The Evolution of the Women’s Movement in Somaliland: Challenges and Grounds for Optimism

It is important to acknowledge that, the Somalia-Somaliland conflict of the 1980s/1990s continues to influence the politics, gender relations, and evolving women’s movement of the semi-independent territory of Somaliland as well as the gender relations and evolving women’s movement in Somaliland today.12 In the wake of this conflict, women across Somaliland communities have increasingly become primary breadwinners and heads of their households, and they have gained a stronger presence and role in public life.13 Despite these significant sociocultural shifts, the Somaliland government continues to ignore the importance of reforming policy and legal frameworks to recognize and treat women as equal citizens.14 All attempts so far for legal reform that could enable women’s equality have been ceased or obstructed by either the parliament or the House of Elders. This indicates a failure by the government of Somaliland to recognize that the human rights of women and girls are a crucial part of the peace and development processes of the country. The groups of women who initially formed NAGAAD Network, which was founded to advocate for women’s empowerment and to work toward achieving an egalitarian society, constituted the beginnings of the Somaliland women’s movement and also played an active role in peace building, reconciliation, and reconstruction after the civil conflict of the early 1990s.15 Over the last two decades, women’s groups and women-led civil society organizations have grown and increasingly participated in Somaliland national development activities, including their work to disempower the warlords, increase community awareness, reduce interclan fighting, and promote women’s participation in the public spheres of politics, employment, and social interaction.16 Despite these contributions, the structures and institutions of power and decision-making in Somaliland have remained deeply patriarchal.17 Women make up half of the nation, yet their oppression continues. This negatively impacts the development of the entire nation, causing slow growth or stagnation in education, health, and security sectors as well as on human rights indicators.

“People try to colonize each other’s pasts, and men try to colonize women’s versions of conflicts”18

Although the struggle for an independent and peaceful Somaliland was a joint struggle, where

12 Tungaraza, 2010 13 Gardner & Bushra, 2004; Tungaraza, 2010 14 Gardner & Bushra, 2004; Tungaraza, 2010 15 Tungaraza, 2010 16 Jama, F, 2010 17 Jama, F, 2010 18 Hale, 2012

women played a significant and equal role in the fight for independence, the memory of women’s participation in the struggle is being reshaped and adjusted to serve the interests of patriarchal hierarchies in the country.19 On a 2018 visit to Somaliland’s newly opened national Museum, the Saryan Museum, one could hardly find anything speaking to women’s participation in the struggle for the independence of Somaliland. On the other hand, one cannot deny the critical role women played in establishing stability after 1991.20 Dr. Edna Adan is one of the women who was particularly involved in the peace processes. She was the first woman from Somaliland to advocate for ending all forms of FGM/C and served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2003-2006 and later served as a Minister of Social Welfare. In addition to Dr. Edna Adan, there were many other female civil society activists involved in the Somaliland peace processes who significantly contributed through their activism on women’s rights, peace, and development in Somaliland.21 As of the mid-1990s, a number of women’s organizations and networks were emerging in Somaliland, acting as platforms for women in Somaliland to amplify their agendas.22 One such organization is NAGAAD Network, a network of women’s organizations, which is still in operation today. The organizations within NAGAAD Network laid down the roots of the women’s movement. Their primary focus was centered on promoting women’s rights to political participation and education, changing the harmful gender-based attitudes of the community, enabling women’s economic empowerment, and increasing women’s influence over decisionmaking at all levels.23

