In August, Oxfam America’s Scott Paul traveled to Somaliland to research a money transfer system that helps support countless families in the region. A senior humanitarian policy advisor, Paul discusses how remittances provide a lifeline to Somalilanders and people all across the Somali region. This is the third in a series of three blogs on the topic.

A remittance clerk examines Scott Paul's passport.

During Ramadan, the month of fasting and reflection in Islam, Muslims are expected to send gifts to their loved ones and increase their charitable giving. That was the month I was in Hargeisa, Somaliland, trying to understand how the money transfer system so many people depend on works—and how to make sure it keeps working.

Knowing that a $60 transfer had arrived for me I took my place behind a long procession of Somalilanders eager to collect funds that their relatives, friends and broader kin had sent from other countries. I’m certain it was the same all over Somalia – people were waiting on line to collect money they desperately need to get by.

Earlier in the day, staffers at the Dahabshiil branch had kindly given me a tour of the company’s compliance practices. Dahabshiil puts every US-Somalia money transfer through two rounds of vetting– one automatically when their agents collect the money and one by the compliance department before payment is issued –  to make sure it doesn’t violate US counterterror laws. The branch office’s anti-money laundering officer usually only does a third check on what the US calls “suspicious transactions,” transfers of more than $10,000. But to help me understand the system better, the branch officer ran my $60 through that anti-money laundering check, too.

After the remittance clerk made a copy of my passport and took down my information, I was finally ready . . . to sign the paperwork, collect a voucher and wait in another long line of restless Somalilanders. But it didn’t take long for me to present my voucher and collect my money.

Oxfam is committed to helping Somalis find a way out of the current humanitarian emergency and build a secure and prosperous  future. So we’re studying the US laws on money laundering and trying to figure out whether Dahabshiil or the other dozen or so other Somali money transfer companies can do anything to put themselves on stronger footing to ensure they can continue the service. Abdirashid Duale, the Dahabshiil CEO, is convinced they’ve done everything that’s required of them and more. And we’re looking at what banks and the government can do to better facilitate the Somali remittance system without compromising their efforts to weed out money laundering.

No matter what conclusions we reach, from my experience in August, two things are clear. First, the perception of all Islamic money service businesses in Somalia as insecure, informal, and uncommitted to compliance with US law needs to be thoroughly re-examined. Second, any interruption in the flow of remittances to Somalia would abruptly sever a critical lifeline to the Somali people, who have suffered through a humanitarian crisis for 20 years and counting. Such a cruel turn of fate would be unfair for any country, let alone one that has weathered so much hardship for so long.

In August, Oxfam America’s Scott Paul traveled to Somaliland to research a money transfer system that helps support countless families in the region. A senior humanitarian policy advisor, Paul discusses how remittances provide a lifeline to Somalilanders and people all across the Somali region. This is the second in a series of three blogs on the topic.

People wait in crowded lines to receive money transfers in Somaliland. Photo by Scott Paul

On my first day in Somaliland, I traveled to the operations center of Dahabshiil. In case I didn’t drive the point home strongly enough yesterday, Dahabshiil is a significant presence in Somaliland. The operations center now occupies two older buildings, but it’s scheduled to relocate to a new building, which, when completed, will be the biggest in all of Somaliland.

I asked Abdirashid Duale, Dahabshiil’s chief executive officer, what most threatened the free flow of remittances from the US to Somalia. Without hesitation, he replied, “Banks, banks, banks.”

Traditional Islamic money service businesses like Dahabshiil have agents to collect and distribute money transfers, but they can’t actually send money from the US to Somalia themselves – they need banks to do that. But US law requires banks to devote a ton of resources to monitoring the transactions and to subject themselves to additional government scrutiny.

As a result, only a few small banks still work with the Somali money transfer companies. And those banks could decide at any moment to discontinue service – even if the companies go above and beyond their legal obligations.

Many Somali-Americans are scared and frustrated, and I can understand why. Imagine tightening your belt so you can set aside a few extra dollars for your kin threatened by famine and conflict, while knowing in the back of your mind that a bank can shut down the transfer service at a moment’s notice.

It’s no wonder the Somali-American community in the Twin Cities in Minnesota has organized town hall meetings, protests, and boycotts this year in order to force banks and government officials to find a way to keep remittances flowing.

To millions of Somali families, messages from money transfer companies like this one means the support they need to survive has finally arrived. To me, it meant a window into a poorly understood facet of Somali life was beginning to open.

In August, Oxfam America’s Scott Paul traveled to Somaliland to research a money transfer system that helps support countless families in the region. A senior humanitarian policy advisor, Paul discusses how remittances provide a lifeline to Somalilanders and people all across the Somali region. This is the first in a series of three blogs on the topic.

