Background
Somalia became independent on 1 July 1960, after the merger of former British Somaliland and the Italian protectorate to form the Somali Republic.
Nine years later, the elected civil government was overthrown on 21 October by the military in a bloodless coup led by Muhammad Siyad Barre. His regime was ousted in January 1991, plunging the country into anarchy, with leaders of the armed group that had fought against Barre's administration turning against each other in a vicious power struggle.
In May 1991, northern clans declared the establishment of an independent Republic of Somaliland that now includes the administrative regions of Awdal, Galbeed, Togdheer, Sanaag and Sool. The regions of Bari and Nugaal and northern Mudug comprise a neighbouring self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, which has been self-governing since 1998, but does not seek independence.
Between 1993 and 1995, a United Nations humanitarian effort (primarily in the south) was able to alleviate famine conditions, but when the UN withdrew in 1995, having suffered significant casualties, conditions deteriorated. The mandate of the Transitional National Government (TNG), created in August 2000 in Arta, Djibouti, expired in August 2003.
In October 2004, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was established under President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Both the TFG's 275-seat parliament and 42-member cabinet are made up of representatives of the country's various clans. Despite the formation of the TFG, effective governance has yet to be established.
The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took control of the capital, Mogadishu, in early June 2006 and continued to extend its authority over much of southern and central Somalia, challenging the legitimacy of the TFG. Despite international support, the TFG has no real power base and is largely paralysed. In late December the UIC was ousted from Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia by Ethiopian-backed TFG forces.
Peace and security
After taking Mogadishu and the rest of the south the TFG is having trouble containing the situation in the capital. There are fears that if the situation is not stabilised soon, the security situation will deteriorate further. In late February the UN authorised the deployment of African Union peacekeepers for six months.
On 6 March 2007, the first AU peacekeepers from Uganda arrived in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. The Ugandan contingent is to spearhead an 8,000 strong AU force expected to replace the Ethiopian forces, which ousted the UIC, and pave the way for a UN peacekeeping force.
Humanitarian organisations said escalating violence and insecurity in Mogadishu had forced at least 40,000 civilians to flee the city in February 2007.
"Insecurity, fear of attacks, removal from public buildings and outright violence are the main reasons for the movement of peoples and more than 40,000 people have left Mogadishu in the past month," the agencies said in a February situation report.
Lack of security is affecting the ability of aid organisations to respond to emergencies and emerging needs. The daily exchanges of weapons fire between what is thought to be remnants of the UIC on the one hand and Ethiopian and government forces on the other has claimed many innocent lives and forced many residents from their homes.
Many observers believe that peace talks between the TFG and those opposed to it, including the UIC, is the only way out of the current situation. The government, after pressure from western donors, has announced it will hold a reconciliation conference but insists that so-called moderates participate only as part of their clans.
Children
The lack of a permanent central government has contributed to Somalia's status as one of the poorest and most volatile countries in the world. The main causes of death among children are diarrhoeal diseases, respiratory infections and malaria (an estimated 87 percent of Somalis are at risk of malaria).
Malnutrition is also rampant, with acute malnutrition afflicting 17 percent of the children, according to UNICEF.
The nomadic lifestyle of Somalia's rural population makes regular immunisation programmes difficult to implement. Measles and cholera are serious threats against which few children have been vaccinated.
UNICEF and its partners have created a network of child-protection advocates to aid vulnerable children in more than 75 communities. Action plans have also been developed on issues such as sexual abuse, female genital mutilation and child prostitution.
IDPs/Refugees
There are an estimated 350,000 Somali refugees in neighbouring countries, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and an estimated 400,000 internally displaced persons in the country.
The violence that has gripped Mogadishu since the ousting of the UIC in December 2006 is creating a new wave of displaced people, both within the city and outside.
The UNHCR has repatriated close to 500,000 refugees back to the country but the fighting between the UIC, and the Ethiopian and government forces, at end-2006, forced many Somalis to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.
Democracy and governance
There is no effective central government in Somalia, with the TFG under President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed struggling to establish effective governance against a backdrop of increasing violence in the capital, with daily attacks on Ethiopian and government positions by suspected remnants of the UIC.
Political loyalties are based on clan and region rather than party, with the society highly fragmented, which makes the sustainability of a centralised political system difficult. Throughout the 1990s the country was under the fragmented control of about 12 competing clans.
Media
The transitional federal charter guarantees freedom of the press, but the political situation in Somalia does not provide any framework for regulation or protection of these freedoms, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
According to Amnesty International, journalists in Somalia have frequently been subjected to arbitrary arrest by the authorities and have been subject to death threats, unfair trials, physical violence and ill-treatment and other forms of harassment.
After the collapse of the Barre regime in 1991, dozens of private newspapers and radio and television stations mushroomed. Almost all major Somali towns now have a private radio station or newspaper.
Several political factions have their own newspapers. Three Somalis returning from the diaspora in 1999 founded HornAfrik, an independent media corporation broadcasting on radio and television in Mogadishu.
In the breakaway administrations of Puntland and Somaliland, press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed, but has been restricted by the respective governments.
Economy
The country is highly dependent on agriculture, with livestock accounting for about 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and about 65 percent of export earnings. Livestock, hides, fish, charcoal, and bananas are Somalia's principal exports while sugar, sorghum, corn, khat and machinery are the principal imports.
The GDP per capita average annual growth rate from 1970-1990 was -0.9 percent. More recent statistics are not available.
The TFG has not been able to effectively collect taxes and has no notable finances. As such, there is no audit institution in the country and much of the national banking system collapsed because of the civil war.
Despite the lack of institutions, the country's service industry is thriving, with telecommunication firms providing wireless services in most big towns. The companies offer some of the lowest international calling rates in Africa.
