Kenya's new Special Envoy for Somalia Bethwel Kiplagat, speaking in Eldoret, where he is now in charge of the peace process for Somalia. Kiplagat was appointed by the new Kenyan government that won elections last December. He takes over from Elijah Mwangale as chairman of the IGAD technical committee that is organizing the peace talks.

Somali factions attending peace talks underway in Eldoret, Kenya, face expulsion or other sanctions if they continue to violate the ceasefire agreement, Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka warned on Monday.

According to a new report released this week by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Somali children sent abroad in the expectation of a better life instead end up facing serious psychological and identity problems, and in extreme cases, are even forced into prostitution as part of an exploitative child-smuggling business.

The authorities in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, have lifted the ban on two BBC reporters, according to a senior official in the region's commercial capital, Bosaso.

A Somali professor says that his arm was broken by thugs hired by warlords at the ongoing peace talks in the Kenyan town of Eldoret. Professor Mohammed Abdi Gandhi told the BBC that he was beaten up after he and other representatives of civil society, including women, stormed a meeting of warlords.

Somali leaders attending the peace talks in the Kenyan town of Eldoret have proposed that extra delegates be allocated to represent the self-declared republic of Somaliland in northwestern Somalia, according to one of the leaders.

Somali parents are paying smugglers up to US $10,000 to take their children abroad, as part of a lucrative and exploitative international child-smuggling business. Faced with desperate choices, many parents who see no future in their own country allow their children to be abandoned by "agents" at airports and railway stations in European and North American countries.

UN agencies working in Somalia have called on Somali leaders and all parties to the conflict to take immediate measures to ensure that children are protected from violence. In a statement issued last Friday, Maxwell Gaylard, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, expressed deep concern at the recent killings, kidnappings and attacks targeting children.

Ever since the outbreak of fighting in the southwestern town of Baidoa last July, humanitarian agencies have been unable to access the town, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka and the newly-appointed special envoy to Somalia, Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat, have met Somali delegates gathered in the Kenyan town of Eldoret for peace talks. The minister was also expected to express the new government's commitment to the Somali peace process.
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About 10,000 Somalia refugees in Kenya are to be resettled in the US. They will be airlifted from the Kakuma and Dadaab camps in Turkana and Garissa districts from next month, the NGO facilitating the relocation programme said.

Thousands of children are being smuggled into Europe from war-ravaged Somalia every year, with Britain the most popular destination, according to a UN report. "Child smuggling from Somali territories is now so widespread that it has become a critical informal institution," the UN information agency report says.

Technical committees discussing core issues of the Somali conflict should conclude their work this month, Kenya’s special envoy for Somalia Elijah Mwangale announced on Tuesday. This means that the power-sharing phase of peace talks should start early next month, he told a news conference in Nairobi.

Somalia lost many things as a result of having no government for over a decade during the 90s, but one of the least obvious was an ability to protect its environment. But one woman has been of critical importance in Somalia's environmental crisis. Now in her mid-fifties, Fatima Jibrell has made it her life's work to fight back. She founded the Horn of Africa Relief and Development Organisation (Horn Relief) in the early 1990s and also coordinates the Resource Management Somali Network (RMSN), which includes environmental groups throughout the Horn of Africa.

A prominent Mogadishu-based faction leader Muse Sudi Yalahow left the Eldoret peace talks on Monday because he is unhappy over the progress of the meeting. Yalahow's departure follows that of another Mogadishu-based faction leader Muhammad Qanyare Afrah and of Colonel Barre Hiiraale, the leader of Juba Valley Alliance, which controls the port city of Kismayo and much of the Juba valley area of southern Somalia.

Hundreds of people from throughout the state of Maine are expected to protest a January 11 rally that has been scheduled in Lewiston, the state’s second largest city, by a white supremacist group calling itself the World Church of the Creator. The racist group, which is based in East Peoria, Illinois and claims to be the fastest-growing white supremacist organisation in the US, is calling for the expulsion of all Somalis from the Lewiston area. More than 1,000 Somali refugees have settled in the city over the last two years.

The offices of a local human rights group in the south-central town of Baidoa have been attacked by armed militiamen, according to an official of the organisation. The offices of the group, Isha (Somali for "eye"), were overrun and looted by militiamen, who stripped them of their equipment.

Somali political groups participating in the Eldoret peace talks have called on Kenya's new president, Mwai Kibaki, to save the talks from collapse. In a statement issued on Tuesday, the leaders' committee alleged that the talks were being mismanaged and conducted contrary to agreements.

The self-declared republic of Somaliland has postponed presidential elections from January to March, according to a senior official. Mahmud Jama Warfa, the Somaliland deputy information minister, said the move was taken after the independent electoral commission decided more time was needed to have everything in place for smooth elections.

Fighting has again broken out around the villages of Jadid and Qararsoor in the Qardho area, some 260 km south of Bosaso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, with between 30 and 40 people reported to be killed, according to local sources.
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