Special envoy Joli can help draw attention to “some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations”
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Actress Angelina Jolie was asked Tuesday 4 October by the head of the UN refugee organization UNHCR to take on a new role as special envoy, in the wake of several new emergency refugee situations this year.
The invitation was extended by High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who recognized her 10 years of service with the agency by asking her to take on an expanded role in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.
His request came just as news reports began to flow in of a bomb blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Seventy people were reportedly killed and 150 injured, according to Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmedhe.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting the government, took responsibility for the suicide bomb. The news is the latest evidence of the rising level of violence in the country, from which people are fleeing in growing numbers.
The Dabaad camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia, now have nearly half a million people, with 1,000 arriving daily. Some 200,000 Somalis have fled to these camps in the past four months.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
Jolie is in Geneva for the annual meeting of UNHCR’s executive committee, which oversees funding for the organization and its projects.
She has become one of the best-known goodwill ambassadors for a UN agency, through her regular and frequent visits, on average four a year, to refugee camps around the world, including some in very remote regions. She took on the ambassadorial role in August 2001.
“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she told the executive committee. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”
Monday Jolie shared the spotlight with Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, founder of Yemen’s Society for Humanitarian Solidarity: she co-presented with Guterres the 2011 Nansen Refugee Award, given to the SHS. The prize, widely considered the refugee world’s highest honour, was awarded to the founder and the 290 staff of SHS, a non-governmental organization, for their life-saving work in helping thousands of refugees and migrants who arrive on Yemen’s shores each year.
The staff comb the Yemeni coastline year round, pulling people from the sea and helping them find safety and assistance.
Heavy shelling broke out in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, Sunday 16 May, as the parliament met for the first time this year. Reports vary. of 13 to 24 people dying in the fighting. The Islamist opposition called for the Western-backed government to step down.
Links to other sites: AllAfrica, Aljazeera, BBC, National Post, Canada
A blast in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, killed three cabinet ministers and at least 18 other people Thursday 3 December, although AllAfrica, picking up the story from a UN humanitarian newsletter which cites a hospital source, puts the figure at 50 dead. The authors of the crime remain a mystery. A bomb exploded during a medical school graduation ceremony and suspicion quickly fell on an Islamist group, al Shabaab, but the group has denied it was involved. The extremist group has been locked in a power struggle with the Western-backed government, which the extremists accused of masterminding the blast, pointing out that the government itself has deep rifts. The US has called al Shabaab a proxy for al Qaeda in the region and Reuters reports that “Western security agencies say Somalia has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the impoverished region and beyond.”
The Somali militant Islamist group, al Shabaab, holding a French security contractor since July, have said they will release him if France stops supporting the Western-backed government. They also demand the withdrawal of African Union peacekeepers, “especially the Burundians”, from the country, and an end to French anti-piracy patrols in the sea off the coast of Somalia. The French security contractor was kidnapped from his hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia along with a colleague, who managed to escape 26 August, and is now in France.
The demands come three days after US forces killed four men in the south of the country in a helicopter raid. The militants are battling a weak central government, which is struggling to hold onto parts of Mogadishu. Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991. BBC, Reuters
A military raid on a car carrying suspected Islamist militants in southern Somalia has likely killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan-born man officials say was a senior member of al-Qaeda in Eastern Africa. Nabhan is believed to be responsible for a bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya in 2002 which killed 15 people, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane flying out of Mombasa later that year. He may also have been involved in the US embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1998.
Witnesses say six helicopters flew into the Barawe district in southern Somalia, 250km south of the capital Mogadishu, which is controlled by Al-Shabaab rebels fighting for supremacy in Somalia. Two fired missiles on the car. At least four bodies were removed and two wounded people were taken away by the helicopters’ crew. Al-Jazeera, AllAfrica, BBC, GaroweOnline
Image ©2008 E Hockstein/UNHCR, on flickr.com
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Over 204,000 people have fled their homes in the northern suburbs of Mogadishu, Somalia to escape fighting since Islamist militants began their campaign eight weeks ago to gain control of the city, according to Geneva-based UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Local groups working with the UN agency say that fighting has claimed 105 lives and 380 wounded in the past week.
At least eight people died 17 June when a mortar landed on a building in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and up to a dozen more deaths were reported elsewhere in the city in the latest wave of fighting. Government forces are battling some 500 fighters from the hard-line Islamist Shabaab group in the city. Mogadishu’s police chief was also killed in an offensive on rebel positions. Various rebel factions control most of the south of the country along the border with Kenya. Aid agencies have said that Somalia’s internally displaced population is the largest in the world and that the dire security situation makes it very difficult to provide help. BBC, Reuters, Oxfam
Background: UNHCR
A spike in fighting on Tuesday, 12 May forced thousands of people from their homes in north Mogadishu, Somalia, Reuters reports. The wire service cites a local human rights agency reports 113 dead in the latest fighting between pro-government forces and the Shabaab (“Youth”) Islamist militants, which has forced 27,000 people to flee the city since last week.
Updated 23:35 with Kenyan man biting snake It’s the silly season for news again. Here are some of the latest shenanigans we human beings are up to, some worthy, some less so, some just plain intriguing. Switzerland looks relatively calm compared to the rest of the world.
- A woman driving a convertible in Olten, Switzerland, was attacked by four women in a car behind her, when she braked abruptly because of a cat in the road. The driver of the second car whistled and shouted abuse at the 22-year-old convertible driver before the others jumped out and attacked the first driver, pulling her hair, then bashing her head against the car. Le Matin, Fre
- Scotland’s Susan Boyle took a dream and ran with it: the 47-year-old unemployed charity worker fulfilled a promise to her mother and stood up on Britain’s Got Talent show, met derisive smiles head on and belted out a song that now has more than six million people watching her on YouTube (Ed. note: this is some voice!) (note just in from Evelyn Ralph and other fans from Scotland in Geneva: here is an even better YouTube version, this one viewed by 8 million – we do love a true winner)
- In Norway, a man was arrested for driving while having sex – 133 kph in a 100 zone, with his companion’s back blocked his view of the road. Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
