Pick of the year

Few countries generate such a volume and breadth of coverage by IRIN as Somalia. Here are some of the year’s highlights, including stories that give a voice to individuals caught up in the conflict between government forces and Islamist insurgents – and to those working selflessly to make life better for others – as well as explorations of how the crisis in Somalia spills over its borders.



These articles explain:



- How ambulance crews rescue conflict casualties dying on the shell-strewn streets of Mogadishu



- How one woman’s passion for medicine led her to set up the only teaching hospital in Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland



- What it is like for a mother to dodge militias and search for lost loved ones while fleeing Mogadishu for life as a refugee in a dusty camp in neighbouring Kenya



- Why watching football or going to see a film can be dangerous and how the country’s passion for football nevertheless remains undimmed



- How the conflict has adversely affected security in the northeast of neighbouring Kenya



- The challenges facing the new prime minister in ending violence and battling corruption



- How pirates deprive IDPs of relative sanctuary by buying up land where camps have been set up and evicting the residents, who, in the absence of any significant presence by aid workers, have to manage their own humanitarian needs



- That primary school is a road to educational nowhere in the Gedo region and how, in the insurgent-occupied city of Kismayo, the first university graduates are celebrating



- The challenges of working as a journalist in a perpetual warzone as well as the defiantly witty response (croaking frogs come into it) of some broadcasters to a ban on airing any form of music



- How the livestock trade in the borderlands between Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia is thriving, despite the rampant insecurity in Somalia



- How Somali refugees endure police harassment in Kenya



- Why the new president of the self-declared independent state of Somaliland has his work cut out to avert a crisis after clashes with rebel groups in the eastern Sool region



am/mw