65
Alliances and Strategies
Under the governance pillar of the
National Development Plan
, the government of Somaliland
considers the needs of the Somaliland parliament over a 5-year period. Costing a projected $4
million, the priorities in the plan are:
•
Constitutional reform;
•
Building institutional capacity;
•
Enhancing linkages between elected members of the parliament and their constituencies;
•
Strengthening the capacity of the selected parliamentary committees and house staff;
•
Improving the system of reviewing and approving laws and regulations proposed by the
executive;
•
Building research and information generation and dissemination capacity;
•
Addressing the gender imbalance in parliament, and;
•
Holding the government accountable.
In order to meet these priorities, the strategy identifies the following activities as critical:
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•
Building a library shared by both houses;
•
Hiring legal experts;
•
Establishing a printing press shared by both houses;
•
Building new cafeteria for both houses of parliament;
•
Recruiting support staff;
•
Training members and staff to enhance their skills;
•
Organizing study tours;
•
Establishing regional offices for constituency consultation;
•
Clearing backlog legislation;
•
Upgrading the security of the parliament, and;
•
Enhancing the information and communications technology system, including creation of a
database for the House of Representatives.
Future Considerations
While it has been argued that Somaliland demonstrates “the efficacy of internally-driven,
culturally-rooted, ‘bottom-up’ approaches to post-war nation-building” which reconcile
“indigenous cultures and traditions and modernity,”
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the future of Somaliland’s parliament
depends on its ability to show that it is a dynamic force in the country’s development.
The over-riding consideration for Somaliland’s parliament in the near future is the planned
elections for the House of Representatives, which have been scheduled for June 2015, and the
Guurti,
for
June 2016. These elections will demonstrate whether the government has sufficient
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There is a mismatch between budgeted activities and stated activities.
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Jhazbhay, Iqbal D.
Somaliland: An African Struggle for Nationhood and International Recognition
.
Johannesburg: Institute for Global Dialogue/South African Institute of International Affairs, 2009. Print.
