Somali Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (SOMESHA)

Contact Information

  • Where – Somalia (Eastern Africa)
  • Website – www.somesha.wordpress.com
  • Contact Person – Daud Abdi Daud
  • Email – Daauud27@gmail.com
  • Address – Taleh Coca-cola Area, Tahir Printing Press House, Hodon District, Mogadishu
  • Other – somesha2010@yahoo.com, somesha2010@gmail.com

Areas of Expertise

SOMESHA has expertise in a range of areas, including:

Main Aims and Objectives

SOMESHA is non-profit and non-governmental association, which is an umbrella body of professionals from many different districts. It is the third labour union, representing over 80 journalists nationwide.

Goals:

  • Develop a new journalistic paradigm that would enable citizens and communities to shape the news agenda by enhancing the skills of community journalists and raising the professional standards of the media.
  • Encourage greater citizen’s participation in governance and civic life through public journalism initiatives.
  • Increase popular understanding of peace, development, social justice and governance issues through better and involved journalism that would contribute to policy reform.

Upholding the Principles of Conflict Transformation

SOMESHA builds capacities in news reporting and in developing media-citizen engagement mechanisms. It likewise strengthens community-based media networks and journalism initiatives anchored on the principles of public journalism that promotes the idea that the news belongs to the people and that the news should lead to the solution of local problems.

It also works for the safety of community journalists through the Somali Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (SOMESHA) office.

Where and with Whom?

Formally, SOMESHA is based in Mogadishu Somalia and is a member of the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ), the United Religions Initiative (URI), the Global Civil Society Organization for Disaster Risk Reduction (GNDR), the African Federation of Environment and Agricultural Journalists (AFEAJ), the African Forest Communicators Network (AFCOMNET) and Somalia Climate Change Network (SCCN).

SOMESHA is a pending member of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ).

Main Activities in the Field of Conflict Transformation

SOMESHA has for over four years been operating in Somalia as a non-governmental journalists association.
Somalia development has not been well served by the national media due to the media professionals who are uninformed about national development agendas and the country’s leadership, which has not factored the role of media in their development programmes, whilst support for media from donors has not been effective.

SOMESHA members and its leadership worked together to achieve a remarkable activities including:

  • Lobbying for the determination of a Somalia Exclusive Economic Zone (Somalia-EEZ);
  • Formation of the Somalia Climate Change Network (SCCN); after which the South Central Somalia Non State Actor Forum (SOSCENSA) and SOMESHA organized a consultation meeting with civil society representatives in a roadmap for achieving sustainable agricultural practices as a way to increase resilience to climate change was developed.
  • Lobbying for an end to “Insult Laws” and Criminal Defamation in Somalia, which lead to the arrest of SOMESHA Secretary General, Mr. Daud Abdi Daud, on February 5, 2013.

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