A sign draws attention to one of Somaliland's money transfer companies. Photo by Scott Paul

Years ago, as a student working a summer job in Moscow, I came to the stark realization that I didn’t have enough money in my account to move into my summer digs. With no small amount of embarrassment, I called home to my parents and asked if they would send cash to help me cover my security deposit and initial rent payment until I received my first paycheck. Sure enough, the next day I found cash waiting for me in my bank account.

I forgot this entire experience until August when I traveled to Hargeisa, a city in Somaliland that might be appropriately called the remittance capital of the world. Of course, Somalilanders don’t receive money transfers just to cover a month’s rent until the next paycheck comes in. For many families, money transfers are the next paycheck.

A self-declared independent republic northeast of Ethiopia, Somaliland is viewed by many as an autonomous region of Somalia, not as an independent state. Somalis in Minneapolis, London, Nairobi, Dubai, and all over the world send money to their relatives, friends and their broader kin there, and in Somalia, to cover everything from basic needs like food and shelter to investments in small businesses.

The Somaliland Ministry of Planning and Development estimates that remittances reach more than 40 percent of Somaliland households and account for a staggering 25 percent of its gross domestic product. In South and Central Somalia, where drought, armed conflict and human rights abuses have created arguably the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the numbers may be even higher.

That’s why “Fast Money Transfer You Can Trust,” the slogan of the Hargeisa-based money transfer company Dahabshiil, is more common on billboards than “Just Do It” or even the classic “Always Coca-Cola.” And it’s why everyone I talked to in Hargeisa – women’s groups, government officials, youth leaders and others – made clear that remittances are nothing less than a lifeline to the Somali people.

In December, 2011 – in the midst of this century’s worst famine – that lifeline was nearly cut off when a key bank in the United States decided to stop doing business with the Somali money transfer companies. Oxfam’s partner organizations in Somalia sounded the alarm, urging us to help persuade banks and policymakers to find a way to keep the money flowing to Somalia.

But to do that properly, first we had to understand exactly how the Somali remittance system works. That’s how I found myself going through the time-honored tradition in Somalia of receiving a money transfer from America.

Ahmed wants his children to have an education and live in peace.

Representatives from governments around the world met at a conference in London last week to talk about the future of Somalia, where a recent famine and years of conflict have left nearly a third of the population in crisis.

In a briefing note, A Shift in Focus, Oxfam called for the development of a strategy that prioritizes the interests of ordinary Somalis.

What are those interests?

Our partners fanned out across the capital of Mogadishu and other parts of the country to ask, and what struck me was the frequency of one answer: education. People want their kids to have a chance to go to school—and a chance at the hope and possibility education promises for a new generation and the future of Somalia. Those are no small cravings in a country that has known nothing but strife for decades.

“We need support to strengthen local and community-owned administrations, and help us to build schools and hospitals,” said Haawo, a 50-year-old woman.

“The international community should provide huge humanitarian support for the ordinary people, with support for free education and scholarships in order to educate a large number of young people who will play key roles in the future of the country,” said 28-year-old Amino.

“I wish they will live without conflict and with free high quality education,” said Mohamed, 52, of his children.

But for many families, realizing the dream of education often means making the most painful of decisions: choosing between your children. Sa’ido, a 35-year-old mother who lives in the Benadir Region, has six children but eking a living from selling charcoal provides her with barely enough resources to send just two of them to school.

“The conflict, especially, has prevented us from sending our kids to school and earning enough for our daily food,” she said. And added to her concerns about the children she can’t afford to educate are her worries about those who are getting an education.

“I feel really frightened when I’m sending my kids to school…,” said Sa’ido.”…I wonder whether they will come home or not because the violence is increasing in the city.”

For Ahmed, a father of seven children, it’s not just the daily struggle to feed his family that weighs on him, it’s his inability to scrape together the fees to send them to school. At 58, finding a job in Mogadishu has been an enormous challenge.

“…In the morning I go out as a man who goes to a job, but the reality is that the life of my household relies on friendly begging to family and friends,” said Ahmed. “My children don’t go to school due to lack of proper income to pay the school fees.”

Shown in a picture standing on a rubble-strewn street, his brow deeply furrowed, Ahmed and his hopes speak to the urgency of Oxfam’s call to focus on ordinary folks, folks whose dreams are no different from our own.

“Children want to learn and go to school,” said Ahmed. “In the future, I am hopeful my children will have success and fortune with a high quality education (with) which they will live in peace.”

Halima Hussein is a nurse in a therapeutic feeding center in Mogadishu. Photo by Caroline Gluck

Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck spoke recently with Halima Hussein, a 42-year-old nurse working for SAACID, one of Oxfam’s local partners in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. She’s based at the emergency therapeutic center in Badbaado, the city’s largest camp for people displaced by the conflict and drought ravaging the country. Here, in an interview recorded by Gluck, Hussein talks about the challenges of the job and what keeps her going.

