Editing Office - Geneva

Ceerigaabo, 22 June 2022 – Located in the remote eastern region of Sanaag, the small city of Ceerigaabo is some 560 kilometres from Hargeisa, the capital of SomalilandGetting to Ceerigaabo by car from Hargeisa involves a long and often bumpy journey. It takes 12 hours of driving; the trip to the city of around 221,000 people is often split over two days.And that is exactly where a group of United Nations officers from a variety of expert backgrounds found themselves recently for meetings with a range of Somaliland partners – the first such visit after a pause of a few years due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.“The aim of the trip is to connect with our partners – local governments, civil society and human rights activists. And by reconnecting, I mean engaging with them and finding out what their greatest challenges have been and what their opportunities are and how we can collaborate even better than how we have been collaborating in the past,” says Sia Mawalla, a human rights officer based in Hargeisa, the leader of the visiting UN team.