Resource Details [ back ] RSS Feeds Sudan Return and Reintegration Operations Annual Report 2009

In 2009 approximately 445,561 IDPs and refugees returned to southern Sudan and the Three Areas, a number similar to 2008 levels. Of this total, around 85 percent returned spontaneously, 11 percent returned in joint organized movements and 4 percent returned with state-organized returns. The statistic also showed a significant decrease in joint UN-IOM/GNU/GoSS-organized returns of IDPs, from over 28,000 in 2008 to about 11,000 in 2009, or almost sixty percent. This resulted largely from a change in UN policy to shift emphasis away from organized north-south IDP movements toward an accentuation of the need to focus on sustainable reintegration. The organized returned of refugees also decreased by 50 percent, from over 62,000 in 2008 to 32,000 this year. Similarly, the state-organized returns decreased dramatically by 70 percent, from 39,887 in 2008 to 11,884 this year. The statistics also revealed that, despite the lack of joint organized north-south returns and significant decrease in other organized movements, people were still returning to southern Sudan and the Three Areas. As anticipated, this year spontaneous returns even increased slightly from over 325,000 returnees last year to over 390,000 in 2009.Read more

Somaliland Holds Credible Presidential Election – IRI

HARGEISA (Somalilandpress) — IRI found that Somaliland’s election was peaceful, without major incident and generally met international standards. Hundreds of thousands of Somalilanders turned out to vote in their fourth election, and although wanting international recognition, did not wait to continue to build their nascent democracy. The international community should credit such democratic progress and the example it sets for others.
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Doubts Rise in Rwanda as Election Is Held

KIGALI, Rwanda — President Paul Kagame uses Twitter. He has lunched at Google. He started out as a skinny rebel fighter in the bush, marched into Rwanda’s capital in the midst of a genocide and then rose to make his country one of the developing world’s most orderly and crime-free societies.
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Istanbul declaration (Istanbul, Turkey - 22 may 2010)

Istanbul declaration (Istanbul, Turkey - 22 may 2010)

The Istanbul Conference on Somalia took place in Istanbul from 21-23 May, 2010 reflecting the strong determination of the United Nations, the Government of Turkey and the International Community to work with the Transitional Federal Institutions and the people of Somalia to defeat the cycle of lawlessness, violence and despair in the country and to build in its place a peaceful and prosperous future for the Somali people. The Conference reaffirmed the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and unity of Somalia.
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The Somali Conflict: The Role of External Actors

Somalia has been without a functioning state ever since 1991, when the former dictator, Siyad Barre, was overthrown. None of the competing factions were strong enough to take his place as ruler of the country, producing first chaos, but gradually a form of stateless order. The international interventions have ever since the failed, and counter-productive intervention by the United Nations and the United States in the early 1990 exacerbated rather than mitigated the problems, let alone solved them. This was especially the case for the Ethiopia invasion (December 2006-January 2009), which produced utter chaos and a severe humanitarian crisis. Since the withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces, Islamist extremist militias have been establishing control of Somalia, and they may or may not be able to maintain this control. If they pursue their radical programme of Islamisation, their reign is likely to be short, but if
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Beyond Regional Circularity: The Emergence of an Ethiopian Diaspora

By Aaron Matteo Terrazas
In March 2007, Foreign Affairs magazine described the Horn of Africa — the area comprising the east African states of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan — as the "hottest conflict zone in the world."

Over the past half century, the Horn of Africa has played host to some of the world's deadliest conflicts. Caught in the crossfire, the region's population has shifted back and forth across international borders seeking refuge not only from violence, but also from poverty, famine, natural disasters, failed states, and repressive governments. Landlocked Ethiopia, which shares a border with every other state in the Horn, is at the intersection of a complex system of multidirectional regional and international flows of humanity.

The movement of people within the Horn of Africa is hardly a new phenomenon. However, migration from Ethiopia to countries beyond the Horn can be linked to the 1974 revolution that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie and installed a Marxist military regime, the Derg. Before 1974, the few Ethiopians who went abroad were elites who did so to study and then returned
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The Leading Factions behind the Somali Insurgency

By Andrew McGregor


The U.S.-supported Ethiopian invasion that expelled Somalia's Islamist government last December is rapidly deteriorating into a multi-layered conflict that will prove resistant to resolution. Resistance to Ethiopian troops and the Ethiopian-installed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is inspired by nationalism, religion, economic factors and clan loyalties, yet all of these motivations are part of a constantly shifting pattern of allegiances in which the only common characteristic is a desire to expel foreign troops from Somalia. Local warlords and clan leaders who were deprived of power by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) are now scrambling to reassert control over their small fiefdoms in Mogadishu, while many former ICU gunmen have transferred their allegiance to clan militias.

Fighting in the Somali capital of Mogadishu has created over 300,000 civilian refugees. Thousands more (nearly all from the Hawiye clan that dominates the capital) have been killed as residential areas become battlegrounds. Only one overwhelmed hospital is open as Ethiopian troops are using other hospitals as barracks. The Somali TFG is exacerbating the situation by imposing bureaucratic delays on the delivery of relief aid arriving in Mogadishu. Unable to resist the Ethiopian incursion, the ICU dissolved December 27, 2006, returning its stockpiles of weapons and vehicles to the clans and militias who had donated them. Since then, a number of leading elements in the resistance have emerged.
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