MOGADISHU: Somalia’s government and federal member states said Sunday that direct universal suffrage would be introduced with local elections set for June 2024, following a pledge by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in March to end a complex indirect system in place since 1969.
“The basic principles should be that the election of the Federal Somali Republic must be one that gives the public the opportunity to cast their votes democratically in a one-person, one-vote system,” the government said after reaching an agreement with state leaders.
More than a million Somalis have been displaced within their own country in just over four months through a mix of drought, conflict and floods, humanitarian agencies said Wednesday.
Around 433,000 people were forced from their homes between January 1 and May 10 as a grinding insurgency raged and clashes broke out in the breakaway Somaliland region, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said.
in addition, “over 408,000 people were displaced by floods sweeping across their villages and another 312,000 people were displaced by ravaging drought,” they said in a joint statement.
Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya have been suffering the worst drought in four decades after five failed rainy seasons that have left millions of people in need and decimated crops and livestock.
AFP
