," said Magatte Guisse, UNHCR's representative in Somalia.

Currently, aid agencies have received only 22 percent of funding to meet their needs for Somalia this year.

Al-Qaeda linked Al-Shabaab jihadists have been fighting the fragile central government since 2007 and control parts of the countryside from where they have carried out numerous attacks both in Somalia and in neighbouring countries.

Meanwhile flash flooding has hit central Somalia since May after heavy rainfall sent water gushing into homes in Beledweyne town in Hiraan, submerging roads and buildings and killed 22 people.

The Horn of Africa has been scarred by protracted armed conflicts and climate disasters with the World Food Programme (WFP) warning on Wednesday that crises were far from over.

"The last three years of drought has left more than 23 million people across parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia facing severe hunger," the WFP said in a statement, adding that it would take years for the region to recover.

OCHA said last week that while famine "has been prevented" in the region, the humanitarian emergency was not over.

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UN conference pledges $2.4 bn to head off Horn of Africa famine

United Nations (United States) (AFP) – A UN-backed conference raised $2.4 billion Wednesday to prevent famine in the Horn of Africa, which is reeling from its worst drought in decades as global temperatures rise.

Issued on: 24/05/2023 -

 

 

Meteorologists and aid agencies have warned of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in the Horn of Africa 

© EDUARDO SOTERAS / AFP/File

The money will provide life-saving assistance for nearly 32 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the world body's humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement.

"Famine has been averted, thanks in part to the tremendous efforts of local communities, humanitarian organizations and authorities, as well as the support of donors," OCHA said.

But the sum is considerably less than the $7 billion the United Nations says is needed to provide help to people affected by drought and conflict in the region.

"The emergency is far from over, and additional resources are urgently required to prevent a return to the worst-case scenario," OCHA added.

Since late 2020, countries in the Horn of Africa -- Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan -- have been suffering the region's worst drought in 40 years.

Five failed rainy seasons have left millions of people in need, decimated crops and killed millions of livestock.

More than 23.5 million people are enduring high levels of acute food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, according to OCHA.

In Somalia alone, which is also in the throes of an Islamist insurgency, the number of people displaced from their homes now stands at 3.8 million, with 6.7 million people struggling to find food, according to figures from the UN and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

More than half a million children are severely malnourished, they added.

Deaths from hunger are on the rise in Africa because of droughts worsened by climate change and conflict, UN officials and scientists say.

The devastating drought in the Horn of Africa could not have occurred without the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, an international team of climate scientists, said in a report released in April.

At the opening of the donor's conference, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for "an immediate and major injection of funding" to stop people from dying.
'We owe them solidarity'

"We must act now to prevent crisis from turning into catastrophe," he added, recalling that last year donor countries delivered vital help to 20 million people in the region and helped avert a famine.

Guterres said people in the region were "paying an unconscionable price for a climate crisis they did nothing to cause."

"We owe them solidarity. We owe them assistance. And we owe them a measure of hope for the future. This means immediate action to secure their survival.

"And it means sustained action to help communities across the Horn adapt and build resilience to climate change," he added.

OCHA said the funds pledged Wednesday would allow humanitarian agencies to sustain aid pipelines of food, water, health care, nutrition and protection services.

Joyce Msuya, the UN's deputy emergency relief coordinator, welcomed the pledge but added: "We must persist in pushing for stepped-up investments, especially to bolster the resilience of people already bearing the brunt of climate change."

U.S. gives nearly $524 million in drought aid to Horn of Africa

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Wednesday announced nearly $524 million in U.S. humanitarian aid to the Horn of Africa to help people struggling to find food and water in a drought across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

May 24 (UPI) -- U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Wednesday announced nearly $524 million in drought aid for the Horn of Africa.

"When I visited Mogadishu in January, I heard firsthand how the drought impacted the food supply and the increased potential for famine," Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement. "While there, I announced over $40 million in additional funding from the United States to Somalia to save lives and meet humanitarian needs."

She said more than 23.5 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and that's why the United States is continuing to support humanitarian aid to the region.

In April, a multi-national group of scientists found that human-induced climate change is worsening the Horn of Africa drought.

