The UN Panel of Expert on Somalia’s (formerly SEMG/Monitoring Group) 2019 final report, which was recently made public.
The group managed to produce the report under very difficult circumstances during this mandate, in the face of obstructionism by the Federal Government of Somalia and the inability to travel to the country since February 2019.
Highlights from the report include:
- Confirmation of Al-Shabaab’s manufacture of home-made explosives (HME);
- Expansion of Al-Shabaab ‘taxation’ to encompass Mogadishu port;
- Systematic violations of the arms embargo over the course of a decade by the State-owned Metals and Engineering Corporation (MetEC), based in Ethiopia;
- Al-Shabaab’s January 2019 attack on the DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi;
- The existence of Al-Shabaab cells in Kenya and Tanzania aimed at carrying out attacks and kidnapping foreign nationals;
- The first instance in which the ISIL faction in Somalia was linked to a planned attack in another country;
- Irregularities in the collection of $5.8 million in air navigation fees by the FGS Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation;
- The ongoing diversion of FGS-marked weapons into the illicit sphere;
- The large-scale import of commercial explosives into Somalia, creating the threat of diversion for purposes of IED construction;
- A lack of illicit charcoal exports since August 2018.
Click the link below to read the full report