Somalia remains fifth from the bottom on the UNDP Human Development Index with 73.4 percent of the population living in general or extreme poverty.
Population
The population is estimated at 8.2 million, with a 4.2 percent growth rate, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). However, this number is not considered reliable as there has not been a census since 1987.
The years of conflict with resulting low levels of infrastructure and high numbers of displaced persons have also made health and population data difficult to obtain.
Somali women average about six lifetime births each over the course of their reproductive lives.
Somali is the main language with several dialects; Common Somali, Coastal Somali spoken on the Banaadir Coast, Central Somali spoken in the inter-riverine area. English and Italian are used at university level while Arabic is used in religious contexts. Indigenous languages include various dialects of Afar and Boni.
The majority of Somalis are Muslims. Nomads and semi-nomads, who are dependent on livestock for their livelihood, make up a large portion of the population.
Development indicators
The maternal mortality ratio is estimated to be as high as 1,100 deaths per 100,000 live births; child mortality rates are as high as 225 per 1,000 live births and life expectancy at birth is about 44 years.
The adult mortality rate is high at 524 for males against 428 for women per 1,000 people, according to the UN World Health Organization's World Health Report 2006.
Less than 30 percent of the country has access to safe water.
The statistics for Gross Domestic Product Per Capita, Purchasing Power Parity and population living below the national poverty line are unavailable although Somalia has been classified as a low income country by the World Bank.
Education
Most education statistics for Somalia are unavailable as a result of the civil unrest in the country since 1991. According to the UNDP, Somalia has among the lowest literacy rates in the world, with 26 percent female and 50 percent male literacy in 2001.
The absence of governmental institutions results in a primary school enrolment rate of about 20 percent. School attendance ratio is very low, according to UNICEF, with the net primary school enrolment being estimated at 13 percent for boys and 7 percent for girls.
Health
The status of health in Somalia is among the poorest in the world, with much of the population lacking access to basic healthcare and an acute shortage of trained medical personnel.
In the past 10 years, considerable resources have been invested by the international community in rehabilitating the water and sanitation systems damaged during the civil war.
However, extensive contamination of surface supplies remains a problem, with only 29 percent of the population having access to clean drinking water, according to UNFPA.
After being polio-free for almost three years, Somalia saw a recurrence in 2005. There were a total of 215 confirmed cases of polio by November 2006. Fourteen of Somalia's 19 regions have been infected, according to the WHO.
HIV/AIDS
The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate among adults aged 15 to 49 is estimated at 0.9 percent, with 44,000 people living with HIV, according to UNAIDS.
At least 3.3 percent of pregnant women are receiving treatment to reduce mother-to-child transmission while only one percent of HIV-infected women and men are receiving antiretroviral therapy.
UNAIDS has AIDS Commissions in the three Somali entities: Somaliland, Puntland and areas of south-central Somalia under the TFG. A roadmap is also being developed to scale up the work of the commissions and formation of a tripartite Somali AIDS Coordination Body.
Other issues of concern include addressing gaps in the response related to universal access to prevention, treatment care and support; and focus on the most vulnerable women and girls.
The major impediments to the HIV/AIDS response are insecurity and lack of capacity among government departments and other service providers. There is little effective Somali institutional and human capacity to develop resource-mobilisation strategies, making the response dependent on Nairobi-based international community leadership.
Food security
Somalia is a least developed, low-income, food-deficit country, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). Global acute malnutrition rates are believed to be generally high, with rates above 20 percent in areas such as the Juba Valley and Gedo, Bakol and Bay regions of the south.
The situation in the south is aggravated by civil strife, insecurity and drought, while areas along the Juba River suffer from floods. Additional food security risks include: the absence of an effective central government, lack of bilateral aid and a fragile environment.
According to UNICEF, 20 percent of children below the age of five were underweight.
WFP has implemented a protracted relief and recovery operation in Somalia since 1999. From 1991 to mid-1999, WFP distributed 113,310 metric tonnes of food to an average of 1.3 million beneficiaries a year. At least 2.2 million people are expected to benefit from food aid in Somalia from 1 August 2006 until 31 July 2008.
Gender issues
Civil war and the continuing lack of a central government have had a devastating impact on Somalia's women, who, with children, are frequently victims of clan violence.
Lack of infrastructure, investment, rampant unemployment and environmental degradation are severe barriers to economic recovery, with women comprising about 43 percent of the workforce.
About 48 percent of all primary students are girls, despite the fact that women make up 65 percent of the population as a whole.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is nearly universal in the country, with up to 99 percent of all girls and women having undergone FGM by the age of 12, according to UNFPA.
At the official level, a ministry for gender and family affairs was established in 2004 to advance women's condition. However, Somalia is not a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Human rights
There is no rule of law or national system of justice in Somalia, which has been a collapsed state since 1991, according to Amnesty International.
Several death sentences have been imposed and carried out by Islamic courts and their militias in recent years, although most death sentences have been replaced by compensation negotiated between the clans of the victim and the perpetrator, according to Somali customary law.
Violence against civilians resulted in hundreds of deaths in 2005, according to UN reports. There were also numerous violations by foreign security agencies stationed in Somalia, including kidnappings, harassment, threats and arrests of persons suspected of belonging to terrorist groups, according to the UN delegate to Somalia, Ghanem Al-Najjar.
Humanitarian needs
The Deyr seasonal rains (October to December) began early in 2006, with rainfall in some regions measuring six times the seasonal average, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). This resulted in the displacement of thousands of people in need of emergency aid, as well as property damage and crop loss.
There is also a need to improve security as the working environment for humanitarian workers remains difficult and insecure, especially in south and central Somalia.
An estimated 1.25 million returnees and 400,000 displaced scattered in 34 locations also need assistance, according to UNHCR.