Dokument #1025460
IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Autor)
According to a former teacher at the
National University of Somalia who is currently residing in Canada,
it was not very common to see army officers studying at the
University of Mogadishu before 1985 (2 Nov. 1992). Nevertheless,
there were officers studying at the university, some of whom were
sent by the Ministry of Defence to study fields that were of
interest to the armed forces, such as medicine (Ibid.).
According to a former director of education
of Somalia who is currently residing in Canada, the University of
Somalia had some students who were in the armed forces (2 Nov.
1992). In the late 1980s a number of seats in the university were
reserved for the military, although in the early eighties there was
not a large number of officers attending university nor a
systematic effort to make it so (Ibid.). In this period,
most military officers who pursued further studies attended the
military academies of Somalia and other countries
(Ibid.).
According to the manager of the Centre for
Italian Scholastic and Technical Organizations (COSTI), who is
familiar with the education system of Somalia, officers of the
armed forces were allowed to attend university (2 Nov. 1992).
Officers were sometimes granted leave or given a job in the armed
forces that, due to its location or time requirements, would allow
the person to take university courses (Ibid.). The granting
of permission to attend university, whether as an assignment or for
personal purposes, depended largely on the individual's boss or his
supervising authorities (Ibid.).
Please find attached a document that
provides some information on the training of officers of the armed
forces of Somalia.
Additional and/or corroborating information
could not be found among the sources currently available to the
DIRB.
Centre for Italian Scholastic and
Technical Organizations (COSTI), Toronto. 2 November 1992.
Telephone Interview with Manager.
Former Teacher of the University of
Somalia. 2 November 1992. Telephone Interview.
Former Director of Education of Somalia.
2 November 1992. Telephone Interview.
Nelson, Harold D., ed. 1982. Area
Handbook Series: Somalia: A Country Study. Washington: American
University, Foreign Area Studies, pp. 252-257.