RELATED Study: Human-caused climate change worsened Horn of Africa drought

The U.S. aid includes nearly $108 million from the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and over $416 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

With Wednesday's announcement, total U.S. aid to the region in 2023 will be more than $1.4 billion. The money will be used for lifesaving support for people in the Horn of Africa who have been affected by the drought, food insecurity, and conflict.

"A storm of crises has pushed millions across the Horn of Africa to the brink," Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement. "A long, protracted drought has exacerbated acute food insecurity. Recent flash floods have wiped out entire homes and livelihoods. And conflict in neighboring countries has also had a devastating impact on vulnerable populations, including internally displaced persons and refugees."

RELATED U.N. warns of catastrophic water shortage

Humanitarian groups in the region have launched a collective Humanitarian Response Plan calling for a cumulative total of $7 billion in assistance.

"We must act now to prevent crisis from turning into catastrophe," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "Let us act together now -- with greater urgency and far greater support."

Thomas-Greenfield said the global community must heed that call.

RELATED Response to Africa drought criticized

She also called for building more sustainable and resilient food systems around the world to adapt to the effects of climate change.

Somalia: Severe Malnutrition Among Children Soars 300% Since January

Sunday, 10 July 2022, 6:01 pm
Press Release: Save The Children

The number of children in Somalia receiving treatment for the most dangerous form of malnutrition surged 300% in the first six months of 2022 as the worst drought in years tightened its grip on the country, Save the Children said today.

In June, doctors at a healthcare facility for children in Baidoa, southwest Somalia, run by Save the Children, treated a record 471 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition with other medical complications - four times more patients than in January.

Doctors said they were witnessing first-hand how a changing climate is fuelling a catastrophic hunger crisis. Dr. Farhiyo Mohamud Abdirahman has treated malnourished children at Save the Children’s stabilisation centre in Baidoa for more than two years and now works overtime regularly to cope with the increase in the number of patients.

"We’re facing a lot of new challenges compared to even two to three months ago. We don’t have enough beds, there are not enough rooms, and staff are working overtime," said Dr. Farhiyo Mohamud Abdirahman. "We are being pushed to our limits."

Four consecutive rainy seasons have failed in the Horn of Africa with forecasts for a fifth poor rainy season later this year, with the crisis compounded by rising food prices due to the war in Ukraine and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 18.5 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya have been affected by the drought, which began in October 2020 .

With no end in sight of the devastating drought, Somalia is now on the brink of famine, raising fears of a repeat of a 2011 famine which killed 260,000 people, about half of whom were children aged under five.

In the first half of 2022, Dr. Farhiyo Mohamud Abdirahman and her team treated 1,435 children for severe acute malnutrition, about 25% more patients than the whole of 2021. The health centre recently had to install two medical tents in its courtyard to accommodate the surge in demand for malnutrition treatment.

As drought continues to devastate large swathes of the country, the number of children dying from malnutrition is also skyrocketing. The stabilisation centre recorded 18 deaths in June, more than double the number from May and the highest figure at any other point in the past 12 months. Nearly 90% more children died from malnutrition at the centre in the first six months of 2022 than in the same period last year.

Somalia is facing one of the most severe emergencies in the worst global hunger crisis this century with action needed urgently to prevent a repeat of the 2011 catastrophe. However, only [Somalia%20Humanitarian%20Response%20Plan%202022%20|%20Financial%20Tracking%20Service%20(unocha.org)]30% of a UN appeal for US$1.5 billion to combat the crisis in Somalia has been funded.

Save the Children's Country Director for Somalia, Mohamud Mohamed Hassan said:

"We live in a world where we know how to prevent extreme hunger, yet hundreds of thousands of people still die from lack of food. Today, allowing hunger around the world is a political choice.

"For millions of children in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, time is running out. We’ve already seen the deadly consequences this drought is having on children. We cannot wait any longer to act. In some of the worst affected areas in Somalia, our health clinics are seeing four times as many children suffering from severe malnutrition compared to just six months ago and death rates are soaring."

Early international intervention during a severe drought in 2017 averted a repeat of the 2011 catastrophe. Humanitarian agencies are warning that without urgently needed funds now and lasting action to tackle climate change and its impacts, this year’s drought in Somalia could be even more devastating that the famine a decade ago. The last famine to be officially declared globally was in some areas of South Sudan in 2017.

