Somalia

The UN mandate for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) will expire on 31 December 2021. Fatigued financial donors want reforms and perhaps cuts, while the AU and troop-contributing states seek reliable funding. Somalia’s government relies on the mission but is nonetheless ambivalent about the need to maintain it.

A 15-member team of the African Union Peace and Security Council met with senior Somali officials in Mogadishu on Tuesday and discussed the future of AMISOM peacekeeping operations. Tensions are running high after the Somali government expelled an AU deputy special envoy last week.

United Nations officials say more than 100,000 people are displaced in central Somalia following days of fighting between the government forces and a group opposing the region's local administration.

Somalia's president and prime minister say they have struck a deal to speed up the process for long-delayed elections, ending their simmering feud which threatened to plunge the Horn of Africa nation into fresh crisis.

Somalia has rejected a proposal by the African Union to turn its peacekeeping force in Mogadishu into a hybrid mission, in what could set the stage for a battle for attention at the United Nations Security Council.

The United Nations Security Council has urged Somalia’s feuding government leaders to resolve their disagreements through dialogue and give top priority to holding long-delayed national elections this year. The 15-member body in a statement on Saturday also called on the federal government and regional states “to ensure that any political differences do not divert from united action against al-Shabab and other militant groups”.

Somalia's president announced Thursday that he has suspended the hiring and firing powers of the prime minister during the Horn of Africa country's slow-moving election period. … Farmajo accused Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble of making rash decisions, which he said "could lead the country into [a] political and security crisis."

Somalia's president and prime minister appear locked in a power struggle over the country's spy chief and the death of a cybersecurity agent. Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble this week suspended the head of the National Intelligence and Security Agency, Fahad Fassin, for failing to investigate the agent’s death. But the president rebuked the move and on Wednesday appointed Yasin as a national security adviser.

Amid funding challenges, the African Union (AU) will deploy a reconfigured force of the continental body’s peacekeeping outfit in Somalia for a proposed five-year period after the expiry of the current mandate at the end of this year.

The Security Council today extended until 31 May 2022 the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), requesting it to strengthen its presence across the country “as the security situation allows”.