Somaliland receives USD 1m to deal with drought from Somalia

The breakaway Somaliland administration has received USD 1 million from Somali government to deal with the humanitarian emergency caused by the severe drought that has hit many Somaliland’s regions.

Somali Drought Response Committee has dispatched disaster response teams to Hargeisa town to address the situation before the drought there spiral out of control.

In press statement, Somalia’s deputy Prime Minister Mohamed Omar Arte said Somali government handed over the aid to SDRC as to take it to Somaliland.

“We are ready to collaborate with you (Somaliland) to deal with the national disaster that affected the nation as well as the people.  Recenly people of Somaliland had been saying, is this the brotherhood way of Somalia. We say to our brother in Somaliland, if our response came late, it does not mean that we were not so serious about the situation. We want make clear that Somalia pays this aid for the sake of God but not any other agenda” said Arte.

Receiving Somalia’s delegation at Egal Airport, Somaliland’s minister for religious, Sheikh Khaliil Abdullahi Ahmed said: “We are glad to receive the delegation from Somalia, which is here in response to the humanitarian crisis. We commend their empathy which is more important.”

In 2011, a humanitarian delegation from Somaliland donated relief aid for 9,000 drought-displaced families in the Somali capital, Mogadishu

Somaliland sent food aid and other non food items to its Somali brothers affected by the famine in the southern part of Somalia that time.

It was the first such visit since the region declared unilateral independence from the rest of the country in 1991.

Somaliland, in the north of the country, is a former British protectorate that joined Italian Somaliland to form the Republic of Somalia in 1960. In 1991, the north-western region declared its independence from the rest of Somalia and has enjoyed relative stability and peace unknown in Mogadishu.