Regional Reports - the European External Action Service

ensure the access to these services while others are engaged in the provision of education
and health services.
• In addition to local NGOs, there are also few number of civil society organizations of
various types which are established in urban areas like Jigiga and other major towns of
the region. While women and youth associations are the major ones, anti HIV/AIDS
clubs and forums, pastoralist forums, Iddirs, savings and credit associations are also
important civil society organizations. But their activities are limited since they were
established recently.
• In SNRS, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is currently much higher in urban areas like Jigiga
as compared to the rural areas of the region. More over, the prevalence rate is higher
among the young and women living in urban areas. Therefore, NSA like youth and
women groups are more active in urban areas while such organized groups are less
visible in rural areas where the prevalence rate is low. Nevertheless, CBO especially
Iddirs are not merged like in other major towns to engage in non-traditional activities like
the provision of care and support for PLWHA and/or facilitate donor support for local
social development.
• The total number of NGOs operating in SNRS is very small in relation to the population
and severity of social and economic problems prevailing in this region. This is
particularly true for local NGOs which do not also have the capacity and resources
required to engage in development and service provision activities that they perceive to
do. Only a couple of these NGOs have been operational for a little more than ten years
while many of them were formed very recently and hence are at low level of maturity.
• Local NGOs in Somali region are in most cases organized alone clan lines and their
activities are also confined to the areas inhabited by the clans which they want to serve.
Moreover, occasional social conflict on resources (pasture land and grazing area, water
sources, etc) among clans and also the narrowly focused local NGO operation restricts
cooperation and collaboration among local NGOs. Thus, social capital mobilization is
weak due to the limited number of NSA and because of clan based organisation that
weakens intra-clan operation, networking, collaboration and collective actions.
• While activities that address basic problems of pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihood are
the major sector of engagement for NGOs including INGO operating in the region,
emergency programs aimed at the mitigation of disasters are also important areas of
engagement. Targeting disaster and the vulnerabilities associated with famine and food
shortages are the main thematic area for a large number of the international NGOs that
started operating in the region over a decade ago.
• Resource limitation and access to project fund is a crucial problem for indigenous NGOs
especially those which were formed recently and hence, these NGOs often compete for
similar resources and funding sources. The access to funding sources often depends on
the strength of NGO management to network and link with large INGO and also sector
offices at regional levels. Some of these NGOs that have strong linkage with these
funding sources have started to enter into subcontract arrangement for the
implementation of development and/or humanitarian activities. Such arrangement is in
most cases for the funds provided by multilateral agencies like UNICEF which do not
directly implement projects for themselves but would channel funds through regional
sector bureaus into the local NGOs with whom sector offices like education, health and
BoLSA enter project implementation agreement.
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