Mogadishu to relocate Internally Displaced Somalis

Addis Ababa, February 28 (WIC) - The Mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Ahmed Nur Tarsan announced his government's plan to relocate thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Mogadishu.

Accordingly those willing to go to places they used to reside would be relocated to their previous locations, and those unwilling would be "relocated to camps on the outskirts of Mogadishu".

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said an estimated 369,000 Somalis are living as IDPs in Mogadishu. This move sets to relocate 270,000 IDPs.

The government's intention is "not to put these people in faraway isolated places" but to relocate them to "better places" as these people are currently living in "appalling conditions”, the mayor explained.

The report says the government would be "providing security as well as the land", and called up on aid agencies "to provide services like health and water” in the relocation places.

The head of the OCHA office in Somalia, Justin Brady, said the relocation plan "is not simply a shelter issue or a protection issue, but all of the service providers across the spectrum of clusters need to be involved". (ERTA)