PRESS BRIEFING ON SITUATION IN SOMALIA

Somalia was on the verge of a total economic collapse, unparalleled in modern history, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Randolph Kent, said today at a Headquarters press briefing.  But he emphasized that there were “obvious and doable” solutions.

Mr. Kent said he was aware of the international community's concern about issues of stability, and the consequences of a lack of stability, in terms of radicalism and radicalization of particular social situations.  Somalia was a paradox.  Over the past couple of years, he had seen, in a slow and painful way, a pattern of stability emerging.  Various parties were coming together and, slowly, peace was covering the country.  There had been significant development of an economy that, although fragile, was creating job opportunities and putting Somalia at the forefront of many fascinating innovations, including modern telephone systems, with perhaps the cheapest phone calls in Africa.  Other kinds of industries were also developing, from bottling plants to boat manufacturing.

He said the closure of the remittance houses had come at a time when other difficult factors were emerging.  Last week, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, had launched a consolidated appeal for Somalia for $83 million to assist 800,000 vulnerable people throughout the country survive the drought.  Hence, the closure of Al-Barakat and the remittance houses should also be seen in the context of closing off the access to other resources upon which Somalis survived.

In addition to the drought, he continued, there had also been the continuation of the Rift Valley fever ban.  Because of certain technical issues, that ban by the Gulf States had forbidden Somalia to export its livestock.  For Somalia, livestock exportation was the lifeline to survival.  There was also the situation of hyperinflation:  last year, $1 was worth 8,000 Somali shillings; today that dollar was worth 25,000 shillings.  At a time when the world was seeking to avoid instability and radicalization, "we now find Somalia on the precipice of potential and total economic collapse".

Somalia had been emerging out of the social upheaval, with a trickle of an economic system and a political process that was working, he said.  For each of those problems, there were solutions.  $83 million to save 800,000 people was not an awful lot of money, and convincing the Gulf States, since there was the technical know-how about how to deal with Rift Valley fever, was an objective worth pursuing.  The issue of remittances –- that essential link between Somalis outside and inside the country -– could also be readily resolved by greater monitoring of the kinds of flow of transactions by trying to increase the capacity of banking systems in Somalia for relatively little money.

Asked whether he was saying that the Secretary-General's African recovery programme was not reaching Somalia, he said he had not been saying that at all.  He was identifying the problems facing Somalia that should be addressed as quickly as possible before the collapse of all progress.

Should the closing of the "Barakat system" have been prevented, and would allowing it to be set up again be the simplest solution? another correspondent asked.

Mr. Kent said that what was vital for the Somalis was the flow of resources -– the $100 or $150 that came from Minneapolis, Minnesota; London; Rome; from around the world -- to help relatives in desperate need.  The whole concept of remittances was essential and there were ways to deal with those, such as monitoring their flow and putting in place a more transparent structure.  That solution would not require an awful lot of resources or considerable radical innovation.

Replying to a question about foreign investment in the country, he said that that was principally from the "diaspora".  With the dramatic weakening of the building boom in the north-west and north-east, and to a lesser extent, in the south-west, investments in the bottling plants and the frankincense factories, and so forth, would inevitably, be hit, if they had not already been.  The principal investments came from the disaspora, itself, but Yemen and some other Gulf States were assisting.

Asked for figures on remittances and a sense of how much of the population had benefited from them, he said he had an "impressionistic" sense that the urban populations themselves had been extremely dependent upon the whole remittance flow.  It had been surprising to learn how much of the rural population had also depended upon them.  He did not have precise figures, but estimates ranged as high as $1 billion per year down to $400 million.  He assumed the figure was at about $700 million per year.

He noted that critics of those figures had said that he was annualizing what had occurred in a six to eight week period; that might be an argument if remittances were considered in isolation, but in the context of a very severe drought, hyper-inflation and a ban on the major export of the country, there was "tremendous danger".

Did the remittances actually play into the hands of the conditions that promoted terrorist activity?  Also, what could be done to alleviate that problem or put in place a substitute system?  Was anyone actually trying to do that?  If so, who -- and what was the status?  If not, why not? another correspondent asked.

Mr. Kent replied that in one sense, since poverty bred radicalism, extreme poverty must, in turn, lead possibly to extreme radicalism.  He had not seen radicalism in Somalia.  It was important to understand that the very nature of that nomadic society, and the very structure of Somali society, per se, was "not radical" or prone to radicalism.  His concern was what happened when a society was really pushed over the edge, without any obvious way of maintaining one's livelihood.

He noted that United Nations officials had been working on a daily basis throughout the entire country and had seen no "sense of radicalism".  There were relatively inexpensive solutions to Somalia's problems.  The first phase, or getting things going, would cost approximately $250 million.  The solutions were readily available and doable, and the world community needed to move now.

Asked if he was saying he understood how people "pushed to the edge" might turn to terrorism, he said he had not used the word "terrorism", but "radicalism".  And, he had not thought that Somalia was prone to radicalism.

Responding to a follow-up question about what would happen if the United States acted on its hint that Somalia could be on its target list, he said he had not heard that, but given everything that had happened in terms of a peace process and slow economic growth, it would be unfortunate for any action to undermine the country's aspirations.

There were literally millions of Somalis who depended upon remittances on a regular basis, he replied to a question about whether the closing down of Al-Barakat had been "overly rash".  He hoped for a system that would not deprive the Somali people who had so depended upon remittances.  A system should be set up quickly to ensure the continuous flow of vital resources.

Asked about the comparative importance of livestock exports and remittances, he said that the remittances now were slightly more important.  That was difficult to determine, however, without a definitive figure on remittance flows, but he assumed that some 80 per cent of all Somali exports were based upon livestock, or roughly $300 to $400 million per year, while his "guesstimate" on remittances was approximately $700 million per year.  That should provide a sense of the relative importance.

With respect to Rift Valley fever, he said that the United Nations agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), had been working since September 2000 to address the core issues and define specific solutions in terms of monitoring programmes, the flow of the pens for livestock, and so forth, as well as vaccination programmes.

On a technical level, there was no reason why Somali livestock should not be exported, since it was possible to put the necessary controls in place very quickly, he said.  The real question was convincing concerned governments who had seen their own people suffer the grim death of Rift Valley fever that the solution now could be put in place; that was the next challenge.

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