POVERTY REDUCTION IN SOMALIA

2010/2011 MARYMARG POVERTY REDUCTION AGENCY APPEAL FOR DEVELOPMENT     INTERVENTION FOR SOMALIA

Appealing Agency: UNITED NATION ORGANIZATION (UN)

Activity: Education, training and construction programs

Code: SOM08-09-1/N12A

Target Population: Rural areas of Somalia

Implementing Agency: MARYMARG Poverty Reduction Agency

Time Frame: September2008 – September 2009

Objectives: To help reduce health challenges that affects the people OF Somalia and support the enforcement of limited essential health care for Somalia

Funds Requested: US$ 500,000

This is a school poject work by: Mary Ankrah 


Poverty
The state of been poor. It is hunger, lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not assess to school, not having a job, is fear fro the future, living one day at a time, losing a child to illness brought by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.

Somalia: Somalia is the easternmost country on the mainland of Africa. Somalia is situated in the Horn of Africa, lies along the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. It is bounded by Djibouti in the northwest, Ethiopia in the west, and Kenya in the southwest. Generally arid and barren, Somalia has two chief rivers, the Shebelle and the Juba. Somalia has the longest coastline in the continent and it has eighteen regions with Mogadishu has the capital of the nation.

Somalia has population of about 9,118,773 million according to the UN 2007 estimate. Somali is the national language of the Somali people and is used virtually everywhere by almost all the ethnic Somali well as minority groups. Some languages include Swahili, Af-Maay, Jareer and so on. But considerable number of people speaks Arabic due to the close ties with the Arabic world and because of the influence of the Arabic media and religious education. The Somalis are entirely Sunni Muslims.

Despite the economic hardship in Somalia, the country is one of the lowest HIV infection rates in Africa. This is attributed to the Muslim nature of Somali society and adherence of Somali to Islamic morals. However, tuberculosis and leprosy are common diseases in Somalia but the major health canker is maternal and infant mortality. Also, doctors are few and medical suppliers scarce.

Somalia has being transformed from what Siad Barre term as “scientific socialism” to a free market economy. Also agriculture is the most important sector with livestock accounting for 40% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and about 65% of export earnings. Apart from livestock, bananas are the principal export; sugar, sorghum, maize, and fish are products for the domestic market. Their Major trading partners include Yemen, Oman, Djibouti, Kenya, India, and Brazil. The small industrial sector based on the processing of agricultural products and account for 10%GDP

Economic summary: Natural resources: uranium and largely unexploited reserves of iron ore, tin, gypsum, bauxite, copper, salt, natural gas, likely oil reserves GDP/PPP (2007 est.): $5.575 billion; per capita $600. Real growth rate: 2.6%. Inflation: n.a. (businesses print their own money). Arable land: 2%. Agriculture: bananas, sorghum, corn, coconuts, rice, sugarcane, mangoes, sesame seeds, beans, cattle, sheep, goats; fish. Labor force: 3.7 million (very few are skilled laborers); agriculture (mostly pastoral nomadism) 71%, industry and services 29%. Industries: a few light industries, including sugar refining, textiles,

In the 7th century Arabs and Persians developed a series of trading posts along the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. In the 10th century the area was peopled by Somali nomads and pastoral Galla from southwest Ethiopia.

For the next 900 years Somalis spread throughout the Horn of Africa. Britain and Italy occupied different parts of the territory in the 1880s, and until World War II, Somalia remained under colonial control. In 1941, Britain occupied Italian Somaliland and in 1948 gave the Ogaden region to Ethiopia, although it was populated largely by Somalis.

By 1950 the United Nations had voted to grant independence to Somalia, and in 1960, Britain and Italy granted independence to their respective sectors, enabling the two to join as the Republic of Somalia on July 1, 1960. Somalia broke diplomatic relations with Britain in 1963 when the British granted the Somali-populated Northern Frontier District of Kenya to the Republic of Kenya.

Somalia was ruled by a civilian government until 1969, when President Siad Barre came to power in a military coup. His Somali Revolutionary Socialist party, created in 1976, formed the government. Areas inhabited primarily by Somalis, including Djibouti, the Ogaden, and northeast Kenya, had long been considered lost Somali territories. Somalia invaded the Ogaden in 1977, but Ethiopia regained control of the area, and Soviet forces were expelled from Somalia in 1977 for their support of Ethiopia.

The country then received U.S. and other Western aid (mostly food for its refugee population). Sporadic conflict with Ethiopia continued until 1988. Armed domestic opposition to Siad Barre began in the north in 1988 with the Isaaq-based Somali National Movement (SNM) and was brutally suppressed.

