Negotiations with Somali insurgents for access to civilians caught up in the conflict will be a priority for the United Nations, as drought threatens to worsen the already "chronic catastrophe" in the country, a senior U.N. official said.
"We can't afford to see a continual shrinking of humanitarian access in south and central Somalia. We have to try every means to address that," said Mark Bowden, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia. "We need to call upon the insurgents, al Shabaab and others, for far better recognition of the need for humanitarian assistance."
"We have to strive continuously to improve discussions, negotiations ... to get people to accept responsibility, their own responsibilities, for the populations that live in the areas that they claim to control and that I think has to be our priority for the coming year," he added.
Bowden was speaking on Wednesday at the launch of a $530 million appeal to help two million people in Somalia, 70 percent of whom have fled their homes because of fighting between the Western-backed Somali government and Islamist rebels.
Since 2008, 18 aid agencies have been expelled from south-central Somalia, reducing access to "an all time low" according to Kiki Gbeho, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Somalia.
The insecurity in the Horn of Africa country, mired in conflict since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, has forced nearly all aid agencies to bar expatriate staff from working there.
In the past two years, 47 humanitarian workers have been killed in Somalia and 35 abducted.
Bowden warned that if the world body was unable to improve its access to people in need, Somalia would face "a very serious situation at the end of the year".
Somalia's humanitarian crisis, one of the world's worst, has left about a quarter of the population dependent on aid.
Most Somalis fleeing intensified fighting this year have found shelter in makeshift camps in and around the town of Afgooye, 25 km outside the capital Mogadishu. The camps now hold some 400,000 people in the largest concentration of internally displaced people in the world.
To step up political engagement with parties to the conflict, the U.N.'s Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS), is moving to Mogadishu.
"We have found ways of existing and surviving in Mogadishu. We have already deployed the advanced team there," said Augustine Mahiga, the U.N.'s Special Representative for Somalia.
UNPOS has been based in neighbouring Kenya for the last 15 years because of insecurity.
"We believe part of the instability of that government is because they are left alone. They have no interlocutors," Mahiga said. "Hopefully if Mogadishu can be secured politically and militarily, the geopolitical dynamics would change and we would be able to have more access to the southwest."
Britain's envoy to the United Nations said this week that U.N. Security Council members supported the idea of boosting an African Union peacekeeping force (AMISOM) in Somalia to 12,000 from 8,000 soldiers.
Council diplomats said the extra troops should enable AMISOM to secure Mogadishu from Islamist al Shabaab rebels, seeking to topple the government and impose sharia law.
OCHA Somalia's Gbeho also told reporters that the United Nations had intensified its "risk management" following a U.N. report that said half the food aid for Somalis was being diverted to a network of corrupt contractors, al Shabaab militants and local U.N. staff.
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Source: reliefweb.int
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