Somalia
Somalia, a country located in East Africa, has showcased a drastic development in the 2022 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI). This year, it has been given a score of 140 out of 180. Somalia’s ranking has increased considerably from 168 out of 180 in 2018, having moved upwards by 21 points in just the past year alone.
The WPFI, a ranking of 180 countries and regions published annually based on data measuring their level of press freedom, has been consistently updated since 2002. It is produced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a French non-governmental organization (NGO) that monitors the rights of journalists. By analyzing political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and safety, RSF aims to create a comprehensive list of the most and least secure media environments.
The media landscape in Somalia has developed since the end of a dictatorship in 1991, although it remains largely oppressive and heavily monitored by regional governments and Al-Shabaab, an Islamist terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda.
The current president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, previously served from 2012 to 2017. He was responsible for a 2016 media law that prohibited the work of media rights activists and led to the deaths of more than 30 journalists, according to RSF.
Journalists remain under constant threat of arrest and persecution. BBC World News reported on the death of Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled, who was killed in a targeted suicide bomb attack in 2021. Guled was a prominent critic of Al-Shabaab and often interviewed the terrorist group’s former detainees. Media workers in the country receive heavy scrutiny from both local and outside entities.
Journalists also lack adequate protection. RSF covered the case of Ahmed Mohamed Shukur, a reporter working for Somali National Television (SNTV), who was killed by a landmine while covering a counter-terrorist operation on Sept. 30 of this year.
Get Niya Manditsch’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Following his death, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), an organization partnered with RSF, released a statement on the matter. “His death underscores the safety and security challenge that journalists in Somalia face on a daily basis,” NUSOJ declared.
The findings of State Media Monitor, a project run by the CEU Democracy Institute, found a lack of independent press. All five state media outlets mentioned are fully government-financed, feature pro-government propaganda, and have little information on their editorial independence.
These claims are also present in the 2022 Freedom in the World (FITW) report, updated annually by American government-funded NGO Freedom House. FITW regards Somalia as “not free”, citing political instability, government corruption, and regular human rights abuses.
The Associational and Organizational Rights section of the FITW elaborated that NGOs and international groups that attempt to work in Somalia face extreme difficulty, harassment, and threats of violence from regional authorities, especially when operating in Shabaab-controlled areas.
However, certain media groups still find ways to work within the country. One example from WPFI is Universal TV, a satellite television channel based in London that broadcasts to Somalia daily. The channel covers both regional and international news.
Article 19, an international organization aligned with the United Nations that works to defend freedom of information worldwide, demanded the Somali government in 2020 to end politically motivated attacks on journalists and intentional internet outages.
Article 19 also revealed that these outages prevented citizens from accessing vital resources on the COVID-19 pandemic. “Governments everywhere should be as transparent as possible in the measures they are taking to combat the Coronavirus crisis while proactively providing information to the public, rather than stifling engagement with the issues,” stated Mugambi Kiai, the organization’s Eastern Africa Director.
###
Niya Manditsch is currently studying Journalism and English Literature at the American University in Bulgaria. She aims to deliver articles that are both informative and entertaining.
