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Civil Society Development
Several donors placed civil society development as a priority for future international donor
support to Somaliland. While support to Somaliland civil society (particularly to organizations
engaged in promoting participation in or access to democratic processes) has been a mainstay of
democracy and governance programming for Somaliland to date, those who prioritized civil
society development looking forward offered guidance on specific areas of focus.
The first area of focus articulated by members of the donor community was encouraging
Somaliland civil society to take a more active role in the development of policy and engaging
with the Somaliland government:
I think it’s having a strong relationship built between civil society and the
government, having a strong flow of communication, one of trust. And then,
secondly, it’s getting civil society organizations to break out of their comfort
zone and to get more sophisticated in generating legislation and impacting,
influencing policies or policy development… if we want to move [civil society
development] to the next level you have to have this tough engagement on
substantive issues.
Similarly, another donor representative explained:
Obviously, there is a very active civil society in Somaliland, but I think it’s
[important to encourage] developing that relationship between them and the
governing authorities and making sure that it becomes a more natural inclusion
versus an ask by donors. Again, it’s kind of the supply-demand side of the
house. And the same would go with any institution…how civil society feed[s]
into parliament and has that become a natural relationship.
Secondly, donors discussed the need to focus on working with civil society to engage with each
other and build their constituency base. Speaking about this, one donor interviewed stated:
I think that Somaliland at the moment is still kind of the briefcase civil society
level, so building constituencies within organizations and legitimate
constituencies, so that the organization has a sense of membership, and members
feel like they have some control… You don’t see a lot of alliances among the civil
society sector that are well organized and that are really on point about their
issues. I think that would go back to building their capacity in terms of being able
to form coalitions.
Finally, donors prioritized supporting civil society organizations to fulfill watchdog functions
and to encourage government accountability.
Independent Media
A majority of the donor representatives interviewed prioritized bolstering independent media in
Somaliland. Rationale for this priority was explained by one donor as, “Independent media is
crucial…you can’t have a strong democracy without independent media. You need to have a
free flow of ideas, you need to have information getting out there from various sources.”
Another donor stated that currently, a “weak spot” of the democratization agenda for
