|
Somalia, in desperate need, must not be abandoned – UN
humanitarian chief
Accra, May 22 - The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator
on Monday appealed to the Security Council to step up its
efforts to quell the violence and end the suffering in Somalia.
“Otherwise, I fear the worst,” John Holmes,
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said as he
briefed the 15-member body on his recent visit to Somalia and
Northern Uganda.
Affirming that the UN has a responsibility “not to turn its back
on Somalis in their latest hour of desperate need,” Mr. Holmes
said that there has been recent massive displacement following
the worst fighting in the 16 years that the East-African country
has gone without a functioning government.
This, he said in a statement released in Accra on Tuesday, had
compounded the miseries of chronic food insecurity, alternating
droughts and floods and endemic disease.
As the highest-ranking UN official to visit the country since
the early 1990’s, Mr. Holmes said his discussions with leaders
of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) – notably President
Abdullahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedhi – were
complicated by disagreement on the severity of the crisis.
According to UN figures, 340,000 people, roughly one-third of
the capital’s population, have fled the hostilities in Mogadishu
since the start of February, while at least 1,000 have sustained
injuries.
The TGF officials claimed that only 30,000 to 40,000 had been
displaced and most had already returned.
At the same time, however, Mr. Holmes said that President Yusuf
had accepted his proposal of a visit to Somalia by the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to look into
reports of indiscriminate use of force in civilian areas,
arbitrary detentions and disappearances, and other human rights
violations.
After his Government meetings, Mr. Holmes said he had a brief
opportunity to walk through the narrow passageways of a
makeshift site sheltering long-termed displaced in Mogadishu,
trying to imagine the daily life of the throng of children
following him, and the future in store for them.
“Not enough has been done to provide these people with basic
conditions of human dignity,” he said. Turning to Northern
Uganda, which he called “more encouraging,” Mr. Holmes said the
situation in the conflict-affected districts is improving and
there is a degree of optimism in the air.
Security has increased with a major decline in attacks by the
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel group notorious for its
abductions of children for child soldiers and sex slaves.
However, 1.6 million displaced people remain in camps, he said,
even though the number is significantly down from its height of
2 million three years ago.
Some are tentatively moving out of the camps toward their places
of origin, “but this movement is not yet massive or
irreversible,” he commented.
“These people are poised between hope and fear,” he concluded.
“Hope that the day of their definitive return home may be close
and fear that if the peace talks break down, renewed violence
could again wrest this price from their grasp.
“I urge all concerned to do what they can to ensure that this
perhaps unique opportunity is not missed,” he said.
GNA
|
