Alarmed by the increase in piracy, the United Nations has proposed the establishment - for a transitional period - of a Somali extra-territorial jurisdiction court in the Tanzanian city of Arusha to deal just with piracy cases. Jack Lang, the Special Adviser on Legal Issues related to Piracy, told reporters the estimated costs of setting up a court would be around 25 million dollars. This, he pointed out, was 'a relatively modest expense compared to the estimated seven billion dollars' that is the current cost of piracy, including the multi-million-dollar ransoms extracted by pirates in the high seas.

Consultations on the post-transitional government process in Somalia have started, and will involve all stakeholders and the international community, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General to Somalia said. 'There was unanimous agreement, both inside and outside Somalia, that the transitional period has to end in August as envisaged under the Djibouti Peace Agreement,' Augustine Mahiga told a news conference in Nairobi. 'In the meantime, consultations are under way to develop a consensus on how to end the transition and on the nature of post-transition political arrangements.'

The United Nations and the African Union will hold a high-level meeting in a few days to review efforts to achieve peace, security and reconciliation in strife-torn Somalia, which has been suffering through two decades of conflict and numerous humanitarian challenges. The meeting will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the sidelines of the African Union Summit.

The self-declared republic of Somaliland has introduced free education at primary and intermediate levels and doubled teachers' salaries but these decisions will be hard to sustain and could affect the quality of public education, say experts. 'We need to ask ourselves, does the Somaliland government have the capacity to handle this [salary] increase? The short answer is "no",' Saeed Osman, a Uganda-based researcher in Somaliland's education development, told IRIN.

Fleeing Somalia may mean an end to dodging bullets and living in fear, but for many Somalis who manage to cross the border into Kenya, it is also the start of a long and difficult journey as a refugee. 'We have refugees who have been in Kenya since 1991,' said Salam Shahin, registration officer with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Dadaab, the world's largest refugee complex, home to more than 300,000 people, mainly Somalis.

The autonomous region of Puntland in Somalia has announced that it will break with the federal government based in the embattled capital, Mogadishu. After a special meeting of Abdirahman Mohammed Farole's presidential cabinet, the government issued a statement saying that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) 'does not represent Puntland in international forums' and that the United Nations Political Office for Somalia should 'reconsider its position and support for the TFG at the expense of other Somali stakeholders'.

Human Rights Watch has called on Saudi Arabia to stop the deportation of Somali refugees back to the war-torn Horn of Africa nation, reports Bloomberg. Saudi authorities sent more than 150 people back to the Somalia capital, Mogadishu, on 17 December, HRW said, citing local press reports. Another 2,000 were returned in June and July, according to the United Nations.

Over the past four years, violence against journalists and other media professionals in Somalia has escalated to an alarming level. Somalia is now the most deadly state in Africa for journalists. According to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUOSJ), between 2007 and 2010, 22 journalists were targeted and murdered specifically for their journalism, 32 were wounded while conducting their journalistic work, 108 journalists were imprisoned, 200 journalists received death threats, and 250 journalists fled the country.

Mohamed Ahmed Noor was under no illusions when he agreed to take on the job of mayor of Mogadishu, capital of Somalia. He was living in the relative safety of London when the offer was recently made. He sat his family down and told them he may not be coming back. 'I explained the dangers of the job, that I may be killed and that one day they may hear on the news that the mayor of Mogadishu has been assassinated, or killed in an explosion.'

Russian sailors did not shoot at sea pirates in the Gulf of Aden, Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said in comment on a video clip showing crewmembers of the Marshal Shaposhnikov large anti-sub ship fire at small boats, which presumably belonged to Somali pirates. 'Our sailors would have never opened fire at people at sea. That is an absurdity, which is not worth a comment,' he said. The three-minute video clip posted on the Internet displays firing sailors, a pirate boat and an approaching ship, and missiles flying from the warship.

The two Islamist groups fighting the weak UN-backed Somali government, al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, are to merge, according to reports. The two had been allies but have fallen out over the past year, with Hizbul Islam losing ground. Some see the merger as a takeover by al-Shabab, which has links to al-Qaeda.

To mark International Human Rights Day, on 10 December 2010, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) released a groundbreaking report exposing the precarious working conditions endured by journalists in Somalia. The nationwide survey revealed how the human rights of working journalists, particularly their labour rights, are grossly violated by every company and in every corner of the Horn of Africa country.

Reporters Without Borders has awarded its 2010 Press Freedom Prize to two symbols of courage, the jailed Iranian journalist Abdolreza Tajik and the embattled Somali news radio station Radio Shabelle. 'This year we are honouring a courageous journalist, Abdolreza Tajik, and a beleaguered radio station, Radio Shabelle,' Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. 'These laureates work into two countries, Iran and Somalia, where reporting the news is a constant battle.'

The Kenyan government should immediately stop deporting Somali nationals to war-torn Somalia and make a public commitment to protect and help them, Human Rights Watch has said. The Kenyan authorities deported almost 300 Somalis to south-central Somalia on 15, 29 and 30 November 2010, in violation of international law. Credible sources and witnesses to the deportations on 29 and 30 November told Human Rights Watch that police in the Kenyan border town of Liboi used pickup trucks to drive 130 Somali asylum seekers back to the Somali border.

Crops are failing in Somalia because of poor rains, a unit of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation said, raising the prospect of drought and increased hunger in a country where millions already depend on humanitarian aid. Below average rainfall in Bay, Shabelle, Gedo, Bakool and Hiran regions in southern Somalia has already led to early crop failure with planted seeds not germinating in some areas,' said the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU), managed by the FAO, in a statement.

In 2008, only six Somali women received prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services, although more than 2,600 women were estimated to need them. Not a single health centre delivered the complete PMTCT package which includes HIV counselling and testing, antiretroviral prophylaxis and infant feeding support. Earlier this year, however, a programme finally got off the ground, with PMTCT services starting to be offered at 21 sites in all three Somali regions - Puntland in the northeast, Somaliland in the northwest and south-central Somalia.

Minorities in Somalia are being subjected to a previously unreported pattern of gross human rights violations including summary executions, reported beheadings and rape, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in a new report. The report, 'No redress: Somalia'’s forgotten minorities', says the situation for minorities is worse than for other groups in the current conflict because, unlike the majority population, they lack protection from the traditional clan structure.

Born in Mogadishu, Siham and Iman Hashi are the first female Somali artists to sign a record deal with a major American label. After the civil war broke out in Somalia in the 1990s, the girls and their family moved to Canada as refugees. They are currently in Los Angeles recording their first album as 'Sweet Rush' with Universal Motown, while finding time to raise awareness about the continuing suffering in their homeland.

The Security Council has renewed for another 12 months the authorisations granted to states and regional organisations cooperating with Somalia’s transitional government to fight piracy off the country’s coast. As set out in previous resolutions, this includes the authorisation for States and regional organisations to enter Somalia’s territorial waters and use 'all necessary means' - such as deploying naval vessels and military aircraft, as well as seizing and disposing of boats, vessels, arms and related equipment used for piracy.

The death toll in Somalia's ongoing war has increased during the last two years, local human rights groups told AfricaNews. The increment comes as shelling and fighting between government forces backed by AU peacekeepers and rebels reaches high proportions in the capital Mogadishu. The emergency traffic ambulance service in Mogadishu said that at least 4,260 people were killed in Mogadishu during 2009 and 2010.