The post-conflict democratization period in Somaliland created opportunities for women, but in the intersecting oppressions of gender, class, and clan -based discriminations have prevented all but a small, elite class of educated women from having access to the opening spaces of political activism. This is a significant impediment to building an inclusive and influential women’s movement in Somaliland. However, there are many other limitations that obstruct the women’s movement in Somaliland. The Somaliland government has always treated the women’s movement as an extension of its power and has always expected support from the NGOs working in the area of women’s rights in Somaliland. The influence that male elites in Somaliland exert over the country’s political parties has hampered the consolidation of women’s rights groups and NGOs formed during the post-war period into an actual movement. Moreover, the Somaliland government has created a falsely close relationship with the traditional women’s movement in the country to strategically use this relationship to pacify the resistance against the government’s neglect of the women’s movement agenda. Throughout the years since Somaliland’s independence, subsequent governments have continued to reject fundamental changes toward the improvement of women’s rights and gender relations in the country, by rejecting the quota system, refusing to amend the Criminal Code to include the Sexual Offences Bill, and failing to address many of the deeply rooted grievances of women and girls through laws and policies.

19 Ingiriis & Hoehne, 2013; Jama, F, 2010 20 Jama, F, 2010 21 Jama, F, 2010; Tungaraza, 2010

22

23 Ibid. Tungaraza, 2010

As a product of Somaliland’s poor social welfare infrastructure, combined with the rising tide of militant Salafi ideology, and the country’s proximity to Somalia, Al-Shabaab has emerged as another factor that threatens the goals of the women’s moment, and the realization of gender equality in Somaliland. Al-Shabaab bases its political ideology on challenging and fighting the ‘west’ through violent tactics, which it justifies with distorted interpretations of 7th century Islamic Shari’a. Al-Shabaab relies heavily on an ideological narrative, which strictly controls gender relations and cements male guardianship over women. The constantly looming shadow of Al-Shabaab exacerbates the already high prevalence of gender discrimination in Somaliland’s conservative, clan-based society; a society which shows signs of becoming increasingly disposed toward a militant Islamist ideology. These conservative and militant religious forces significantly limit the influence of the voices of women activists and their ability to lead assertive campaigns for women’s rights. These conservative forces also exert considerable influence over politics, in general, in Somaliland. Yet, in its current semi-independent position, the Somaliland government is not directly exposed to international pressure or human rights mechanisms that might otherwise provide a counterbalance to oppressive ideologies. This has largely helped the government to avoid accountability for monitoring human rights violations. Thus, the international community’s refusal to accept Somaliland’s claim to nationhood has hindered the progress for gender equality and the women’s movement.

Despite these formidable obstacles, the women of Somaliland are asserting their own agenda. In recent years, many Somaliland women and men have expressed dissatisfaction with their government’s superficial democracy and poor commitment to human and women’s rights. In 2018, Naima Qorane, a 27 year-old female poet, was detained for reciting poems about the unity of the Somali people. She was found guilty of bringing the nation or the state into contempt, and sentenced to three years in prison, though she was released in May of 2018.24 This situation highlights the dangers of voicing opinions of which the Somaliland government does not approve.

Naima forms part of a wave of women and female and male youth who are organizing to defy the status quo and trying their best to find platforms within civil society to express their interests and agendas outside the scope of both traditional NGO modalities and clan structures. There are changes occurring in Somaliland within the women’s movement that go beyond the traditional structure of NGOs. These changes are assuming new formats for organization and advocacy that actually work, and fit the nature and background of the groups involved. These formulas, although not new, draw inspiration from different modalities of grassroots activism. Professional associations (such as midwife or nurse associations), small business and entrepreneurial groups, and women street vendor cooperatives are good examples, of this kind of effective, contextspecific, grassroots activism.

The number of women in Somaliland participating in public life is also growing. More and more women are becoming engaged in art, cultural activities, business, and entrepreneurship. The Hargeisa Cultural Centre, which provides a space for both Somaliland males and females to

24 Burke, 2018

exist safely and to have access to knowledge, creative arts, dance, music, cultural activities, and debates, has contributed significantly to giving women a voice in a broader and mixed platform. The New York Times article, ‘I Feel Strong and Free,’25 highlights women’s refusal to be excluded from the world of sport in Somaliland. The article notes that women’s representation in the 10-kilometre marathon organized annually in Hargeisa, has been steadily increasing, with 80 female participants this past year.