“I work with mothers and with children. Every day we see on average 200 to 250 people.   They are in different situations. Some are severely malnourished, some are moderately malnourished; others have complications.

 “People come to us initially for an assessment, and if we can treat them we do this in the center. If there are complications, we might have to refer them to a hospital.

“I’m a mother myself. I have five children. The oldest is 21. The others are 18, 14, 5, and 4.  I think about my family a lot in terms of this work.  I always think if this is my child, if they are like this, what could I do for them?  Sometimes I cry when I see the mothers like me suffering and others less fortunate than me…

“We face many problems.  The biggest one I have is how to convince a mother that it’s best to refer her child to the hospital when the child is suffering so much.  They often tell us:  ‘I have four to five other children at home.  Who’ll take care of them?’  Instead of spending four to five days with one child, they think of the other children…

“Three or four children are dying every week in Badbaado. These are children that I see or know about but I think the actual cases are far higher.  Read the rest of this entry »

Oxfam's partner, Hijra, has been providing safe drinking water to more than 100,000 people in camps in Somalia.

Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck was recently part of the organization’s first visit to Somalia by non-African staffers in several years. Here is the second part of her account of a trip shaped by strict security rules. 

My glimpses of Mogadishu, behind the tinted windows of our car speeding as fast as it could to avoid being a sitting target, were tantalisingly brief.   The legacy of war was obvious: there were many wrecked or bullet-marked buildings.

But the city also showed surprising signs of brisk daily life. There were colorful hand-painted shop signs advertising wares; traders sat on the dusty roadside touting their goods—often small collections of fruit and vegetables. Some sat behind sandbags, which might offer protection if fighting flared.   Though signs of commerce and of food availability were evident, for many who fled hunger and drought, the prices were way above what they could afford.

That’s why the centers that offered some basic help were packed.   At one community-based therapeutic care center I visited run by SAACID, staffers were working flat-out as mothers and their children continued to stream in. Read the rest of this entry »

Oxfam's partner, Hijra, is helping to supply clean water to displaced people in Somalia.

 Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck writes about a recent field visit to Somalia where Oxfam and its local partners are providing life-saving assistance to families struggling in the face of famine and conflict.

It’s hard to blend in during a community visit when you’re wearing a heavy flak jacket. But here I was in Mogadishu, the conflict-ravaged capital of Somalia, dressed not in the hijab I’d just bought in Kenya, thinking it was culturally appropriate, but strapped into a bullet proof protective vest, weighing about 22 pounds, slowing down my movements as I ran about trying to film the work Oxfam is supporting and marking me out clearly as a foreigner.

I was part of Oxfam’s first visit to Somalia by non-African staffers in years.   The country has been mired in civil conflict for the past 20 years, and now severe drought has pushed millions into desperation.  The UN has declared six areas of the country famine-affected; more than a quarter of the population has been displaced by the crisis and conflict, with several hundred thousand fleeing into neighboring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.  And inside the country, many more are displaced.  Hundreds of thousands have taken shelter in makeshift settlements and camps around the capital, Mogadishu.  

I visited some of those camps with two Oxfam partners, Hijra, which specializes in providing water, sanitation and hygiene, and SAACID (a Somali word meaning “to help”), whose therapeutic care centers for malnourished children and mothers are supported by Oxfam. But we were under strict security rules and told not to linger in one place for too long: Somalia is not like most other countries.  While the security situation has improved in central Mogadishu, no one takes things for granted. People still worry about getting shot or abducted, cars being targeted, and explosive devices going off.

Gunshots often ring out – sometimes fired into the air by government forces or peacekeepers simply to clear traffic jams because there are no working traffic lights in the city. Read the rest of this entry »

The UN announced on Labor Day that famine conditions have now spread to six areas of Somalia, affecting 750,000 people—more than double the number in July when famine was first declared. Several hundred Somali refugees cross the border into Ethiopia every day; many of  them have walked for three to four weeks across the desert with very little food and water. They seek shelter in places like Dollo Ado, in Ethiopia’s southern Somali region, where Oxfam has been providing water and sanitation facilities for an estimated 11,000 people in Hilaweyn refugee camp.

11,000 people–that’s a lot of water. And a lot of lives depending on it. So what exactly does the relief effort look like? Check out Jane Beesley’s photos, below:

A worker loads Oxfam equipment onto a truck for transport to Hilaweyn camp. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

Shortly before Hilaweyn camp opened, Oxfam workers assembled a water tank called the “T70,” which holds 70,000 liters of clean water. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

Oxfam staffer Enthemanche Chane hands out clean water to people as they arrive at the camp after a long bus journey. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

Oxfam aims to reach more than 3 million people  throughout East Africa with a variety of support, including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are drilling and repairing wells and distributing fuel vouchers to ensure that pumps on the wells can keep operating—even if people have no money. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

Yesterday the UN announced that famine conditions have spread to six regions of Somalia and are affecting 750,000 people, many of them children. One of Oxfam’s local partners, Wajir South Development Association (WASDA), works with drought-hit communities in Wajir in northeastern Kenya, as well as in Lower and Middle Juba in Somalia itself. WASDA program manager Bashir Mohamed, who regularly travels into Somalia, spoke to Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck about conditions on the ground right now and the process of getting aid to those who need it most.

