IOM Builds Capacity of Somaliland Government with Graduate Internships

GENEVA, Switzerland, March 4, 2014/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- Forty unemployed university graduates hired by an IOM livelihoods programme to work as interns in Somaliland's local and regional government in Burao and Borama have completed their seven-month internships.

Twenty-six of the 14 women and 26 men have already been offered permanent positions in the public and private sectors – many of them in the various local and regional offices in which they completed their internships. In Burao municipality, all nine interns – six women and three men – were hired at the end of the programme.

The Japanese-funded programme offered the graduates an opportunity to support key government agencies and allowed local and regional authorities to diversify their workforce and benefit from the contribution of talented young people.

High unemployment in Somaliland, especially among school-leavers and university graduates, has fuelled an increase in irregular migration, drug addiction and conflict, with hundreds of young people embarking every month on a perilous journey to Europe across the Sahara.

Growing national concern about the problem led Somaliland President Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo to establish a national committee to recommend ways to reduce irregular youth migration. The high profile committee has been charged with devising a national youth employment plan.