Somalia/ Somaliland

The current drought in Somalia threatens to push the humanitarian crisis to a new peak, with the UN estimating that more than 3 million people are currently in need of immediate, life-saving assistance. The global recession has exacerbated the situation, with a significant drop-off in remittances from the diaspora on which many Somalis depend.

In a positive move, the federal transitional parliament expanded in 2010 to include representatives from the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), and the new body elected Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the former ARS chairman as president. Yet although its mandate to establish a new Somali constitution and a transition to representative government following national elections has been extended by a year until 2011, the government remains at war with a number of militant groups and is largely unable to deliver public services.

Federal institutions remain precariously fragile, and last year saw armed clashes and mass civilian casualties and displacement across South Central. Meanwhile Somaliland and Puntland are continuing with long-run democratisation processes, albeit in a halting fashion.

A whole generation of Somali children have now come of age without having lived through a single year of peace.

 Amid fighting that is estimated to have killed at least 300,000 people, the country has also been beset by cycles of drought and flooding. The combination of conflict, famine and disease has created a humanitarian crisis on a vast scale, with more than one in three Somalis dependent on food aid and more than a million driven from their homes.

 In 2004, the latest in a long line of peace talks produced a Transitional Federal Government. But its authority has been badly eroded by continued fighting between clans and the emergence of powerful Islamist militias, including the al-Shabab movement, which has declared allegiance to al-Qaida.

Yet despite the negative cycles of violence and the absence of a central state, Somalis have proved incredibly resilient. Social, economic and political life continues with different regions coping in their own way. While the Central and Southern region is still in the grip of civil war and reliant on humanitarian aid, businesses continue to operate and local governments of various complexions provide order in many areas. Somalia's social, economic and governance structures are in tatters, the country has fractured into three distinct regional entities, and with piracy rife along a coastline badly hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, it is often described as archetypal failed state. The north eastern area of Puntland, though affected badly by piracy has a semi-autonomous regional government. Somaliland to the northwest is yet more stable having declared independence in 1991 and managed its own affairs successfully since then.