They adjudicate on issues ranging from squatter land disputes between and among ethnic groups to settlements of bills between sex workers and their clients. Warlords have ruled Somalia since its elected government collapsed more than a decade ago. With the ensuing clan-based conflicts and hostilities, the health system collapsed along with other civil society institutions. International and UN peace efforts have so far failed. For more than two decades now rebels from southern Sudan have been waging a guerrilla war against the Sudanese government military forces in efforts to overturn the Muslim shariah law, imposed on a largely Christian and animist south by an Islamic administration based in the north of the country.
Peace continues to elude south Sudan as one negotiation after another collapses in failure.
Humanitarian aid, mainly in the form of relief food and very rudimentary health care services are provided by a bunch of humanitarian relief and health NGOs and the UN under the auspices of Operation Lifeline Sudan. Only health initiatives presently provide the bridges for peace in both Somalia's Gedo Region and south Sudan. The break out the health-brokered peace has made the area a relatively safe place in the whole of Somalia. Concluding remarks Debilitating armed conflicts and wars are often rooted in ethnic rivalries and gross inequities in income and opportunities. And poor people are often the conscripts and casualties of wars, the targets of crime and exploitation, and the statistics of diseases that are mostly preventable.