86
•
District councilors, directly elected by the public. The number of district council
members per district differs depending on the grade of the district, which is in turn
determined by parliament and the government. The number of council members per
district grade has been set as follows:
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The Capital City, Hargeisa
25 members
Grade A Districts
21 members
Grade B Districts
17 members
Grade C Districts
13 members
Grade D Districts
9 members
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Resources
According to the
National Development Plan
, the government of Somaliland anticipates that
nearly 11 percent of its proposed budget will be allocated to governance, including the security
and justice sectors. Due to the cross-cutting nature of governance, it is difficult to delineate
specific budget lines within sector budgets such as health, education and water/sanitation:
Sector
Amount (USD)
Percent
Allocation
Health
26,000,000
31.2
Livelihoods
21,100,000
25.3
Education
18,100,000
21.7
Governance
9,000,000
10.8
Water/Sanitation
7,000,000
8.4
Private
1,600,000
1.9
Infrastructure
500,000
0.6
Total
83,300,000
100
Local government revenues continue to lag behind service delivery responsibilities, and despite
claims that Somaliland’s local administrations have succeeded in sustaining themselves despite
limited external assistance,
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the reality is that a lack of financial and human resources acts as a
major hindrance to the delivery of social services to communities.
Local governance takes up more than $75 million of the
National Development Plan
budget, of
which more than $65 million is for “Strengthening Regional and District Council
Administrations.” In 2011, for the first time, Somaliland executed fiscal state transfers to six
districts following the establishment of a fiscal state transfer mechanism. However the fund
transfers are irregular and the transfer system does not support all districts equally.
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According to Article 4 of the
2001 Presidential and Local Council Elections Law
and Article 25 of the 2002
law.
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19 Grade D districts are yet to be constituted.
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Eubank, Nicholas.
Working Paper 198 January 2010 Peace-Building without External Assistance: Lessons from
Somaliland
. Working paper no. 198. Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2010. Print.
