Somaliland is not perfect; no place on earth is. But in the midst of regional crisis and global democratic backsliding, Somaliland’s achievements and dogged commitment to its principles deserve more notice.
By Michelle Gavin
On May 31st, the people of Somaliland went to the polls to participate in long-delayed parliamentary and municipal elections. The largely autonomous region in the north of Somalia, which had a different colonial history from the rest of the country and declared its independence in 1991, is building an impressive history of credible elections and peaceful transfers of power.
While Somalilanders were peacefully making their will clear at the ballot box, giving opposition parties control of Somaliland’s parliament, citizens in the rest of Somalia continued coping with a government that provides little in the way of security or services, depends on African Union peacekeepers and international aid, and too often cannot seem to agree on even the most basic parameters of its political system.
It’s not as if Somaliland was destined to be a regional democratic champion. While it is true that British colonizers’ indirect rule left local leadership more intact than Italians did in Somalia, plenty of factors work against Somaliland’s success. It is extremely poor, but has made some hard-won development gains.
It carries a legacy of trauma from the brutality of the Siyad Barre regime, yet historical grievance is not at the heart of its national vision. Its clan and sub-clan dynamics are not as complex as those to the south, but they are by no means uncomplicated. It has less capacity to engage other states or international financial institutions than its neighbors because the world does not recognize its independence, yet it forges ahead with plans to improve infrastructure, provide jobs to its youthful population, and hold its leaders accountable at the ballot box.
Somaliland is not perfect; no place on earth is. But in the midst of regional crisis and global democratic backsliding, Somaliland’s achievements and dogged commitment to its principles deserve more notice. Somaliland stands as a rebuke to those who claim that authoritarianism is simply the required price of stability in the region, or that democratic principles are a fetish of foreigners with no real traction on the ground. Its successes should also prompt policymakers abroad, currently fixated on the Horn of Africa’s multiple crises, to rethink what is possible in the region. Somaliland’s example suggests that the answer may be vastly more ambitious, and far less sensitive to external influence, than conventional wisdom might suggest.
Michelle Gavin
Senior Fellow for Africa Studies
Michelle D. Gavin is senior fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has over twenty years of experience in international affairs in government and non-profit roles. She was formerly the managing director of The Africa Center, a multidisciplinary institution dedicated to increasing understanding of contemporary Africa. From 2011 to 2014 she was the United States ambassador to Botswana, and served concurrently as the United States representative to the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
During her tenure the United States and Botswana launched the most ambitious HIV prevention study in the world, Botswana hosted the 1,400-strong joint military exercise Southern Accord, and the U.S. embassy helped to found the first Botswana-American Chamber of Commerce. Prior to that, Gavin was a special assistant to President Obama and the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, where she led major policy reviews of Sudan and Somalia, and helped to originate the Young African Leaders Initiative.
Before joining the Obama administration, she was an international affairs fellow and adjunct fellow for Africa at CFR. Earlier in her career she worked in the U.S. Senate, where she was the staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on African affairs, director of international policy issues for Senator Russ Feingold, and legislative director for Senator Ken Salazar.
Gavin received an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes scholar, and earned her BA from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she was a Truman scholar. She serves on the board of directors of Points of Light, the Africa-America Institute, and is a member of the Harvard AIDS Initiative’s International advisory board.
Affiliations:
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- Africa-America Institute Board, member
- Emerging Public Leaders Board, member
- Harvard AIDS Initiative International Advisory Board, member
- Points of Light Board, Program and Impact Committee, chair
This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.
