Somalia remains highly fractured with multiple forms of public authority present beyond those of the state. Local populations in many areas face threats to their lives and livelihoods from this political volatility as well as from the wider threats of climate change and transnational influences and regional and global geopolitics.

Our project seeks to deepen our understanding of public authority in this complex environment and the role that peace and justice can play. We aim to engage with different Somali and international stakeholders.

PeaceRep’s Somalia team is currently working on 4 projects across 2 thematic areas:

Thematic area (1): Understanding the Fragment State

Sub-national Governance in Somalia: Checkpoints

Local governance will continue to provide a basis for further research, with the sub-national research memos (for each federal member state) describing the fragment state in Somalia under the federal system and laying the foundation for expanded sub-national and centre-periphery analysis. Public authority/governance at road checkpoints – through taxation – will be developed as a new theme, drawing on work undertaken in the DRC, South Sudan and Sudan by the CRP South Sudan team. A focus on checkpoints will reveal how the benefits of trade relate to public authority, the political marketplace and an understanding local, regional and transnational dimensions of the fragment state in Somalia.

Thematic area (2): Reinventing Peace Processes  

Justice and Security in Somalia

The Somalia programme will continue with its justice (and security) theme, following its initial court observation-based work in Kismayo and Mogadishu, which is developing an interesting comparative picture within the country. A focus will include the ways in which local justice initiatives overlap with local agreement-making.  The project will examine what examination of the justice system tells us about local level conflict resolution and how it operates.

Building on the Galkaio ‘local’ agreement

2017 Galkaio ‘local’ agreement is a landmark achievement and is located within the recent formation of the Federal system in Somalia. It represents a multi-layered agreement with deep historical meaning in conflict and peacebuilding in the country, incorporating both international and insider mediation. This agreement has been documented by the LSE CRP team yet remains poorly known and/or under-appreciated in Somali and international circles. The agreement (and peace) is holding but remains fluid and incomplete. This study will update and deepen understanding of the Gakaio agreement and engage in a wide dissemination and discussion process with Somali and international audiences, drawing upon the mediation experience of Khalif Abdirahman (and Ilham Gasser – to be confirmed).

Emergent conflict and peace dynamics and agreements across the Somali Regions (Somalia, Somaliland and Somali Region, Ethiopia)

The ongoing conflict in and fragmentation of Ethiopia is occurring while its Somali Region is experiencing an unprecedented period of relative peace. Recent regime change in Ethiopia (at Federal and Somali regional levels) has seen a changed political and symbolic position of Ethiopia towards Somalia (and Somalis), at both central, regional and local levels. These changes are having implications for the way political discussions and peace processes are taking place within and between Ethiopia and Somalia. This study will map and follow recent and emergent agreement processes across the Somali regions of the Horn, in a context of rapid political change.

Civicness: The term ‘civicness’ has been developed by the LSE Conflict and Civicness Research Group based on an analysis of the ‘logics of public authority’ in sites of intractable conflict. By public authority we mean a legitimacy structure beyond the immediate family that commands voluntary compliance (e.g., municipalities). Civicness has been identified as a logic based on an implicit social contract in which revenue and votes may be exchanged for rights and the provision of public services (rather than, for example, on the basis of distributional rents linked to ethnic identity). It is a form of collective action that takes place at the mediation point between society and institutions and establishes some form of stability in societal relations. Civicness as an empirical phenomenon is ubiquitous in conflict zones, which exists alongside (and may be intermingled with) the dominant (violent) logics.  

The Somali environment see’s the logic of civicness in different places, and aims to engage and promote such processes; for example, Khalif Abdirahman of the PeaceRep Somalia programme is engaged in such initiatives in both Somalia and Ethiopia, and is the subject of an academic paper on this topic –

Reports and policy briefs

Blogs

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