GENOCIDEWATCH

Thirty years ago, the US-backed Somali government slaughtered an estimated 200,000 people. Now survivors want US help uncovering the crimes.

On a hot and humid June afternoon, a group of boys wearing FC Barcelona jerseys kicked around a soccer ball in the Malko-Durduro, a dry seasonal river on the outskirts of Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway territory of Somaliland. At first glance, the flat, red earth of the riverbed ma...

Violence has broken out in an eastern city in Ethiopia after federal troops took over key positions including the local parliament.

Soldiers were deployed in Jigjiga, the capital of the Somali region, after an apparent rift between local authorities and the national government.

Protesters set fire to a church and looted shops and targeted non-Somalis.

The government recently accused regional officials of carrying out human rights...

Children at a camp for people displaced by violence. Campaigners say many victims of rape and sexual assault come from the overcrowded shelters around the capital, Mogadishu. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

When Anab’s madrasa teacher in Mogadishu told her to stay behind after classes, everyone but her two younger brothers left. He ordered the boys to face the wall, then assaulted their six-year-old sister.

Anab’s father, Yus...

April 15, 2018

A young female poet from Somaliland has been jailed for three years over a poem that advocates the reunification of the country with Somalia.

A court in the country charged Naema Ahmed Ibrahim of bringing the country into contempt over this poem, reports the BBC.

Ibrahim was arrested in January at the Hargeisa Egal International Airport upon her arrival from Mogadishu, where she performed the poem.  Rights group ha...

Some 145 officers from Sierra Leone’s Formed Police Units (FPU) have been deployed in Somalia’s port city of Kismayo, Garowe Online reported yesterday.

The new batch of officers will join an elite team of 15 which are already in the country as part of the African Union Mission (AMISOM) in Somalia.

“Their coming is going to be a boost to the Jubbaland State Police Force. In 2016, we trained 600 police officers in Jubbaland a...

• What happened?  On 14 October 2017, twin truck bombings in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, killed upwards of 300 people. Al-Shabaab, an Islamist insurgency, was almost certainly behind the attack, but has not claimed responsibility.
   

• Why did it happen?  Al-Shabaab has been fighting the government since 2007. The targets of the attack are unclear, though may have been government buildings and the base of African Union...

Executive Summary

African and European leaders are scheduled to meet in November for the fifth triennial African Union-European Union summit at a time when relations between the two institutions have reached a turning point. Both are in transition, undergoing internal reforms that will have serious implications for their future peace and security partnership. After significant disagreements in 2016 over European Union (EU) paym...

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It is not the movement of persons that is the problem, it is the movement of persons without the protection of fundamental rights and norms.’Thus concludes the recently published report on “Forced to flee: A multi-disciplinary conference on internal displacement, migration and refugee crises”, supported among others by the ICRC and held last November at SOAS, University of London.Throughout history people have migrated in sea...