Other clan-backed groups, most notably the Hawiye United Somali Congress (USC) and the Ogadeni Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), joined the antigovernment struggle, and Siad Barre fled on Jan. 27, 1991. In May the SNM declared northern Somalia the independent Republic of Somaliland, an act that was not recognized by any foreign nation. Northern Somalia has since governed itself independently, completing a planned two-year transition to multiparty democracy with the indirect election of a new president in May 1993.

Land area: 242,216 sq mi (627,339 sq km); total area: 246,199 sq mi (637,657 sq km)
Population (2007 est.): 9,118,773 (growth rate: 2.8%); birth rate: 44.6/1000; infant mortality rate: 113.1/1000; life expectancy: 48.8; density per sq mi: 38
Monetary unit: Somali shilling

Languages: Somali (official), Arabic, English, Italian
Ethnicity/Race: Somali 85%, Bantu and others 15% (including Arabs 30,000)
Religion: Islam (Sunni)
Literacy rate: 38% (2001 est.)

Problems facing Somalia people

Somalia faces a number of major obstacles to develop: civil conflict, lack of fully functional central government and natural calamities such as hunger and drought, diseases, poor sanitation, poor health facilities. Poverty has inevitably increased since 1990s. About 43% of the population lies in extreme poverty or less than US $1 per day. This figure rises to 53% in rural areas where extreme poverty is more prevalent.

Political problem
Since the collapse of the central government in 1991, Somalia has been subjected to widespread violence and instability. General insecurity and inter- and intra-clan violence frequently occur throughout the country, and attacks and fighting between anti-government elements and Transitional federal Government (TFG) and Ethiopian forces take place regularly in Mogadishu and in regions outside the capital. Pervasive and violent crime is an extension of the general state of insecurity in Somalia. Serious, brutal, and often fatal crimes are very common.

The political situation in Somalia seems to remain in a state of flux and due to tribal ties being paramount to national ones as well as the increased fractional fracturing that has its roots in the Siad Barr regime, an inchoate government has been able to organically develop. The internationally recognize transitional government controls only parts of the southern Somalia with Abdulkassin Salat Hassan as the president and Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah
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Economic problem
Flawed economic and political models have led to dismal growth in per capital income, falling rates of food production, periodic famines, systematic disregard of basic liberties, institutionalized corruption, and ongoing civil wars. Over the past 18 years, sever drought and famine face the people of Somalia, killing off livestock and reducing harvest in farming areas.

The economy is crippling by violence and outbreak of high food prices. Somalia facing life-threatening food, water shortages leaving millions at risk Winds are leaving crops as dry as the landscape, preventing harvests. Continual armed conflicts in central and south Somalia have aggravated the situation. High inflation on food and fuel has also exacerbated the situation.

Specific Problem to be addressed

One of the major problems facing Somalia is health. Health indicators for the population have shown a decline since 1991. Over the past 18 years, severe hunger, lack of access to potable water, inadequate access to basic health care, malnutrition and poor sanitation have crippled the economy leading to high food prices, diseases and malnutrition in Somalia. .

The entire world is complaining of these four devastating issues, but in Somalia, these factors are widely ignored and in absence of central government, they have remarkably incapacitated the health situation in Somalia.

Brief outline of the project on health
In relation to health, the project states to address health challenges such as hunger and malnutrition and water and sanitation by implementing water and sanitation programs and projects, in conjunction with UNICEF and elaborate and implement adaptation and mitigation strategies, particularly in relation to water, food, educational program on infectious disease and sanitation. This proposal will be a short-term one. The outline of project includes:
• Rural water and sanitation initiative
• Response to humanitarian emergency on hunger and malnutrition

Details of the outline

Rural water supply and sanitation initiative: The MARYMARG Poverty Reduction Agency is to introduce the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative to respond to the challenge of addressing the related targets on water and sanitation in Somalia.

Our Water Vision targets are poverty reduction through the provision of safe water and basic sanitation to 60% of rural populations by 2009. Reduction efforts include the construction of water harvesters in homes to preserve rain water during raining seasons; separate existing water bodies for animals and humans; simple intervention in demonstrating cloth and pipe filters can protect users from contaminated drinking water and organizing programs on health education and messages to inform citizens about problems associated with drinking contaminated water and living in an unhygienic environment.

MARYMARG agency’s plan is to assist Ministry of Health in Somalia to provide technical assistance to improve baseline information and improving knowledge related diseases; effective management of household waste to reduce diseases like Cholera, malaria, tuberculosis and so on from contaminated water and poor sanitation in order to enhance healthy life of rural areas in Somalia.