At least 1.5 million children under five are acutely malnourished across Somalia, with more than 385,000 children at risk of dying without immediate care.

"When I first started working here, there were very few cases of severe malnutrition. Now, every day, severely malnourished children come to the clinic. And, they have more complications and more diseases than before," Dr. Farhiyo Mohamud Abdirahman continued.

Malnourished children are more susceptible to infections and other diseases, such as measles, pneumonia and cholera, putting their health at even greater risk.

Casho-, 33, lost two of her children to measles this year and the majority of her livestock have died during the drought. She explained that her family decided to relocate to a displacement camp in Baidoa in hopes of finding life-saving aid. She walked with her seven children for two consecutive days to reach the camp at Baidoa, leaving behind their home and once prosperous farm.

"The drought has affected us badly, especially children who suffered from diseases like measles. We used to rear animals and grow crops, but our animals died, and crops failed. Our children are sick. We are also sick. We are all suffering from hunger, young and old," said Casho.

With the majority of Somalia facing severe drought, displacement and poverty have become widespread throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of people like Casho have been forced to flee their homes in search of food, clean water and medical care. However, hunger is still a daily reality in displacement camps.

"We did not eat last night or the night before. We have nothing. That is our situation," said Ali-, 15, who arrived at a displacement camp in Baidoa with his family in June. "We beg from the market for some maize or some money, and sometimes we return home with nothing and sleep on an empty stomach. Our farms are dry and we are starving. Our main problem is hunger."

Save the Children is working to help affected communities in Somalia cope with the immediate humanitarian effects of drought. The aid agency is providing emergency water supplies, treating malnourished children, supporting education systems so that children do not miss vital learning while displaced by drought, running health facilities, and providing cash and livelihood support to the most vulnerable.

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Somalia Ex-Minister's Presidential Quest Tests Rigid Patriarchy

16 JULY 2021
The East African (Nairobi)By Abdulkadir Khalif

When Somalia's former Foreign Affairs minister Fawzia Yusuf Haji Adam announced her candidacy for president in the next elections, the reaction in Mogadishu was mostly muted.

Yet Ms Adam, from a prominent family of scholars, is not just testing the waters. She may well be testing the rigidity of an age-old culture.

If the federal electoral commission accepts her candidacy, she will be only the second woman in Somalia's history to contest the presidency.

In 2004, Asha Ahmed Abdalla sought Somalia's top leadership position. That vote was held in distant Kenyan capital Nairobi as Mogadishu then was an arena for warlords.


And during an election contest that took place at Kasarani Stadium at the end of reconciliation midwifed by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) and Kenya, she lost after the first round of voting by a 275-member federal parliament.

Indirect election

Somalia's politicians had been gathering in Mbagathi. When they agreed on an indirect election through delegates, three voting rounds were needed.

Col Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected and proceeded to restore the presidential seat at Villa Somalia in December 2006, before quitting the post two years later.

There are many similarities between that vote and the polls planned for October 10.

One is that Somalia has failed to organise universal suffrage. So leaders still have to jostle for delegates who elect MPs, who in turn elect the president.

Only that the Mbagathi reconciliation meant Somalia's transitional federal government at the time was governing from Kenya, had no idea what the capital Mogadishu was like and the president was basically chosen by a handful of influential clan elders without input from anyone else.

Powerful clan elders

Today, those clan elders are still powerful and have helped nominate delegates in consultation with the electoral commission, as well as blessing or rejecting candidates.

For Ms Adam, 69, her decision to run for president, she argued, was not to stand out of the crowd but because the pace of development had been sorely slow and she wants to do something about it. She vowed to mobilise resources.

"My sole aim is to breathe a new lease of life into Somalia. Our political ideology and beliefs are at the heart and soul of our political trajectory in deciding the best way forward for my nation," she said.

A member of parliament in the expiring legislature, Ms Adam stormed to stardom in 2012 after Hassan Sheikh Mohamud appointed her minister for foreign affairs and international cooperation and named her deputy prime minister.

