Humanitarian Aid To Somalia

Provides an evaluation of Netherlands-supported humanitarian aid to Somalia during the period 1991 to 1993 following civil conflict and drought. Includes case studies of relief operations provided by a number of organizations to which the Netherlands allocated funds.

More than six months after the UN declared a famine, Somalia is still in the throes of its worst humanitarian crisis in decades, with 325,000 children suffering acute malnutrition and 31 per cent of the population estimated to be in crisis. A large scale-up of the international response from July 2011, combined with the efforts of Somali communities and civil society, saved many lives. But access to those in need has deteriorated due to expulsions of aid agencies and also to intensified, internationally backed military operations. Responsibility for this situation lies first and foremost in Somalia, where warring factions are accused of impeding and diverting aid flows, but the international community has also been at fault. Policies focused more on international security concerns than on the needs, interests and wishes of the Somali people have inadvertently fuelled both the conflict and the humanitarian crisis. In February 2012, key governments and institutions from the region and the wider Islamic and Western world will meet in London to chart a way forward. They must seize this opportunity to refocus on the Somali people that past policies have failed, developing more coherent strategies to ensure that aid and protection reach those who need it, addressing the root causes of the protracted conflict and chronic vulnerability in the country, while developing coherent strategies to ensure humanitarian aid reaches those who need it.

The international humanitarian intervention in Somalia was one of the most challenging operations ever conducted by US and UN military forces. Until Somalia, the UN had never run a Chapter VII exercise with large numbers of troops operating under a fighting mandate. It became a deadly test of the UN’s ability carry out a peace operation using force against an adversary determined to sabotage the intervention. Humanitarianism Under Fire is a candid, detailed historical and political narrative of this remarkably complicated intervention that was one of the first cases of multilateral action in the post-Cold War era. Rutherford presents new information gleaned from interviews and intensive research in five countries. His evidence shows how Somalia became a turning point in the relationship between the UN and US and how policy and strategy decisions in military operations continue to refer back to this singular event, even today.

This book examines the intervention in Somalia and draws lessons for future peacekeeping operations, analyzing many aspects of peacemaking that are not well understood, including efforts to rebuild the police, the dynamics of the economy, and the performance of European armies.

Some 250,000 people died in the southern Somalia famine of 2011-12, which also displaced and destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands more. Yet this crisis had been predicted nearly a year earlier. The harshest drought in Somalia's recent history coincided with a global spike in food prices, hitting this arid, import-dependent country hard. The policies of Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist group that controlled southern Somalia, exacerbated an already difficult situation, barring most humanitarian assistance, while donors counter-terrorism policies led to cuts and criminalized any aid falling into their hands. A major disaster resulted from the production and market failures precipitated by the drought and food price crisis, while the famine itself was the result of the failure to quickly respond to these events-and was thus largely human-made. This book analyses the famine: the trade-offs between competing policy priorities that led to it, the collective failure in response, and how those affected by it attempted to protect themselves and their livelihoods.It also examines the humanitarian response, including actors that had not previously been particularly visible in Somalia-from Turkey, the Middle East, and Islamic charities worldwide.

This study reviews aid flows to the health sector in Somalia over the period 2000-2006. In close collaboration with the Health Sector Committee of the Coordination of International Support to Somalis the authors collected quantitative and qualitative data from twenty-six international agencies operating in Somalia, including bilateral and multilateral donors.The paper reaches three main conclusions. First, aid financing to the health sector in Somalia has been constantly growing, reaching US 7-10 per capita in 2006. Although this is a considerable amount compared to other fragile states, it ma.