Obviously I am not a humanitarian expert, but this is definitely something we've looked into.
I'm not sure whether there's been a diminished space. I was doing research in 2011, looking at all the gatekeepers' communities in Mogadishu at the time. I would say the difference is that you have a few more spots closer to the epicentre—Baidoa town, for example, which in 2011 IDPs could not go to—that have opened up. It means that in some ways, humanitarian actors have somewhat closer access to some of the communities most at need, but that access is incredibly limited.
In Mogadishu, many of the international humanitarian organizations don't go past kilometre 13; they're not going further out of town. What we've seen over the last six months—just two weeks ago around Baidoa, and it has happened around Belet Weyne—is local NGO staff going out into slightly more al Shabaab-controlled areas and basically being abducted for ransom. All of them have been released, but after quite significant negotiations. From the standpoint of the al Shabaab narrative, I think it's quite often wanting individuals to deal in their communities on their terms, but from the point of view of access, this obviously limits things significantly.
We've also seen a lot of targeted attacks on humanitarian actors over the last year, so it remains incredibly difficult. It means that there is limited monitoring of what is going on. At the end of the day, this then has very significant impacts also on those most in need, in terms of making sure that those who really are in need are getting the assistance.
This comes back to the comment Fowsia was making about these gatekeepers, who very much run the show around internally displaced settlements, especially in Mogadishu, where there's a very entrenched system because there's no one else. The government does not manage any of these IDP settlements; it is these private individuals, generally linked to local clan militia, who are controlling entrance, access, etc. to these facilities and who often determine which IDPs get access to assistance as well.
It's still a very difficult context.