General Situation
Since the fall of the Siad Barre's regime in 1991, Somalia fell in the hands of different militias commanded by powerful warlords, who divided the country along clan lines. Since then, there have been at least 15 attempts to re-establish a national government, the last of which UNHCR Somalia Funding Situation 32,600,000 brought to power Sheik Shariif Ahmed, at the end of January 2009. Although the establishment of the new National Unity Government was perceived with optimism by the Somali population and the international 17,606,329 14,993,627 community, Shariif is facing overwhelming challenges, as armed opposition groups continue deadly attacks on government and African Union Peacekeeping forces, and still control large parts of Somali territory.
Somalia is a country divided in three regions: Somaliland (a self-proclaimed independent state, not internationally recognized), Puntland and the South Central Region.
The whole of Somalia continues to be in security phase IV (programme suspension), with Mogadishu and other areas on Phase V (evacuation). This has a very significant impact on the operations of UNHCR and the humanitarian community as a whole, especially in terms of the limited access to the population of concern and the limited number of staff members who are allowed to operate in field locations.
Ongoing conflict in the last 18 years continued to generate mass movements of Somali refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries (550,315 as at the end of October 2009, mainly hosted in Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Burundi and Uganda) and internally displaced people (1.5 million, settled mainly in the South-Central region). Since the eruption of violence between government forces and armed opposition groups in May 2009, over a quarter of a million people were displaced from their place of residence in Mogadishu. Between the first of September and mid November only, over 50,000 people were newly displaced in Somalia, 22,000 of them from the capital.
The collapse of the state, lawlessness and anarchy in the country, led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today, translating into unacceptable suffering of innocent civilians who see their basic rights violated daily.
