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Donors pledge $213 million for Somalia

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-24 11:15

BRUSSELS -- International donors pledged more than 200 million dollars on Thursday to help bolster security in Somalia, a key to helping end attacks by pirates off the country's coast.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed (L) and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon attend a donor conference in Brussels. [Agencies]

After Somalia's president underlined the challenges facing the war-torn nation, organisers said 213 million dollars (165 million euros) had been raised to support security institutions and a struggling African peacekeeping mission.

"We plan to do all we can to restore peace in Somalia and end the crisis we have lived through, so that Somalia can become a place of peace," President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters after making a personal appeal for funds.

"I would like to thank the international community for its generosity," said Sharif who is striving to assert his authority after taking office in January.

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel described the four-hour conference in Brussels as "a full success", and said the EU's executive body would donate 72 million euros, around a third of the total.

Somalia has had no effective central authority since former president Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, setting off a bloody cycle of clashes between rival factions.

Islamist fighters including the hardline Shebab militia have waged battles against the transitional government, its predecessor cabinet and their allies, vowing to fight until all foreign forces withdraw and sharia law is imposed.

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More than one million people have fled their homes. Fewer than one in three Somalis, whose life expectancy is 46 years, have access to clean water.

While the conference was not focused on piracy, the high media profile of the growing number of cases of daring raids on freighters on the seas of the Gulf of Aden has become synonymous with Somalia's woes.

"Piracy is not a water-borne disease. It is a symptom of anarchy and insecurity on the ground," said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, also taking part with representatives from some 30 nations.

"Dealing with it requires an integrated strategy that addresses the fundamental issue of lawlessness in Somalia."

Despite international naval missions -- including from NATO and the European Union -- piracy has spiralled over the last year, as ransom-hunting Somalis tackle ever-bigger and more distant prizes.

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