1.5 Literature Review
Overview
Somaliland’s self-determination and the quest for international recognition will be analyzed. Self-determination is it highly controversial notion. It has both political and legal dimensions.
According to Helen Quane, the concept of self-determination creates difficulty when the majority of the population of a State claims the right to maintain the territorial integrity of the State while an ethnic, linguistic or religious group within the State claims the right to secede and establish an independent State. They not only generate instability and civil conflict within the State but can also threaten international peace and security. These conflicts highlight the principal difficulty with the concept of self-determination. Competing claims can be advanced in the name of self-determination due to the ambiguity surrounding the concept. Each State or non-State group can resort to the interpretation which best suits its interests.
Rosalyn Higgins defines self-determination as ‘the right of the majority within a generally accepted political unit to the exercise of power’.
Envar Hassani analyzes the concept of ‘self-determination’ and its historical roots. His work explains the various stages through which the principle evolved. In a more legalist point of view. Antonio Cassese also analyzed the content and the context in which the right to self-determination operates. He clearly differentiates between the political and legal aspects of self-determination. James Crawford wrote on the relationship between state creation and self-determination in international law. A lot of work has been written on the case of Somaliland.
Michael Schoiswohl questions the non-recognition of Somaliland despite the collapse of the mother state; Somalia. He analyses the relationship between effectiveness, state collapse, recognition, and secession by claiming that the more effective a secessionist entity is the more declaratory that is redundant recognition becomes. He goes on to conclude that when a clearly effective entity (as he shows Somaliland to be) secedes from a failed state (which he shows Somalia to be), it can be legally categorized as a state, notwithstanding the absence of international recognition. The second part of his book describes the historical events in Somalia and Somaliland and analyzes various claims put forward in support of Somaliland’s right to statehood.
Schoiswohl considers the historic claim to the title of Somaliland, the right of its population to self-determination, and the Somali government’s denial of this population’s human rights prior to Somaliland’s 1991 declaration of independence. He rejects all these arguments as unsustainable grounds for secession, but then finds that Somaliland ought to be considered a state on the basis of its effective functioning, regardless of its not being entitled to what he considers “the right to secession.” Schoiswahl examines the implications of non-recognition on the status of de facto regimes, which are defined as non-state entities exercising effective control over a territory. He concludes that de facto regimes may be categorized as states despite the absence of recognition.
Schoiswohl describes the history of Somalia and Somaliland and examines Somaliland’s claim to statehood, with the conclusion that it is effectively a state, despite not having been recognized as such. At the outset, Schoiswohl argues that the different motivations for refusing to recognize de facto regimes as states are opaque and irrelevant, as they all have the same legal consequences.
Professor Iqbal Jhazbhay has published on Somaliland and its struggle for international recognition. He concludes that the main obstacle to the recognition of Somaliland is the African Union. He is in support of Somaliland’s assertion of independence in his book, “Somaliland: an African Struggle for nationhood and international recognition”. His opinion of Somaliland’s recognition issue points out that Somalia does not exist despite the narrative dreamt up by African, Arab, and international diplomacy to serve their vested political interests. He argues that those who seek a solution to the Horn of Africa‘s problems must grasp this, and evaluate Somaliland’s potential contribution to stability in the region. He focused on the achievements of Somaliland. However, those against the recognition of Somaliland argue that there are many ways to recognize the achievements of Somaliland short of secession.
Jhazbhay is strongly criticized for calling for the balkanization of a homogeneous African country. That. Somalis have more in common and regardless of their regional affiliations, they share the same ethnicity, speak the same language, follow the same religion, and have the same color. Those against Somaliland’s recognition believe that during the European scramble for Africa, Somalia fell prey to colonial rule and ended up being carved into several spheres of influence. After the Second World War, Somali-speaking people became united again under Britain. For unknown reasons, Britain handed back the south to Italy, the Northern Frontier District to mayors and local government officials. There are officials present from all over the continent, including Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Haud and Reserved areas to Ethiopia.
The recognition of Somaliland is also supported by Alison K. Eggers, who argues that Somaliland which has operated as a self-sustaining state since it declared independence in 1991, should be recognized as such by the international community. Eggers further argues that as international law expects that the right to self-determination be exercised within the framework of existing sovereign states. Somaliland finds itself at an impasse because it lacks an effective parent state from which to apply for secession. With no coherent “parent” state with which to negotiate its independence, international law and the nation-state system leave Somaliland with little alternative but to declare its independence and begin to act as an independent state, which it has done. The author maintains that the question of whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state is hindered only by the blind adherence by the international community to the nation-state system’s inviolability of borders.”
Alison K. Eggers further argues that Somaliland fulfills the Montevideo criteria for statehood (a permanent population, a defined territory, government, and the capacity to defend and represent itself) along with the obvious support for self-determination within the territory itself. That, some 97 percent of its population supported independence in a referendum a decade after its initial declaration. Its problem, however, is Somalia’s unwillingness to agree to a divorce.
Carroll and Rajagopal analyzed the legal grounds on which Somaliland bases its demand for international recognition. According to Anthony Carroll and B Rajagopal, any efforts to deny or delay recognition to Somaliland would not only put the international community at the risk of ignoring the most stable region in the Horn, it would impose untold hardship upon the people of Somaliland due to the denial of foreign assistance that recognition entails. The interest of world peace and stability requires that, where possible, the division or fragmentation of existing states should be managed peacefully and by negotiation. But where this is not possible, as is the case with Somalia, international law accepts that the interests of justice may prevail over the principle of territorial integrity.
According to Onyeonoro S. Kamanu, the light for African independence was waged under the flag of the right of self-determination. Yet the same African states and the O.A.U. condemned Biafra’s attempted withdrawal from Nigeria and similar struggles in Southern Sudan, Chad, and Eritrea, without reference to the possible merits of their peoples’ claims to the right of self-determination. Biafra secession, in particular, was fated as detrimental to African interests: it was irreconcilable with the goal of African unity and would set a precedent that could lead to the further Balkanization of the continent. As a matter of political pragmatism, after independence, African governments were virtually unanimous in agreeing that respect for existing territorial boundaries should be a guiding principle in inter-African relations, it was felt that any attempt to redraw them could plunge these states into internecine conflicts.’
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