crisis

MOGADISHU — Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre met Monday with a senior German delegation for talks on Somalia’s deepening humanitarian crisis, security cooperation and political reforms, as drought-driven displacement and hunger surge across the country. The delegation, led by Germany’s Minister of State for Economic Cooperation and Development, Niels Annen, and including Ambassador Sebastian Groth, discussed emergency assistance, stabilization and development priorities, according to Somali officials. The talks also…

Analysis: The UN’s budget math has turned existential The United Nations is navigating its most acute cash crunch in decades. In a letter to the 193 member states, Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the organisation faces “the very real prospect of financial collapse,” with cash potentially running out as early as July. Senior UN officials now acknowledge that shuttering the Secretariat’s Manhattan headquarters this summer is a “distinct possibility.” This is not rhetorical brinkmanship. It is the cumulative…

Gordon Brown said the crisis engulfing Keir Starmer over Peter Mandelson was “serious” and that the Labour leader had been “too slow to do the right things,” even as he backed Starmer as “a man of integrity” who had been “betrayed” by his former Cabinet ally. The intervention from the former prime minister came as the Metropolitan Police confirmed its misconduct-in-public-office investigation into Mandelson will “take some time,” after officers searched properties in London and Wiltshire. Mandelson has not been arrested. “I…

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s main opposition alliance, the Somali Future Council, says it will attend a federal government–led consultative conference in Mogadishu, a move the bloc casts as essential to averting a constitutional vacuum and breaking the country’s escalating political and electoral impasse. In a statement issued Saturday, the alliance framed its participation as a bid to secure an inclusive political settlement that preserves the unity and statehood of the Federal Republic of Somalia. The Somali Future…

UN warns Yemen crisis set to worsen in 2026 as funding dries up, food insecurity deepens GENEVA — The United Nations warned Friday that Yemen’s humanitarian crisis is poised to intensify in 2026, with deepening food insecurity and a looming collapse in health support as international aid falters. Julien Harneis, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said the situation is “very, very concerning” and risks slipping off the global radar until deaths surge. He told reporters in Geneva that the country faces a…

Trump’s latest tariff threat — a 10% levy on select European nations, rising to 25% by June unless he “gets control of Greenland” — has turned a running spectacle into a high-stakes test of transatlantic relations, Federal Reserve independence and political resolve in Washington. The move over Greenland, paired with a drumbeat of domestic legal offensives, signals not a passing provocation but a strategy designed to force binary outcomes: he wins or he loses, Europe wins or it loses. There is little middle ground left. For…

Somalia’s child-protection reckoning after a teenager’s killing — and a rare death sentence The killing of 14-year-old orphan Saabirin Saylaan in Galkayo has jolted Somalia into a painful examination of how the state, communities and families protect — and fail — their children. A court in Puntland State convicted caregiver Hodan Mohamud Diiriye, 34, of murder and sentenced her to death, an exceptional punishment in a child-abuse case that underscores both the scale of public outrage and the fragility of Somalia’s protective…

MOGADISHU — Former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo warned that Somalia is sliding into a deeper crisis, citing deteriorating security, political, economic and social conditions, and urging national dialogue and unity to avert further instability. In a statement issued Monday, Farmaajo said the country faces “serious security challenges,” accusing the current government of failing to adequately counter the threat posed by terrorist groups. He warned that fragmentation within the national army has weakened the…

Somalia’s 2026 choice: avoid a legitimacy crisis by fixing the election model, not the scoreboard Somalia is entering another high-stakes transition with too little time, too much polarization, and a volatile security map. The federal government’s drive to centralize authority while invoking universal suffrage risks breaking the very political settlement that has held the country together — imperfectly but functionally — for a quarter century. A safer way through 2026 is available: an improved, time-bound indirect election…

KISMAYO, Somalia — Jubbaland’s interior minister warned Wednesday that Somalia is slipping into a national crisis under what he called poor federal leadership, escalating tensions ahead of a political conference in the port city of Kismayo that organizers say is designed to redirect the country’s trajectory. Interior Minister Mohamed Hussein Oogle said expectations placed in President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s administration have not materialized and that the course charted by federal authorities no longer reflects realities…