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7.2a Somalia Misses International Development Aid and Rescue Plans for Global economic Recession 

Many developing countries have been benefiting from bilateral and international aid development funds but Somalia has been missing out all the following developmental or special rescue aid packages programmes during the last two decades:

a) Regional (e.g., EU), bilateral and international development aid

b) Millennium Development funds, and

c) Grant or aid rescue funds for off-setting the Global Economic Recession effects.

For the current severe global economic downturn most developed or developing countries alike either used emergent internal funds or external rescue funds to bail out their financial institutions, industries and trade from bankruptcy, supporting their currencies, and salvaging jobs and pensions, welfare and standard of living their peoples. 

If there has been one or more of such aid funds to Somalia, I have no evidence of that. What I know as everybody else is that in all these years the international community have been providing Somalia goodwill but inadequate non-developmental humanitarian aid that has been enabling millions of Somalis to keep hand and mouth together in a desperate situation of a cycle of dependency and spiraling poverty and misery.

The IMF/World Bank disclosed that the ‘developing countries face a financing gap of 2270 billion to $700 billion this year (2009) as trade incomes dwindles and rich nations vie for capital to deal with global economic slowdown.’(57)  The national governments of these countries have assessed the impact of the global economic recession on their economies and have drawn up plans to mitigate such effect and have asked a share of this international rescue plan funds. But the question is, what to extent the Global Economic Recession impacts on the Somali economy and standards of living and what plans have the international community has made to compensate them?  What we know,  as Somalis, is that the already highly precarious and vulnerable Somali socio-economic system has been hit hardest by the Ethiopian devastating destruction, severe droughts, and the current Global Economic Recession dispossessing and driving many more millions into destitution and abject poverty and starvation as narrated above. As a result of that, we also know that at present the lives of millions of Somalis are in real danger in such deep and widespread poverty, many more are fleeing out daily to escape famine and violence and many more prone to the same fate as specter of mass famine is looming on the near horizon.
 

7.3 Somali Death Toll Not Counted

The UN and other international community members have been counting the death toll of the conflict and displacement in Darfur in Sudan and publicised that 300,000 people have been killed by violence and starvation. But the same international actors (UN, INGOs, major countries) which involved in Somalia, have not come up with any Somali death toll figure resulting from the dire Somali humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the directly US-backed and indirectly backed UN and EU Ethiopian devastating occupation into an unprecedented catastrophe which the UN has described as ‘‘In terms of numbers and access to them Somalia is a worse displacement crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year’ early on 13/5/2008 and again as ‘the worst humanitarian situation in the last 17 years’ on 12/9/2008. 

Thus, the begging question is, why the Somali death toll from Somali driven conflict, or caused by Ethiopian massive socio-economic and displacement, killings and wounding, and/or the out-of-control grinding poverty has not been recorded and made public by the UN and other external actors dealing with Somalia?

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