|
|
Somalia: In Somalia's Counterinsurgency Unhumanitarian Chief Calls for Civilian Protection
 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Reporter (Addis Ababa)
1 December 2007
Posted to the web 3 December 2007
Namrud Berhane
Addis Ababa
Sir John Holmes, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, called on Ethiopian troops backing Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) to exert all possible effort to avoid civilian casualties during counterinsurgent operations in Mogadishu.
"Clearly there is a problem if you are trying to deal with insurgency in a civilian area such as Mogadishu. It is very difficult to conduct operations like that without causing death and injuries to civilians" Holmes, who discussed the issue with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, told The Reporter.
"We recognize the difficulty like any other counterinsurgency operation in a large urban area, but we call upon Ethiopia forces to do whatever possible they can do to avoid civilian casualties, to conform in whatever they do with international humanitarian law."
Holmes also said that while the humanitarian conditions in Somalia remain worrying, with the election of the new prime minister however there was hope that things could improve.
"I do not think that the window of opportunity is closed in Somalia, but it is closing if the government can not make the kind of progress that is needed to establish a genuinely inclusive dialog with the legitimate part of the opposition."
Describing the humanitarian situation in Somalia, Holmes said that in some parts of the country the situation was extremely worrying in that there were people that the UN had not been able to reach with assistance.
"For some people in Somalia, the situation is worse than Darfur because we are having difficulty reaching them with the humanitarian support they need. In Darfur, we have been present for three or four years. Although the situation is very difficult, people are very often gathered in camps where at least you can reach them with the aid they need. In Somalia - South and South Central Somalia - people are scattered all over the place in a very difficult environment for humanitarian workers to reach them," Holmes said.
|
The Under-Secretary-General was this week on a three-nation tour in the Horn which brought him here, the Sudan, and then Kenya.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2007 The Reporter. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