“… Some areas of Somalia, like Mogadishu and Gedo, have been getting more aid.  Apart from the border town of Dobley [which lies en route to Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya], nothing much has reached people in Lower and Middle Juba. Access is a big problem; it’s taken a long time to get agreement from authorities for programs to start and we’ve had many delays.

Bashir Mohamed. Photo: Oxfam

“But now I hope we will be moving fast in our work. We’ve now got agreement for our cash distribution program to start. We will be targeting 14,600 households in middle Juba and lower Juba and hope we might be able to start this week. 

“We have been trucking in water into Lower Juba since July.  But the numbers of people [who need] water are increasing as the situation is getting worse. And we’ve been providing fuel subsidies to some communities so that boreholes can run 24 hours a day, as well as rehabilitating shallow wells.

“We’re planning to drill four new boreholes in the next few weeks in Lower Juba (in Hagar; Nasiriya, Wel Marow, and Bibi). And the drilling could take several weeks. The sites have all [been] chosen for their strategic locations. These are pastoral areas, but very far from rivers, towns, or other water points … so when they’re finished, it will be a great help to many people.

“Conditions are very severe; there are no health facilities and people face restrictions on their movements. People are just praying for the coming rains. But even if the rains come and we manage to reach everyone targeted in our interventions, this emergency will continue will into January and February at the earliest.

Read the rest of this entry »

"We left our village because of the drought," said Fatima Mohammed, a mother of four from Somalia whose family sought shelter in Ethiopia. Photo: Jane Beesley / Oxfam America

Somalia remains the epicenter of the drought and food crisis in East Africa, with 3.7 million men, women, and children affected. Famine has been declared in some parts of the country, and the UN estimates about a quarter of Somalia’s population—1.8 million people—has been displaced. 

Since early August, Oxfam has provided clean water and sanitation for an estimated 11,000 Somali refugees in Hilaweyn camp, in Dollo Ado, Ethiopia. Oxfam’s Jane Beesley visited Dollo Ado last month and spoke with recently arrived refugees, whose stories are excerpted below.

Hussain Aden said his family walked for 30 days to reach a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

Hussain Aden, left, and his family walked for 30 days to reach Dollo Ado from their village, Juwari. “We have a household of 20 people, including children and grandchildren,” he said. “We left due to hunger and drought. We used to have livestock. They all died: 35 cattle and 15 sheep. When the last one died that is when we decided to leave. We left our houses and came here. Before there were droughts but not like this. I don’t know when the drought will end.

“On the way we were very dusty and hungry. We had a little maize that we prepared on the way. We walked with our children on our backs … the children are small and couldn’t walk by themselves.”

Aden said one of the challenges the family faces now is the lack of opportunities to earn a decent income. “All the men want to work, but there is nothing for us. The women are collecting firewood, which they sell … [but] we are idle when we want to work.”

Hawa Aden said she collects and sells firewood to buy food for her family. Photo: Jane Beesley/Oxfam

 “I went out and collected firewood early this morning,” said his wife, Hawa Aden. “Normally we go at 7am and come back at 1pm. I go with a lot of other women. It takes three hours to get to the place where we collect wood.

“If I sell wood in the camp I get 5 Birr (about 29 cents), but if I go into town I can get 10 Birr (58 cents). It takes me one hour to walk into town and another hour to walk back. I use the money to buy tea, salt … food for the family. I get water in the camp, one jerry can a day. I use the water for bathing the children, preparing tea, and drinking. … I have two children, both boys; they are 7 and 4.”

Fatima Mohammed, pictured above, arrived in Dollo Ado with her four children. Her family was waiting in a transitional camp before moving to long-term shelter.  “We left our village because of the drought,” she said. “We’ve been experiencing drought now for three years. All the people from my village have come here. We’d heard people were coming to Dollo Ado. On the way we asked people for directions.

“I think life here compared to there will be different for us,” said Mohammed. “When I arrived I felt satisfied, because I thought now I’ll get everything I need—enough food, enough water, and my children will get good medicine.”

Oxfam aims to reach more than 3 million people throughout East Africa with a variety of support, including food aid, clean water, and veterinary care for animals. We are drilling and repairing wells and distributing fuel vouchers to ensure that pumps on the wells can keep operating—even if people have no money. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.