Article Index
1. Country Context
After the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, the Somali Republic splintered into three autonomous regions: South-Central Somalia, Somaliland, and Puntland. South-Central Somalia lacked a formal government from 1991 until August 2012. The appointment of the new federal government in 2012 is encouraging, and the new administration has made many commitments to passing legislation and policy to ensure a stable nation state governed by the rule of law. However, they too have lacked the capacity to draft, pass and implement legislation. Somaliland has functioned independently since 1991, and formally voted to secede in 2001, though their sovereignty is not recognized by any country.
Somalia occupies a land area of 637,540 square kilometers and only 13% of Somalia’s land is arable, of which only 8% has been cultivated and 98 % is made up of rangelands. Livestock production is the primary economic activity in the country, comprising approximately 50% of the gross domestic products and more than 80% of the export revenue. About 55% of the national population participates in nomadic pastoralism and 80% is engaged in livestock raising of some kind. The use of land for grazing plays a crucial role in the lives of people and the economy in Somalia, since roughly 55% of the Somali population is pastoralist. It is estimated that a population of roughly 8,050,000 people.
Population estimates for Somalia vary from 6.8 million, according to the Somalia Watching Brief (2003), to 10.3 million, according to the UN (2004) (Table 1). About 65 percent of the population is rural. Population density is 16 inhabitants/km2 and the annual population growth rate was 2.3 percent between 1990 and 2002. A majority of the population remains nomadic, either pastoralist or agro-pastoralist. Agriculture is the second most common occupation. Somalia’s agro-pastoralist and settled farmers live in villages or small settlements where water resources are reliable, while the nomadic
pastoralists move seasonally with their livestock depending on the availability of pasture and water. In 2001, Somalia counted about 300 000 internally displaced persons and 264 000 refugees in neighbouring countries. Up to 77 percent of the population is without access to safe water and 49 percent are without access to sanitation (1999). The prevalence of HIV/AIDS is estimated to be less than 1 percent.