Responds to humanitarian emergency on hunger and malnutrition
Through our Health program, MARYMARG Poverty Reduction Agency will work to improve on the nutritional status of the people most especially children in the rural areas of Somalia. MARYMARG will conduct many trainings and educational programs to reduce micro nutrient malnutrition in food to the treatment of severe malnutrition in the country.

Our unique contributions to addressing hunger and malnutrition in Somalia are to encourage Subsistence farming of both crop in homes and large farm areas: small-scale community crop, vegetable and fruit gardens that will play a significant role in increasing production of micro nutrient-rich foods. To improve micronutrient status, gardening projects will also lead to increased consumption of the micronutrient-rich foods produced.

The agency will introduce mixed farming and irrigation farming. Our agency will provide agricultural seeds and fertilizers for this purpose. These effective interventions will increase food production for consumption to prevent and control infectious diseases that lead to malnutrition and other diseases that are the major causes of deaths and illness in children in Somalia. It will also promote health and contributes to sustainable development in Somalia.

Positive outcome from the project

The initiatives will improve health, food and water, reduce malnutrition, promote hygiene and agricultural development through closer collaboration between the agriculture and health sectors. MARYMARG Poverty Reduction Agency will achieve the following from the project:

• Water and Sanitation: There will be access to clean water to over 500,000 people over the course of one year by rehabilitating (restoring) rural water-systems and rural bore-holes and hand-dug-wells.
• Food and Nutrition: There will be less malnutrition diseases such as Kwashiorkor, scaries and night blindness affecting children.
• Improvement in human resource: It will increase the human resource in the country, thereby, increasing productivity in the country.
• Reduce extreme poverty and hunger
• Reduce child mortality

Negative outcome

• Constant civil war will be a problem
• Since there is no central government, it will be difficult to mobilize the people and also get the full support of the government and its policies.
• The weather condition will be a challenge since there is constant dry season in Somalia.
• Land to farm on will be a constraint because it will require local government intervention or assistance.
• Co-operation from people would be difficult to confront.

Budget Summary

MARYMARG Poverty Reduction Agency will prepare a situation analysis of poverty in Somalia. The analysis will cover health situation on nutrition, water, sanitation and food. The work will involve a desk review of existing studies and documentation on Somalia. The resulting Situation Analysis of Somalia will be of significant benefit to all aid agencies, both international and local who are working to promote health in Somalia.
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Concurrently, an approach for continuous monitoring of the health situation in Somalia will be developed, based on the monitoring capacities of local administrations and agencies involved in Somalia, particularly the UNICEF. Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) will be carried out in accessible rural areas of the country in order to capture key data in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, and food.

Results of such surveys, together with analysis of other kinds of information (such as routine monitoring of services delivered through health and educational facilities) will contribute to the understanding of the health sector and its changes. Somalis will benefit from this project through the provision of materials, trainings and educational programs. As a quality improvement program, its implementation will produce significant cost savings for all.


FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
Budget Items US$
Research on health issues 90,000
Situation analysis 50,000
Monitoring system on the situation of health (food and nutrition, water and sanitation 50,000
Monitoring and evaluation technical staff 100,000
Program support and educational training 50,000
Irrigation and mixed crop farming equipment 110,000
Seedlings 100,000
TOTAL 500,000

500,000 US Dollar = 716,775,090 Somali Shilling

Mechanism to measure success or failure
• Organizing periodic assessments (three –four) of the rural capacity for the application of project tools for resolving health-related challenges, and using the results of such assessments to determine the relevance and applicability of policy tools.
• Undertaking periodic monitoring and evaluation of the rural performance of the country on the enforcement of health policies and laws.
• Allocating human, financial, and material resources for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating integrated health and environmental policies and action plans, and also considering the creation of funds for research and for dissemination and use of results
• Conducting an assessment of the problem, analysis of the causes and review of available resources will serves as a basis for our planning efforts to identify and implement micro nutrient deficiency prevention strategies.

Conclusion

In view of this project proposal drawn the project is to increase the human developmental index of Somalia and to reduce poverty in the rural parts of Somalia. As a result of training and organizing educational programs that will assist local entrepreneurs, the project will help farm business to grow and create jobs for people. The farming activities will help boosts their agriculture because there will be more produced food to cater for the people.

Secondly, the health condition of the people will improve due to the possible solutions MARYMARG Poverty Reduction team will embark on. Again, many vulnerable people have lost their assets, other valuable properties and fallen sick due to hunger and lack of nutrient as a result of conflict in Somalia, therefore humanitarian assistance will also contribute to improve their health statues and give them sense of belonging.