The Midwifery Leadership and Development in Somaliland Association (SLNMA) represents an emerging modality for the women’s movement through the alliance of jobs dominated by women, such as midwifery and nursing. The University of Hargeisa is also providing a space for women to organize and learn, particularly within the University of Hargeisa legal clinic, which enables female lawyers to access and engage with the legal system. The Women Journalist Association (WIJA) is another attempt by women to organize beyond the bounds of the conventional NGO format. These efforts resist the ‘NGOization’26 of the women’s rights struggle in Somaliland.

The NGOization of women’s rights activism in Somaliland has contributed to factionalism and polarization within women’s movements, limiting their capacities for activism and political influence. This results in large part from a prevalent perception within the NGO sector that identifies women outside the sector – particularly poor and minority women – as beneficiaries of NGO interventions, but not as partners in the same struggle. It is also important to acknowledge that women in Somaliland are extremely diverse and as such, their agendas and needs are equally diverse. The fear of politicization that characterizes the NGOization of women’s movements will eventually do more harm than good as it will impose a point of stagnation upon the women’s agenda and will stifle exploration of innovative and unconventional methodologies of struggle and advocacy. During focus group discussions, women activists in Somaliland recognized that working with NGOs, comes with significant disadvantages and that in Somaliland, women’s activism should be developed and supported from the grassroots. Several of the focus group participants added that the women’s movement in Somaliland should build alliances that are inclusive of the full diversity of women in Somaliland, including the younger generations.

Between 2017 and 2020, SIHA Network, in its efforts to reach out to and enable the organizing of urban poor women in the informal sector in the Horn of Africa, developed and implemented a project working with women street vendors in Hargeisa, Somaliland. The objective of the project was to connect these women to the wider women’s rights movements in Hargeisa, and to enable women street vendors to become active agents in changing their situation. By the end of the project, SIHA Network had supported 150 women street vendors in Hargeisa to form three large cooperatives. The women received leadership and human rights training and learned how to utilize the cooperative model to increase the safety and financial security of their community of women street vendors. The women involved in this project were primarily urban, poor, and minority women as well as migrant and internally displaced women who depend on street and

25

26 Dahir, 2020 Al-Karib, 2018

market vending for their livelihoods.27 This SIHA Network engagement also supported these women in the informal sector to organize into networks and groups to advocate effectively for women’s access to basic rights, like education, legal rights, and sexual and reproductive health rights. In Wajale, a major hub city in Somaliland, a large group of women street vendors exercised their collective power within the women cooperatives to demand fairer treatment. As in other parts of the country, women vendors in Wajale are regularly exposed to physical or verbal harassment, assault, and confiscation and destruction of their wares by local government officials and police forces.28 In January 2019, the women vendors in Wajale called out to the President of Somaliland, demanding justice for the crimes that had been committed against them by the city authorities. They organized a vocal television and radio campaign, which brought in support from across the country.29

Overall, despite the entrenched gender-discriminatory aspects of Somaliland society, shifts in the actual lived realties of women and men in Somaliland are laying the groundwork for progress toward equality.30 Women working is fast becoming the norm in Somaliland, as their contribution is fundamental to the survival of the household. This shift in labor norms has coincided with women’s increasing recognition of their social, economic, and political value and rights.31 Women of different backgrounds within Somaliland society are striving to occupy public spaces, and focusing on controlling their own lives rather than waiting for someone else to change for them. While the process of transformation will not be easy, the progress being made at the grassroots is evidence of the capacity of women to push for change in their own societies, exceeding the assumptions of NGOs who have long occupied a gatekeeping position vis-à-vis the women’s movement.

27 SIHA Network, 2018b 28 Ibid. 29 SIHA Network, 2019 30 Jama, F, 2010; Tungaraza, 2010 31 Gardner & Bushra, 2004