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Somalia: Conflict and Insecurity Drive More Than 140,000 New Displacements in Recent Months

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported on Monday that conflict, drought, and massive flooding has caused the internal displacement of 140,000 people in Somalia in the last four months, Medicine Reports.

Thrown into anarchic lawlessness by the overthrow of President Siad Barre’s military regime in 1991, Somalia was torn apart by rival warlords. An internationally backed government was subsequently installed in 2012, but just as the African country started to gain stability, al-Qaeda-aligned Al-Shabab insurgents began wreaking havoc, killing, displacing, and terrorizing Somalis with their aim to establish an Islamic caliphate.

While reeling from chronic conflict, Somalia was hit with back-to-back extreme climate events last year, including the worst drought in 40 years and once-in-a-century floods due to El-Niño and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole. The UNHCR reported that 2.94 million Somalis were displaced in 2023.

In its report Monday, the UNHCR-led Protection and Return Monitoring Network (PRMN) recorded 52,000 new displacements in April alone: “14,000 were caused by conflict or insecurity, 33,000 were due to floods, and 5,000 were due to other reasons,” the UNHCR said.

Medialine reports that the highest number of displacements were from the Bay region (15,280 people) and Mudug (12,940) due to conflict and insecurity. Lower Juba (26,550) and Bay (8,770) regions also experienced significant displacements due to flooding.

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