Somaliland Civil Society Forum on Aid Effectiveness and Humanitarian Meeting Communique

Horndiplomat-Somaliland Civil Society Forum on Aid Effectiveness and Humanitarian Meeting.

Communique

1. Somaliland civil society/NSA has made tremendous efforts over the past twenty seven years to contribute peace- building, state- building, implementation the rule of law, good governance, democratization and elections. In the meantime, Somaliland CSOs and non￾state actors have participated a critical period for Somaliland’s reconstruction and development strides and this CSOs policy engagement has encouraged the spirit and strategic partnership between Somaliland CSOs, government institutions and international partners to widen the outreach of the local beneficiaries.
2. Somaliland development process has recently constrained enormous challenges as recurrent droughts and natural catastrophes as “Cyclone Sagar” where the rural communities and farmers suffered a lot and lost their livestock and agricultural sites.
   Therefore, Somaliland civil society is recommending the government of Somaliland, donors and international development partners to review the humanitarian assistance provided to Somaliland and take some genuine and coordinated steps on humanitarian and development assistance in short, medium and long term recovery plans.
3. This Somaliland Civil Society Forum on Aid Effectiveness and Humanitarian is
   appealing from the donor countries and all international partners to increase their
   development and humanitarian assistances and consolidate their efforts towards the prevention and remedial steps over the humanitarian crisis left by the “Cyclone Sagar” disasters and continuing droughts which severely affected the rural and agricultural communities.
4. This tragedy of “Cyclone Sagar” which resulted the death of many people and livestock in the coastal area in Somaliland and has also affected a number of households and
   destroyed many homes, schools, health facilities, water, roads and other social services.
5. In this regard, civil society has observed the low humanitarian respond from bilateral and  multilateral international partners whereas thousands of people live in Somaliland are in critical situation and there are many Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who are not cared and lack very basic needs such as shelter, food, water, education, sanitation, and health services.
6. To rationalize this effort and safe many people affected these on-going natural disasters, the aid and humanitarian assistance need not to be either politicized or conditioned the new accord between Somaliland and Somalia and this can undermine the will and fundamental rights of the people of Somaliland.
7. Somaliland CSOs are calling clans who fought in Ceel- Afweyn District to stop hostility and support the efforts and peaceful dialogue which the government of Somaliland and traditional elders are committed to facilitate in order to cease this recurrent conflict. This Ceel-Afweyn conflict has humanitarian aspects since many people internally displaced and need humanitarian assistances.
8. Somaliland CSOs are supporting the efforts led by the international community towards Tuka-raq conflict and CSOs are encouraging peaceful dialogue and it is commendable that the President of the Republic of Somaliland in many occasions declared that Somaliland is ready for dialogue and peaceful negotiations with its neighboring of Somalia.                     CSOs are monitoring the humanitarian situation in the Tuka-raq district where many displaced people need urgent humanitarian assistance.
9. This Somaliland Civil Society Forum on Aid Effectiveness and Humanitarian stands for Somaliland civil society to accelerate their development and humanitarian interventions with more coordinated and coherent manner and to help international partners to cooperate the national civil society organizations in terms of services delivery interventions and policy settings. This meeting which took place on June 9th 2018 at Mansoor Hotel was intended to encourage to strengthen the partnership between CSOs, government and international partners for the benefit of the Somaliland citizens.
10. It is commendable that Somaliland Development Fund (SDF) has demonstrated some characteristics of aid effectiveness principles and SDF was a kind of paradigm shift from traditional aid modality to untraditional and the CSOs have acknowledged that SDF is worthy to resume and scale up for the following years and civil society is grateful for the countries who supported the SDF as United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and Netherlands.
11. CSOs believe that Somaliland Special Arrangement (SSA) has contributed the country development framework and workable strategic partnership with donors and international community at large, from this standpoint, Somaliland civil society is encouraging donors and international partners to support and assist Somaliland again to in place this partnership framework of SSA with conformity of the National Development Plan.
12. Somaliland CSOs are welcoming to the donor countries, bilateral and multilateral international partners who are committed to support Somaliland development and political aspirations, CSOs are also grateful the international partners who are promoting civic engagement, rule of law, gender development and favoring with civil society participation on domestic and international policy dialogue. Somaliland CSOs are also congratulating the President of Somaliland H.E. Muse Bihi Abdi in his approval for 20% women quota and additional seats of the minority groups for upcoming parliament and local council elections.

SOURCE:Horndiplomat