Tag: Somalia

In Somalia, one of the most difficult and dangerous places for aid agencies to work, the conflict has left many communities hard to reach. Mobile phones offer an innovative way of educating such communities with life-saving information.

Flooding from the overflowing Shabelle River left more than 10 people dead in the town of Beletweyne at the end of September. Other reports put the death toll as high as 55, with many still missing. More than 8,000 families have been displaced by the flooding, which took place in Somalia’s central region of Hiraan.

Hawa Aden Mohamed, the founder and director of an Oxfam's partner organization in Somalia, the Galkayo Education Center, which this blog post - initially pubslihed in August 2012 - is about, has won the UNHCR's Nansen Refugee Award "for her exceptional, tireless and inspiring humanitarian work for Somalia’s refugee and displaced girls and women."

It is a year now since the world woke up to what has been called the worst food crisis in the 21st century. The footage of Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya was truly awful, and the conditions people were living in when they arrived at Dollo Ado camp in Ethiopia were quite shocking. The UN categorized parts of Somalia as being in famine – a term used so rarely now that we had started to think it no longer happens.