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which receives funding for its
Pillars of Peace
and democratization programs from multiple
sources. In the period leading up to the 2010 presidential election, the Democratization Steering
Committee began to take on an expanded role to include donor coordination for other
programming. While a number of international partners, including Oxfam and IRI, now
implement programs in Somaliland with funding from members of the Democratization
Steering Committee, Interpeace continues to serve a facilitation role as the only non-funder and
implementing partner member of the Democratization Steering Committee. The
Democratization Coordination Committee was established subsequent to the Democratization
Steering Committee as a mechanism for program coordination that is inclusive of a wider group
of organizations, including donors that do not fund Interpeace and the other international
implementing partners working in Somaliland; however, the Democratization Steering
Committee remains the primary mechanism utilized by the donors working in Somaliland to
coordinate programs.
The general impression by donor and implementing partner interviewees of the coordination
among international partners working in Somaliland was positive. One interviewee explained,
“The Democratization Steering Committee exists now for the ninth year in a row. There’s no
other donor committee with this degree of specialization that has existed for such a long time,
not nearly.” Others said the following:
One thing that I’ve seen as positive over the last number of years is that it’s the
same organizations that have been working on the various elections, and so that
we are, it seems to me, developing an institutional memory about these… I think
what’s been nice to see when we’ve been working with the Democratization
Coordination Committee and others is that when we come, it’s we come back for
the next rounds of meetings, it’s, Saferworld and Oxfam and IRI and [others], and
some of the staff may have changed but the institutional memory of all those
institutions and what they’ve done before remain…I think, related to that is that
we all managed to coordinate very, very effectively. And I think that one of the
things that I really appreciated enormously about the work in Somaliland has been
the close coordination and actually the strong coordination through the
Democratization Steering Committee and the Democratization Coordination
Committee with the donors and with the other NGOs. I think it’s actually a very
healthy environment; everybody has specific niches that they work on in different
pieces of the puzzle;
and:
I think coordination I guess in Somalia overall is not very good. But for the
democratization part in Somaliland, it's actually - compared to the rest - very good
I would say… like the close engagement with Interpeace and the support to the
elections and so on, and the close connection to the donor communities, to the big
donors through the Democratization Steering Committee. It's working very well.
And also they have the broader - it's called the Democratization Coordination
Committee, whereas other NGOs as well are involved.
