Somalia looks to the future as the UN’s political mission closes
The UN Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia, known as UNTMIS, wraps up its work on Saturday and according to Mr. Zenenga “while significant challenges remain, the closure of UNTMIS comes after considerable progress by Somalia since the early years of international efforts to support the country’s recovery.”
Somalia has undergone a profound transformation since the early 1990s, when the collapse of central State institutions and the outbreak of civil war ushered in years of conflict, instability and humanitarian crises.
The conflict sparked a major outflow of refugees and internal displacements, while ongoing insecurity, contested electoral processes and constitutional reform, as well as recurrent climatic shocks – including droughts and floods – compounded humanitarian needs and presented formidable challenges to the country’s recovery.
Somalia’s responsibility
Successive political missions accompanied Somalia through critical stages of its peacebuilding and State-building journey, supporting Somali-led efforts to restore governance, rebuild institutions and foster national reconciliation.
With the end of the UNTMIS, it is now Somali institutions which will take on the full responsibility for the country’s recovery with support from UN agencies already working in the country.
“Somalia today possesses national and federal institutions that did not exist when the UN’s political engagement began. Progress has been made in State formation, political inclusion, constitutional processes, human rights frameworks and the development of governance structures that enable Somali-led decision-making,” said Mr. Zenenga.
“However, continued engagement by the international community will remain important to sustaining progress and addressing outstanding priorities,” he added.
Humanitarian and development support
That engagement includes some 25 UN entities that are still working across Somalia on humanitarian and development support.
In September, in the town of Balcad, a run-down vegetable market got a makeover from the UN’s migration agency, IOM.
There are now 56 sturdy stalls, running water and solar lighting. About 70 per cent of the stalls went to women-headed households, women-led businesses and small enterprises.
Elsewhere, Somalia’s health ministry, working with UNICEF, launched national guidelines on caring for newborns, including babies who are small or sick.
In Puntland, where nearly a million children are out of school, the UN’s food agency FAO is backing a school meals programme that links 1,330 local farmers and fisherfolk to schools serving 18,700 children, so kids eat and families earn.
And in Baidoa, mine action experts from UNMAS helped Somali authorities teach hundreds of students and teachers how to spot explosive dangers.
A complex crisis
The UN’s humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, calls the situation in Somalia one of the world’s most complex crises.
Conflict and climate shocks keep feeding each other, and families who fled drought or fighting have often been uprooted a second or third time by floods or fresh violence.
This year, 4.8 million Somalis, out of a population of just under 20 million, need humanitarian help.
Aid agencies are asking for $852 million to reach 2.4 million people, just half of those in need, and by mid-October only about 35 per cent of that had arrived.
The UN Secretary-General also wants continued support to tackle the threat from the terror group Al-Shabaab and to help Somalia move to a gradual, sustainable security transition.
Looking ahead, one huge challenge for Somalia’s leaders after October is poverty.
They’ll need to tackle it while steadying an economy that’s still fragile. It leans heavily on subsistence farming, livestock, money sent home by relatives abroad and pastoralism.
The country imports more than 90 per cent of its essential goods, according to OCHA.
UN will remain
While UNTMIS is closing down, the United Nations is not leaving. UN humanitarian and development agencies continue to support Somalia and its people.
“Today is not an end to the partnership between the United Nations and Somalia,” Deputy Special Representative Zenenga said. “It marks the conclusion of one chapter and the beginning of another.”
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