Accord Somalia project
Accord 21 looks at Somali peace processes. It seeks to improve understanding and complementarity between indigenous Somali and international policy and practice.
Whose peace is it anyway? Connecting Somali and international peacemaking is edited by Mark Bradbury and Sally Healy. It includes over 30 articles, from interviews with Somali elders and senior diplomats with the African Union, the UN and IGAD, to contributions from Somali and international peacemaking practitioners, academics, involved parties, civil society and women’s organizations.
For many people Somalia is synonymous with violence, warlordism, famine, displacement, terrorism, jihadism, and piracy. Nearly two decades of foreign diplomatic, military and statebuilding interventions have failed to build peace. Over three million people are in dire need of aid.
No government emerging from any internationally-sponsored peace process has established its authority or legitimacy among Somalis.
International engagement has only deepened the humanitarian and political crisis.
But Somalia is not an entirely lawless and ungoverned land. Over the past 20 years Somalis have used their own resources and traditions of conflict resolution to re-establish security and governance in many communities. Somali-led initiatives have set up viable political and administrative arrangements to manage conflict and provide durable security and law. Somali entrepreneurship has also revitalized the economy in many places.
Read our policy brief with recommendations for policymakers.
This project is in collaboration with Interpeace and draws on their peace mapping study.
“We should all recognize that Somalia is not given the necessary attention and care by the international community. We call it a failed state and we seem to admit this is a new category of states for which we are helpless. From my own experience in Somalia I believe there is a remarkable potential in the people of this country which deserves to be given a chance: through real long term support for economic development and federal governance. This Accord publication essentially highlights some of the ways that international policy can better engage with Somali peacemaking.”
Mohamed Sahnoun, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Africa and former Special Representative for Somalia, and Vice Chair of Interpeace and of the UN mandated University of Peace.
