Somalia: Humanitarian aid still needed

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, travelling through Africa on an 11-nation journey, has congratulated Somalia on Wednesday’s vote, by the country’s National Constituent Assembly, to approve a new provisional constitution. She said the vote “moves Somalia closer towards lasting stability”.

The situation in Somalia, however, remains volatile as hundreds of thousands of people struggle to overcome the effects of war and natural disasters.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has just completed a distribution in Mogadishu, Somalia of a one-month supply of basic food aid to more than 400,000 highly vulnerable people, including displaced, orphaned, elderly and disabled persons.

Although the ICRC says the situation has improved since last year’s drought, they insist that more work need to be done to relieve the suffering of the Somali people. “The situation has slightly improved since last year, when we had a drought in Somalia,” said Jean-Yves Clémenzo, the public relations officer for the ICRC for Eastern Africa. “But there are still important humanitarian needs, especially in the capital Mogadishu, where many people were displaced recently.”

He spoke about the challenges facing humanitarian groups in Somalia: “The major challenge is access, access to the people, especially in the Shabab area, where we cannot work now. And the second question is the question of logistics, because Somalia is a country that has been very much damaged and destroyed by the war.”

Clémenzo said that although the situation has improved, more work needs to be done. “We are not anymore in an emergency situation, but we are in the time of recovery. So there are a lot of needs in terms of infrastructure . . . there is still a lot that has to be done to help Somali people.”

Listen to the full interview of Jean-Yves Clémenzo with Christopher Wells: