United Nations new report has revealed shocking children rights violations perpetrated by Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and insurgents. A report shows that children rights violations ranges from murder and rape to their recruitment as child soldiers and also denial of humanitarian access to those in need.

The number of grave human rights violations against children in Somalia, from acts of murder and rape to the recruitment of child soldiers to the denial of humanitarian access to those in need, have all increased in the past year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report to the Security Council.

Three Somali journalists have been awarded the prestigious Hellmann/Hammett award in recognition for their journalism while risking their lives and suffering terrible hardships in the midst of Somalia’s worsening armed conflict, Human Rights Watch has said.

Ugandan peacekeepers have come under attack in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, with at least 10 people killed in the ensuing gun fight, according to residents and officials. The fighting on Tuesday came a day after anti-government forces attacked an African Union (AU) base manned by Ugandan troops in the capital.

Clashes between Ethiopian troops and Islamist insurgents have killed more than a dozen people in southern and central regions of Somalia, residents said. Islamist fighters, opposed to Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia to support its interim government, ambushed a convoy of Ethiopian forces in the central Hiraan region on Wednesday, triggering an exchange of mortar bombs and machinegun fire.

Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes. The human rights group listed abuses carried out by Ethiopian and Somali government forces, and some committed by al-Shabaab, an anti-government militia which the US designated a terrorist group.

The dire human rights and humanitarian crisis facing the people of Somalia has been revealed in a groundbreaking new Amnesty International report. First-hand testimony from scores of traumatized survivors of the conflict is included in the report, which exposes the violations and abuses they have suffered at the hands of a complex mix of perpetrators.

The Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia deteriorating at an accelerated pace due to sky rocketing food prices, a deepening drought due to an abnormally harsh dry season and a delayed and poor start to the seasonal rains (mid-April to June). As result the number of people in need of assistance has increased to 2.6 million people in Somalia (35% of the total population), which is an increase of more than 40% since January '08.

John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian official, has called on all parties in the Somali conflict to protect civilians amid an increasing trend of indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force against the general population in contravention of international humanitarian law. “Combatants appear to have little regard for the safety of civilians in Mogadishu, where residents have been traumatised by years of violence,” he said in a statement issued on 24 April.

A human rights group has accused Ethiopian troops of deliberately "targeting civilians" during a deadly raid on a mosque in the Somali capital Mogadishu that left 21 people dead. But Wahide Belay, a spokesman for the Ethiopian foreign affairs ministry, on Thursday dismissed Amnesty International's report as "total rubbish".

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) is disturbed by the arrest of prominent and respected radio journalist Abdi Mohammed Ismail, who works for Mogadishu-based privately owned Shabelle Media Network. Abdi Mohammed Ismail, publicly known Abdi Uud, was arrested on 21 April, by recently trained armed forces of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia at Banadir junction of Madina district in Mogadishu. The Transitional Federal Government or its armed forces did not talk about the reason of the arrest.

Bill Fletcher looks at the hypocrisy surrounding the United States' misadventures into Somalia.

Bush’s so-called war against terrorism entered a further, cynical stage with the recent classification of a Somali group as alleged ‘terrorists’. Al Shabab, the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, was declared by the US State Department to be a terrorist organisation. The Bush administration claims that ‘some’ members of Al Shabab are affiliated with Al Qaeda.

In order to understand the cynicism of this move it is important to remember that Somalia was a basket case for over a decade after the overthrow of the dictator Siad Barre. Filled with clan-based warlords, the country had no stable government. An international attempt to forge a transitional national government resulted in no further stability or end to the violence. The rise of a right-wing Islamist group known as the Union of Islamic Courts, however, brought about a period of relative stability and internal peace. While the group was and is ultra-conservative in many of its tenets, it was successful in crushing or co-opting many of the warlords. Further, it was an indigenous group to Somalia and not an arm of another country or an external social movement.

Using the pretext of an alleged - and unproven - connection between the Union of Islamic Courts and Al Qaeda, Ethiopian troops - encouraged and backed by the Bush administration - invaded Somalia in 2006 with the stated objective of supporting the Transitional Federal Government, an institution that was on its last legs and had little support within the population. Although the Ethiopians defeated the UIC in formal battle, the situation in Somalia devolved into guerrilla war and chaos. It has been going downhill ever since.

Al Shabab, whether one supports them or not, is an armed resistance movement. It has been carrying out military actions against troops of the country that invaded Somalia. One does not have to support the UIC or the actions of Al Shabab to recognise that a people have a right to oust those who invade their land.

The Bush administration’s action in classifying Al Shabab as ‘terrorists’ further complicates an already difficult situation. Instead of recognising that Al Shabab is the military wing of a legitimate movement, classifying them as alleged terrorists makes efforts towards a political resolution of the conflict unlikely, if not nearly impossible, just as has happened in Iraq. One does not have to like Al Shabab, or agree with its objectives, as long as it can be demonstrated on the ground that it is a movement that has a real constituency and is militarily confronting an occupying army.

The Bush administration, as it has done in other parts of the world, e.g. in Turkey with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), or in the Philippines with the Communist Party of the Philippines (and their New People’s Army), selectively chooses when to classify an insurgency or resistance as terrorists, based almost solely according to whether the target of the insurgency/resistance is a friend of the Bush administration. In the case of Somalia, the Ethiopians are doing the bidding of the Bush administration as well as serving their own regional ambitions.

There is another piece to this which is worth noting. Throwing around the label of ‘terrorist’ is also aimed at suppressing dissent here at home in the USA. Whether one is a Somali émigré, Somali American, or simply someone who supports Somalia’s right to national self-determination, the label of terrorist has a chilling effect on one’s willingness to speak out. As witnessed during the Cold War with the manner in which the charge of ‘communist sympathiser’ was used to suppress dissent, the suggestion that someone is either soft on terrorism or, worse, aiding and abetting an alleged terrorist group shuts down all reasonable discussion.

So, let’s be clear: the Bush administration is not interested in reasonable discussion. We, however, should be, so we need to push back against this latest outrage.

*Bill Fletcher Jr. is executive editor of The Black Commentator where this article first appeared [www.blackcommentator.com">. He is also a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

A British schoolteacher, her two female Kenyan colleagues and a Somali headmaster were killed in an overnight attack in central Somalia blamed on Islamist insurgents, witnesses said on Monday. The four were killed when suspected rebels attacked and briefly took control of Beledweyne, the capital of Somalia's Hiraan region located about 300km north of the capital, Mogadishu.

Squatting in the scorching sun, Adan Hassan Mahamud pointed to the parched landscape around Hamure village, 280km east of Bosasso in the self-declared autonomous Somali republic of Puntland. "I have seen droughts but nothing like this in 12 years," Mahamud, 80, said. "Many in the community have lost a large number of livestock - their only means of livelihood."

Halima [not her real name], a mother of five girls, shudders whenever she remembers how she suffered after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM/Cutting), a practice still widespread in Somalia. "I will not put my daughters through it," Halima told IRIN in Bosasso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, where an estimated 98 percent of girls still undergo the cut.

The Somali consul in the port city of Aden has called on the international community to take steps to end the deaths of migrants - mainly Somalis fleeing in flimsy smugglers’ boats to Yemen - in the Gulf of Aden, and find a lasting solution to their plight.

A journalist threatened with death flees his homeland, only to find that nearby countries and regions don't want him or have their own problems. His story is not uncommon. Many of Somalia's 600,000 displaced people have left the country; but few are finding host nations willing to lay down a welcome mat. And in a region where free media are rare, his press pass hasn't exactly opened doors for him either.

The Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO) has learned with dismay the adoption by the Transitional Parliament of Somalia of a new press bill which blatantly violates press freedom and freedom of expression. The new law contravenes international legal instruments which guarantee press freedom, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

A culture of impunity is the root cause of Somalia's humanitarian and political crisis and unless the world urgently addresses it, war crimes and crimes against humanity will continue unabated, a civil society activist has told IRIN. "No one has ever been held accountable for these crimes," Marian Hussein Awreeye, chairwoman of the Isma'il Jimale Human Rights Centre, said.

An outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) in and around the town of Belet Hawo, southwestern Somalia, has killed at least 11 people in the past three weeks, medical sources said on 28 February. "Eleven people have so far died in Belet Hawo hospital and the villages around it," Saaid Mohamed Samatar, a doctor with the Gedo Health Consortium (GHC), said.