Summary
Since declaring its independence from Somalia in 1991, Somaliland has set up its own government institutions, written its own laws and constitution, and held credible elections. No government in the world has yet recognized Somaliland’s independence and for 18 years the territory has been left in legal limbo—a country that does not exist. During that time Somaliland has gone a long way towards building security and developing democratic institutions of governance. But the government’s failure to hold elections planned for a year ago has laid bare the limitations of that progress and now threatens to reverse it. Somaliland is at a crossroads, and the events of the next few months could well determine whether the territory will build upon its gains or see them begin to unravel.
What Somaliland has accomplished over the years is both improbable and deeply impressive. While much of south/central Somalia remains mired in chaos and bloodshed, Somaliland has built a hard-won peace that it has now maintained for more than a decade. That peace has sheltered Somalilanders from the horrific abuses that have destroyed so many lives across Somalia. At the same time, Somaliland has done much to build the foundations of democratic governance grounded in respect for fundamental human rights. In 2003 and 2005 it held competitive and credible national elections, including parliamentary polls that put the territory’s House of Representatives firmly in the hands of the political opposition. There is a vibrant print media and an active and independent civil society. Somaliland has accomplished these things primarily on its own, in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
All of this stands in marked contrast not just to the chaos in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, but also to the records of governments across the Horn of Africa. The brutal, systematic repression that characterizes governance in Ethiopia and Eritrea does not exist in Somaliland. Its elections have not been undermined by the sort of brazen fraud that delegitimized Kenya’s 2007 polls or rendered meaningless by broader patterns of government repression like Ethiopia’s 2008 local government elections. Somaliland’s security forces have not been implicated in the kind of deliberate attacks against civilians that have taken place in Ethiopia, Kenya, and south/central Somalia in recent years.
The problem with all of these comparisons is that—given the dismal human rights situation that prevails across the region—they set the bar extremely low. Viewed objectively, Somaliland’s human rights gains are both limited and fragile. Despite the achievements, human rights violations by government officials occur with impunity.
Government officials have often harassed journalists, opposition figures, and other government critics. Numerous journalists and opposition activists have been briefly detained in retaliation for their activities. Many have also been subjected to attempted bribes by government officials eager to bring them into the fold of the ruling United Democratic Peoples’ Party (UDUB).
While rare, more heavy-handed acts of repression have also occurred. A former driver to Somaliland’s first family who blew the whistle on alleged acts of corruption was imprisoned and released only after a public outcry resulted from photos of him lying ill in a hospital, chained to his bed. Journalists who reported on similar allegations of government corruption have been arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, then released under strong public pressure.
While Somaliland’s civil society and print media are both independent and vibrant, government efforts to curtail the strength of both institutions have had a chilling effect. Months after it attempted to challenge in court the constitutionality of the government’s use of illegal security committees as instruments of detention, Somaliland’s preeminent independent human rights monitoring organization was effectively dismantled after a leadership struggle that was characterized by overt government interference. The government has refused to permit the emergence of any independent radio broadcasters—the one media outlet capable of reaching most of Somaliland’s population.
Arguably the most important caveat to everything Somaliland has achieved—and the one thing that most threatens those gains in the short term—is the presidency’s consistent and brazen refusal to abide by the rule of law. Perhaps the most glaring example of the government’s extralegal practices is its use of Security Committees to usurp the role of the courts across a broad range of criminal justice and other matters. The security committees, made up of government officials and security officers, exist without a sound legal basis. They completely ignore the due process rights guaranteed by Somaliland’s constitution and regularly sentence defendants to prison terms en masse without even allowing the accused an opportunity to speak. During Human Rights Watch’s most recent visit to Somaliland in February-March 2009, over half of the prisoners in Somaliland’s main Mandhera prison, primarily alleged petty criminals and juveniles, had been sentenced by the Security Committees, not the courts.
The government’s use of the Security Committees is an important human rights issue in and of itself—they have left hundreds of Somalilanders to languish in prison with no due process rights. But the committees are a symptom of a larger problem—the presidency’s willingness to run roughshod over the legal and constitutional restraints on its power. There are important and very substantial limits on the government’s power, but these are mostly informal constraints rooted in the power of public opinion and traditional institutions. The formal boundaries to presidential power set down by Somaliland’s laws and constitution are frequently swept aside and ignored.
The courts and legislature have shown no ability to hold the administration of Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin in check. Somaliland’s House of Representatives is under opposition control but the presidency largely ignores the institution and brushes aside its attempts to exercise oversight of government finances as provided for by the constitution. The Supreme Court has the power to overturn unconstitutional government actions but the court is beholden to the executive—activists who attempted to challenge the legality of the Security Committees were simply thrown out of court and arrested. Neither that case nor any other constitutional challenge to government action has ever been heard by the court.
Somaliland society at large remains able to limit the president’s ability to force through deeply unpopular actions. But there are also severe limits to public willingness to openly challenge government actions for fear of threatening Somaliland’s hard-won peace and stability or damaging its chances of international recognition. The president and his party have successfully exploited this widespread aversion to direct confrontation to occupy a space well past the legal limits of their power but short of what would trigger real public anger. Many Somalilanders lament that they are effectively “hostages to peace.”
The extent of the danger posed by these broader trends has become apparent with the president’s repeated failure to hold elections that could turn his administration out of power. Somaliland’s presidential elections were originally scheduled to be held in April 2008. But the president has so far extended his own mandate by 18 months through the bicameral legislature’s unelected Guurti, or House of Elders, using means whose constitutionality is questionable at best.
The president’s insistence that these delays result solely from logistical problems with organizing the elections is disingenuous. Somaliland has held credible elections before with less institutional capacity than it has today. Logistical hurdles and incompetence are real problems, but they result largely from the government’s total failure to meet its responsibilities. The Riyale administration obtained an initial one-year extension of its mandate in 2008 in order to have a second chance at organizing the polls—and then squandered it.
Somaliland now faces a moment of real danger. The president may be intending to prolong his mandate without elections for as long as possible, and his administration risks doing lasting damage to Somaliland’s emerging democratic system in the process. There are still good reasons to believe that Somaliland will emerge from this crisis with its democratic system intact. If elections are held in September 2009 as currently scheduled, and if those polls are free and fair, the damage will be minimized. But at this crucial moment it is vital that Somaliland’s international partners intervene to lend momentum in the right direction.
Most international engagement with Somaliland has been hampered by the fact that key donors and potential bilateral partners bind their relationships with Somaliland to the framework of their engagement with the radically different context prevailing in south/central Somalia. Human Rights Watch, in keeping with its organizational mandate, takes no position on whether Somaliland’s independence should be recognized. But for the sake of contributing to human rights and regional security, key actors, including the African Union and western donor states, should immediately engage more deeply with Somaliland with a view to averting an electoral crisis and then maintain that deeper level of engagement over the longer term.
In the short-term, what is most needed is robust international pressure on Somaliland’s government to attempt no further delay of the elections. This should be accompanied by substantial international assistance to ensure that the polls are organized by September 2009 and closely monitored by both domestic and international observers. In the longer term, Somaliland’s international partners should devote themselves to addressing the root cause of the looming crisis by using both sustained and targeted pressure and institutional capacity building assistance to help ensure the government acts within the confines of its own laws and constitution.
Moving forward past the elections Somaliland’s government should move urgently to strengthen the rule of law and combat human rights abuses. Important first steps include stripping the government’s Security Committees of all power to order arrests and impose prison sentences, committing to improving the independence and capacity of the judiciary, and ending overbroad restrictions on the right to hold political demonstrations and other assemblies.