She remains the only Somali woman to have held that position.

Her campaign team says she is running on the National Democratic Party ticket and will chair the Hiigsi coalition. She wants to run on issues that cement "nationhood" including "durable peace, justice and development".

She will face incumbent Mohamed Farmaajo, former Galmudug president Abdikarim Guled, former presidents Mr Mohamud and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, former prime minister Hassan Khaire and former lawmaker Abdikadir Ali Osoble, who are seen as frontrunners for the seat.

Conservative

She faces two challenges. One is she is female in a male-dominated polity where only elites with money have been voted in. Under influential clan elders, the Somali political scene has largely remained conservative, as seen when leaders haggled over the 30 per cent allocation of seats to women.

There has been no clarity on how seats will be allocated to women to achieve the threshold, but at least the outgoing parliament had seen about 24 per cent seats go to women.

Still, some clan elders have openly rejected the idea of quotas for women or even giving them a chance at all.

Ms Adam, though prominent in the early years of Mr Mohamud's rule, was born in Hargeisa, Somaliland. In Somalia's tense clan politics, people from Somaliland hardly crack it in the presidency in Somalia, given Somaliland's continual declaration of (unrecognised) independence from Somalia.

Somalilanders who choose one Somalia have often landed the prime minister's post or deputies. The indirect elections also cost lots of money and candidates have to move round, by air, seeking to get as many favourable delegates as possible to elect MPs, who are then required to elect the president.

Hoping to shine

Having reached the highest political office ever achieved by a Somali woman, Ms Adam's ambition now is to rule the Horn of Africa country. Her hope is to shine in a race crowded by men.

Ms Adam is armed with a significant diplomatic career. She had joined the foreign service in the 1980s, serving in different offices in the Somali ministry of foreign affairs as well as in missions in other foreign countries.

During her tenure as foreign minister and deputy premier, she rubbed shoulders with top diplomats around the world.

Somalis may remember her for attempting to help in returning Somalia's assets seized abroad after they were illegally grabbed when the country fell to warlords.


Read the original article on East African.

Outcry in Somalia as new bill would allow child marriage

AP , Wednesday 12 Aug 2020


FILE PHOTO: Zeinab, 14, attends a class at a school near a camp for internally displaced people from drought hit areas in Dollow, Somalia, April 3, 2017 REUTERS


An outcry is rising in Somalia as parliament considers a bill that would allow child marriage once a girl's sexual organs mature and would allow forced marriage as long as the family gives their consent.

The bill is a dramatic reworking of years of efforts by civil society to bring forward a proposed law to give more protections to women in one of the world's most conservative countries.

The new Sexual Intercourse Related Crimes Bill ``would represent a major setback in the fight against sexual violence in Somalia and across the globe'' and should be withdrawn immediately, the United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, said in a statement Tuesday.

The bill also weakens protections for victims of sexual violence, she said.

Already more than 45% of young women in Somalia were married or ``in union'' before age 18, according to a United Nations analysis in 2014-15.

Somalia in 2013 agreed with the U.N. to improve its sexual violence laws, and after five years of work a sexual offenses bill was approved by the Council of Ministers and sent to parliament. But last year the speaker of the House of the People sent the bill back ``in a process that may have deviated from established law'' asking for ``substantive amendments,'' the U.N. special representative said.

The new bill ``risks legitimizing child marriage, among other alarming practices, and must be prevented from passing into law,'' U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said this week, warning that its passage would ``send a worrying signal to other states in the region.''

Thousands of people in Somalia are circulating a petition against the bill, including Ilwad Elman with the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace organization.

As Somalia prepared to mark International Youth Day on Wednesday, Elman tweeted this week: ``I don't wanna see any Somali officials participating online to celebrate ... when you're trying to steal their childhood away from them RIGHT NOW with the intercourse bill legalizing child marriage.''

The U.N. mission to Somalia in a separate statement has called the new bill ``deeply flawed'' and urged parliament to re-introduce the original one. That original bill ``will be vital in preventing and criminalizing all sexual offenses,'' the Somalia representative for the U.N. Population Fund, Anders Thomsen, said.

``Big moment for MPs to decide Somalia's future values,'' the British ambassador to Somalia, Ben Fender, has tweeted.

