Hard-line Islamist fighters exchange gun fire with Somalian military forces in Mogadishu in the summer of 2009. Somalia has been without any functioning government since 1991 -- perfect territory for different militia and factions to fight over the bones of the old state.
(CNN) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron urged the international community Thursday to help Somalia's feeble government tackle piracy, militants and hunger.
Otherwise, he said, the world risks terror threats from the troubled African nation.
World leaders met Thursday in London to address terror and a raging insurgency in the Horn of Africa nation and find ways to resolve other critical problems including famine and weak leadership that have dogged the nation for decades.
Representatives from 40 countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, attended the conference on stabilizing and rebuilding Somalia after decades of war.
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"These problems in Somalia don't just affect Somalia. They affect us all," Cameron said at the event.
"In a country where there is no hope, chaos, violence and terrorism thrive," he said. "Pirates are disrupting vital trade routes and kidnapping tourists. Young minds are being poisoned by radicalism, breeding terrorism that is threatening the security of the whole world."
Look at a high-res gallery of Somalia turmoil
Cameron said the world cannot afford to look the other way any more.
"If the rest of us just sit back and look on, we will pay a price for doing so," he said. "For two decades, politicians in the West have too often dismissed the problems in Somalia as simply too difficult and too remote to deal with."
Clinton pledged to boost U.S. efforts in the nation, and said the focus should be on political progress and bolstering security.
"The transitional federal government was always meant to be just that —transitional," she said. " It is past time for that transition to occur, and for Somalia to have a stable government. "
Somalia has not had a central government since 1991, and the Islamist Al-Shabaab has waged war against the transitional federal government for years.
Clinton said the United States will continue to work with Somali officials to create jobs, provide health and education services, and conflict resolution.
"And today I'm pleased to announce that the United States is providing an additional $64 million in humanitarian assistance to the Horn of Africa countries," she said.
She said the funds bring the total U.S. emergency assistance to the region up to more than $934 million since last year, including more than $211 million for life-saving programs in Somalia.
Thursday's session aimed to galvanize the international community to develop a more comprehensive approach to addressing Somalia.
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"We are realistic -- Somalia's problems cannot be solved in a day, but its people deserve a better future, and our own security requires their country to become more stable," U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
The meeting comes a day after the U.N. Security Council voted to increase the African Union force in Somalia from about 12,000 to close to 18,000 troops to help battle Al-Shabaab.
"We must keep up the pressure on Al-Shabaab so that their grip on Somalia continues to weaken," Clinton said.
The terror group, which announced recently that it joined al Qaeda, has lost ground but remains a potent threat in the country. The international community hopes the bolstered force will further degrade the group, creating space for a political solution.
Established in 2004, Somalia's transitional government is weak and needs significant capacity building to consolidate the country's security gains with political ones.
The international community wants it to meet a timeline for establishing a new government, including writing a constitution, before August when its mandate expires.
The crisis in Somalia has drawn in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, which have both sent troops directly, while Uganda, Djibouti and Burundi are contributing peacekeepers.
The United States has used drones to target militants in Somalia.
Adding to Somalia's burdens is the fight against famine, which has forced a constant stream of refugees into neighboring nations.
The United Nations declared an end to the famine recently, but said the hunger situation is still dire.
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Heavily armed pirates have taken advantage of the nation's lawless coastal waters to become a major threat to international shipping in the area. In this photo, a gun-wielding pirate keeps vigil along the coastline at Hobyo town, north-eastern Somalia, 2009.
The militant Islamist Somali rebel group Al-Shabaab emerged in about 2004. Its gunmen were involved in a series of assassinations of Somalis who had connections to the West. Children as young as 10 years old increasingly face horrific abuse in the region as the group forcibly recruits them to replenish its diminishing ranks of fighters. Shocking patterns have also emerged of children serving as human shields on the battlefields, according to Human Rights Watch.
An Islamist fighter stands guard as hundreds of residents watch an amputation punishment carried out. Al-Shabaab's implementation of strict Sharia law has begun to alienate many in the way that al Qaeda did in Iraq. Women have been stoned to death for adultery; amputations and beheadings are common. In some areas Al-Shabaab has banned listening to the radio and non-Arabic signs; and it has assassinated several journalists.
Al-Shabaab factions have carried out what appeared to many Somalis as senseless attacks. Here, a doctor treats a victim at Mulago hospital in Kampala late on July 11, 2010 after twin bomb blasts tore through crowds of football fans watching the World Cup final, killing 64 people, including an American, and wounding scores of others.
Amid the violence, the Somali people have endured bouts of natural disasters, including famine, drought and floods. In this picture, Farhiyo Hassan sits with her sick and malnourished two month-old twins at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu, in August 2011. The U.S. government said 30,000 children had died in Somalia due to famine in the previous three months alone.
An aerial view of the Dagahaley refugee camp which makes up part of neighboring Kenya's giant Dadaab refugee settlement. The camp, near the Kenyan border with Somalia, was designed in the early 1990s to accommodate 90,000 people but, since the civil war and the worst drought to affect the horn of Africa in six decades, the U.N. estimates over four times as many reside there.
A security officer keeps order in Dadaab as hundreds of desperate people try to move to a less crowded refugee camp set up three days' drive away.
For over 20 years Somalians have faced the horror of famine and war. In this image from 1992, women and children sit inside a feeding centre run by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baidoha, Somalia, during a period of extreme famine and drought that claimed 300,000 lives, according to the U.N. Security Council.
The one thing more persistent than famine, however, has been the ever-present conflict between warlords and sectarian militia groups. In this photo from 1997, Somali gunmen hold rocket launchers on the streets of Mogadishu after local warload Ali Mahdi Mohamed accused his rival Hussein Aidid of setting up roadblocks in the streets of the capital.
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