Open Letter to the President: Somaliland Women are Concerned

This is a press statement from Somaliland Women dated on 28/01/2020.

Somaliland Women from all regions of Somaliland and different sectors of the society including Women Organizations, grass-root advocates and women activists, signed an open letter to the president of Somaliland H.E. Muse Bihi Abdi and published it through media. The Women are extremely disappointed that the decision-makers marginalized women from all government institutions. The attached Open letter to the president is analyzing all government positions to present the facts and figures about how women are missing all decision-making tables.

According to the data in the OPEN LETTER,

•  Somaliland government has more than 613 elected and nominated positions, nearly 97.4% of them are male while women secures less than 2.6% of decision-making possitions.

• For the last two years, the president of Somaliland Muse Bihi Abdi nominated more than 214 positions, 201 of them were male leaders while other remaining 13 are Female Leaders (one female leader resigned and other was sacked, only 11 of them are in office now)

•  According to a data collected from 39 government institutions in April 2019, Somaliland has, at that time, nearly 263 Department Directors, only 47 of them were Female department directors while other remaining 216 were Male Department Directors.

• Somaliland has 96 Decision-making Offices including the Offices of the President, Chief Justice, Parliament Speakers, 19 Mayors, 14 Governors, 8 Security Sector Commanders, 23 Cabinet Ministers, 25 Head of Independent Commissions etc. Women leads only three offices (Two full Cabinet Ministers and the head of National Health Professionals Commission), while Male Leaders leads all the other 93 Offices.

Somaliland Women are very concerned that Somaliland’s democratization system is becoming more male dominated system and women are marginalizing every sector of the decision-making platforms including the cabinet, the directors, the independent commissions, the parliament, the local councils etc.

The Somaliland Women engaged the Minister of Social Affairs Ms. Hinda Jama Hersi, the Minister of Interior Affairs who is also the first Deputy Chairman of the ruling party of Kulmiye Mohamed Kahin Ahmed and other government officials to share their concern including the attached open letter to the president and requested them to submit it to the president but, unfortunately we did not succeeded to reach the president to share our concern directly. So, now we are going to reach the president through the media, and our next move is depending on the response we receive from the president.

We are planning to engage and meet the international friends to share our concern.

So, please find here the attached “Open Letter” that we send to the President of Somaliland to raise our concern against the current marginalization of women in leadership.

haweenkasomaliland@gmail.com

Signed women are written the open letter.