The contentious new bill comes as women's rights groups openly worry that the coronavirus pandemic and related travel restrictions in Somalia have worsened violence against women and female genital mutilation. Nearly all Somali women and girls have been subjected to that practice.

Some 68% of more than 300 service providers across the country have reported an increase in gender-based violence, including rape, since the pandemic began, UNFPA said in a report last month.

Nearly a third of respondents, including more than 750 community members, said they believed child marriages had increased in part because of economic pressures and in part because schools have been disrupted.

And in some cases, health facilities have closed, limiting access to care.

In Somalia, a rare female artist promotes images of peace

By HASSAN BARISE

Somali artist Sana Ashraf Sharif Muhsin, 21, sits with some of her paintings at her home in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. Among the once-taboo professions emerging from Somalia's decades of conflict and Islamic extremism is the world of arts, and this 21-year-old female painter has faced more opposition than most. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)


MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Among the once-taboo professions emerging from Somalia’s decades of conflict and Islamic extremism is the world of arts, and a 21-year-old female painter has faced more opposition than most.

A rare woman artist in the highly conservative Horn of Africa nation, Sana Ashraf Sharif Muhsin lives and works amid the rubble of her uncle’s building that was partially destroyed in Mogadishu’s years of war.

Despite the challenges that include the belief by some Muslims that Islam bars all representations of people, and the search for brushes and other materials for her work, she is optimistic.

“I love my work and believe that I can contribute to the rebuilding and pacifying of my country,” she said.

Sana stands out for breaking the gender barrier to enter a male-dominated profession, according to Abdi Mohamed Shu’ayb, a professor of arts at Somali National University. She is just one of two female artists he knows of in Somalia, with the other in the breakaway region of Somaliland.

And yet Sana is unique “because her artworks capture contemporary life in a positive way and seek to build reconciliation,” he said, calling her a national hero.

Sana, a civil engineering student, began drawing at the age of 8, following in the footsteps of her maternal uncle, Abdikarim Osman Addow, a well-known artist.

“I would use charcoal on all the walls of the house, drawing my vision of the world,” Sana said, laughing. More formal instruction followed, and she eventually assembled a book from her sketches of household items like a shoe or a jug of water.

But as her work brought her more public attention over the years, some tensions followed.





Somali artist Sana Ashraf Sharif Muhsin, 21, works on one of her paintings at her home in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, Oct. 15, 2021. Among the once-taboo professions emerging from Somalia's decades of conflict and Islamic extremism is the world of arts, and this 21-year-old female painter has faced more opposition than most. 

(AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

“I fear for myself sometimes,” she said, and recalled a confrontation during a recent exhibition at the City University of Mogadishu. A male student began shouting “This is wrong!” and professors tried to calm him, explaining that art is an important part of the world.

Many people in Somalia don’t understand the arts, Sana said, and some even criticize them as disgusting. At exhibitions, she tries to make people understand that art is useful and “a weapon that can be used for many things.”

A teacher once challenged her skills by asking questions and requiring answers in the form of a drawing, she said.

“Everything that’s made is first drawn, and what we’re making is not the dress but something that changes your internal emotions,” Sana said. “Our paintings talk to the people.”

Her work at times explores the social issues roiling Somalia, including a painting of a soldier looking at the ruins of the country’s first parliament building. It reflects the current political clash between the opposition, she said, as national elections are delayed.

Another painting reflects abuses against vulnerable young women “which they cannot even express.” A third shows a woman in the bare-shouldered dress popular in Somalia decades ago before a stricter interpretation of Islam took hold and scholars urged women to wear the hijab.

But Sana also strives for beauty in her work, aware that “we have passed through 30 years of destruction, and the people only see bad things, having in their mind blood and destruction and explosions. ... If you Google Somalia, we don’t have beautiful pictures there, but ugly ones, so I’d like to change all that using my paintings.”

Sana said she hopes to gain further confidence in her work by exhibiting it more widely, beyond events in Somalia and neighboring Kenya.

But finding role models at home for her profession doesn’t come easily.

Sana named several Somali artists whose work she admires, but she knows of no other female ones like herself.