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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 4

Publication Date: April 25, 2023

DOI:10.14738/assrj.104.14257.

Issa-Salwe, A. M., & Osman, A. S. (2023). Has Somaliland Not Been Recognised as a Sovereign State? Advances in Social Sciences

Research Journal, 10(4). 08-12.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Why Has Somaliland Not Been Recognised as A Sovereign State?

Abdisalam M. Issa-Salwe

East Africa University

Abdullahi Salah Osman

ABSTRACT

After the collapse of the Somali state, civil war followed, leading people to turn to

their ancestral homeland. Consequently, rudimental local administrations were

formed with a provision of becoming part of a decentralised governance system in

Somalia. However, one region stood differently by declaring itself a separate state,

Somaliland, within the boundaries of the former British Somaliland Protectorate.

To overcome the objections of African countries about the session, Somaliland

claimed that its declaration of independence in 1991 was supposed to be a

dissolution of the union rather than a declaration of separation. This idea follows in

the footsteps of other failed federations, such as the United Arab Republic, which

included Egypt and Syria from 1958 to 1961, or the Senegambia Confederation,

which existed between Senegal and the Gambia from 1981 to 1989. These failed

political unions symbolized the breakup of that union and the restoration of the

protectorate's original, pre-1960 borders. (Gordon, 2023) Britain granted

Somaliland independence on June 26 1960, and after four days, it joined with the

former UN Italian Somaliland Trusteeship Territory to form the Republic of

Somalia. Thus, Somaliland's case differed markedly from the other regions as it

wanted to stand as a separate nation-state within Africa. Yet, over thirty years have

passed, and Somaliland has not been recognised as a sovereign entity. To answer

why it happened, we have to look at the historical factors on state formation in

Africa and how newly independent countries treated colonially inherited

boundaries.

Keywords: Somaliland, Federal Somali State, Colonial legacy, colonial boundaries, Pan- Africanism, Organization of African Unity (OAU).

INTRODUCTION

At the end of December 2022, in Las Anod, in northern Somalia, an upheaval started when some

prominent local figures, including Abdifatah Abdullahi Abdi, were assassinated by unknown

killers, thus sparking anti-government protests across the city. The violence escalated and is

still ongoing. How this new development would affect Somaliland’s quest for a separate state

from Somalia is a matter that warrants further elucidation.

Nevertheless, the war has brought forward the question of the identity of Somaliland and how

the world sees its claim as a distinct state from the rest of Somalia. The question of whether to

recognise Somaliland as a sovereign entity lies, among other things, within the policy and

decision of postcolonial African states that formed in the late fifties and early sixties. Prior to

that, in the early nineteen and twenty centuries, the Pan-Africanist authors viewed the colonial

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Issa-Salwe, A. M., & Osman, A. S. (2023). Has Somaliland Not Been Recognised as a Sovereign State? Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,

10(4). 08-12.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.104.14257

boundaries with suspicion created to further the interest of colonialists at odds with those of

the African people.

The advocates of Pan-Africanism forwarded the idea of bringing together all African states to

form the United States of Africa. However, once the colonial powers started leaving Africa, Pan- Africanists discovered that creating a politically united Africa was not as popular as previously

considered. Therefore, dealing with the boundaries inherited from the former colonial powers

became a pressing issue that needed appropriate attention.

THE BACKGROUND SOMALI PEOPLE'S COLONIAL DIVISION

Somalia is situated in the Horn of Africa and has gained independence from Italy as Italian

Somaliland Trusteeship Territory and Britain as British Somaliland Protectorate. The two parts

joined as the Somali Republic on July 1, 1960.

Scattered over a territory covering nearly 600,000 square kilometres in the north-eastern

corner of the African continent, theSomali-speaking people form one ofthe largest single ethnic

groups in Africa. With a population of over ten million, the Somali people are distributed from

the Awash Valley in the northwest, around the periphery of the Ethiopian highlands and along

the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean coast to the Tana River in north-eastern Kenya.

The Somali identity and settlements in this part of the Horn of Africa are generally believed to

be what the ancient Egyptians called the Land of Punt, the country of frankincense, going back

thousands of years. However, only a little was written about the Somalis until the arrival of

European colonial powers in Africa in the nineteenth century.

After the partition of Africa, Somali society was traumatised by European colonial intrusion at

the end of the nineteenth century. It shattered the peace of a unified people and ultimately

divided their territory into five distinct political entities. The extensive partition of the Somali

people became one of the causes of conflict in the Horn of Africa in the early 1960s (Issa-Salwe,

2000). According to Samatar and Laitin (1987), the most regrettable impact of Somali history

on modern politics was that a sizable portion of people connected to Somali customs remained

outside the borders granted to Somalis by the colonial powers.

As a result, many people lived in Kenya and Ethiopia as second-class citizens and unwanted

subjects. The significance of this boundary dispute and the intense yearning of so many Somalis

to be united under the banner of a single state have added to the pathos of this complex scenario

and dominated the narrative of Somali politics after independence in the 1960s (ibid, 1987).

The establishment of the independent Somali Republic on July 1, 1960, started the Somali

people's fight for a united country. This tied together the Somalis formerly subject to colonial

powers like Italy and Britain. However, it did not include people who resided in Ethiopia, Kenya,

or Djibouti (Issa-Salwe, 2000).

Consequently, Somali nationalists saw the founding of the Somali Republic as a step towards the

culmination and realisation of the Somali nation. Nearly all of Somalia's foreign policy since

gaining independence in the 1960s has been centred on unifying allSomalis under a single state.

As a result, Somalia "remained a nation in search of a state," which presented a dilemma for

Africa (Samatar et al.) The 'unification of all Somalis' became the core of Somali aspirations.

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 4, April-2023

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

As discussed before, with over 165 boundaries separating its 53 separate republics, Africa is

one of the continents with the most borders. Consequently, passionate discussions over the

fragmentation of Africa's physical, sociological, and political space and its effects on inter-state

relations have occurred between revisionists and anti-revisionists.

Gathara (2019) as one of the revisionists argue for the immediate reconfiguration of Africa's

inherited borders and the state system to eliminate sociological incongruity, improve their

economic viability, and assist in resolving the multiple crises of legitimacy, identity,

development, and integration (Fischer, 2015). For them, the postcolonial African states have

always been an alien mode of organising African societies and communities, and it has

continued to vainly strive to imitate the characteristics of the traditional Westphalia state

system.

The revisionists contend further that the postcolonial state had continued to manifest itself in

ways that were fundamentally at odds with the established and ingrained sociological realities

on the ground because the interruption of the natural evolution of political institutions in

precolonial Africa preceded it.

They concluded that the numerous inter and intra-state conflicts most prominently reflect the

problematic nature of many African states' boundaries, institutions, and governance.

They contend that re-examining Africa's colonial borders and the conditions that resulted from

them was the only way to find a solution (Gbenenye, 2016).

The 'anti-revisionist' started thinking the case thesis of leaving borders as they were left on

independence was more appealing to the emerging African leadership and the emigrating

colonialists when countries gained their freedom.

Indeed, the OAU Charter of 1963 included the principle of the inviolability of national

boundaries, which reflects this. Protection of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the

inalienable right to each member state's independent existence were among its guiding ideals.

African leaders understood the urgent need to create rules for the peaceful settlement of

disputes despite their inherited borders continuing to be sources of contention.

The leaders thus adopted the document on managing conflicts among African states at the First

Ordinary Session of Heads of State and Government level in Cairo in July 1964 (Ikome, 2012),

which reaffirmed the strict respect by all member states of the OAU principles laid down in

paragraph 3 of Article III of the Charter of the OAU.

The Article Solemnly declared that all member states pledge to respect the borders existing on

their achievement of national independence. It is noteworthy that the United Nations (UN)

accepted the OAU decision on the African boundaries despite conflicting with its well-known

slogan relating to the right to self-determination for all peoples of the world and approved the

African Union's (AU) principle of the inviolability of Africa's colonially inherited borders. The

policy of territorial status quo resulted from African leaders' legitimate fear of opening

Pandora's Box of territorial claims and possible anarchy on the continent. However, the

expectation that by keeping the box closed unconditionally, the potential difficulties would

wither away has remained an illusion. Africa's colonial boundaries have continued to manifest