LAND, PROPERTY, AND HOUSING IN SOMALIA 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Part A: Executive Summary 10 Part B: Introduction 14 Purpose and intended audience 14 Limitations and qualifications 16 Acknowledgments 17 Part C: Contexts 18 Section 1: Historical background 18 Chronology of key events in Somali history 18 The problem of knowledge 21 Section 2: Political background and analysis 22 Conflict dynamics and analysis 22 The political economy of war 24 Formal governance structures and their capabilities 27 “Radical localization” and decentralization 28 South central Somalia 29 Puntland 31 Somaliland 32 Traditional governance structures 33 South central Somalia 33 Puntland 34 Somaliland 34 Developing traditional structures 34 Section 3: Geographical and environmental factors 36 Suitability and use of land for various forms of agriculture 36 Environmental issues 36 Agricultural production and food security 38 Agriculture and food 38 Vulnerability to natural disasters 40 5 Section 4: Socio-economic background 40 Key statistics and indicators 40 Clans, class, and other divisions 44 Introduction and historical background 44 The civil wars and the clan system 46 Other divisions 48 Vulnerable groups 49 Introduction 49 General background 50 The major “minority” groups 51 Women 54 Introduction 54 The pre-civil war situation 55 The post-civil war situation 57 General analysis 57 Government revenues and the macroeconomic picture 59 The situation before the civil wars 59 The situation since 1991 60 Key sectors of private economy 62 Introduction 62 The effects of the pre-civil war situation 63 Current trends and issues 64 Remittances and their effects 66 Pre-civil war remittances 66 Remitters, remittees, and amounts 66 Uses and effects of remittances 68 Section 5: Displacement patterns and protection issues 68 Overall patterns and phasing of displacement 69 Recent profiling information 71 Livelihood security and household vulnerability 75 Difficulties of humanitarian assistance 76 6 Part D: Housing, land, and property in Somalia 80 Section 1: Changing patterns of rural land ownership 80 Introduction 80 Clans and land 82 The colonial era and independence 84 Somaliland 84 Islamic farming cooperatives 86 The Jubba and Shabelle Rivers 87 The Barre regime 88 State agricultural policies and their results 88 Drought and war in the 1970s 89 Developments in northern Somalia 90 Increasing competition for resources in the south 91 Title registration in the Middle Jubba Valley 92 Agro-pastoralism in the Bay region 94 Smallholder irrigation in the Gedo region 95 Livestock trade in southern Somalia 96 Smallholders and pastoralists in the Lower Shabelle 97 Land alienation and state farms in the Lower Jubba 98 Land tenure in the Lower Shabelle 99 The civil wars and their aftermath 100 Conflict in the north 100 Conflict in the south 100 Underlying dynamics 102 The major state farm projects 103 “Post-war” landholding and agriculture on the Shabelle River 104 Section 2: Housing, settlements, and infrastructure 105 Key land-related indicators 105 Urban settlements 105 Urban infrastructure 107 Mines and other explosive remnants of war 108 Section 3: Current land administration and management structures 109 Land titling and registration systems 109 Land governance structures 111 South central Somalia 111 Puntland 111 Somaliland 112 7 Section 4: Land- and resource-based conflicts 112 Causes and dynamics 112 Rural land conflicts 113 Urban conflicts 114 Water issues 114 Weapons 116 Dispute resolution mechanisms 116 National level 116 Puntland 119 Somaliland 119 Section 5: Housing, land, and property “theory” and policy debates 121 The human rights framework for housing, land, and property 121 African land reform, customary tenure, and individual titling 123 Introduction 123 Customary tenure 125 Land reform: old and new orthodoxies 126 Criticisms 128 Gender issues 129 Urban titling 130 Communal land use 131 Best practice in land administration and land reform 132 Introduction 132 Land policy design 133 Part E: Legal frameworks in Somalia 135 Section 1: “Secular” law 135 Historical background and developments 135 General structure 136 Somalia 136 Puntland 138 Somaliland 138 Judicial systems 140 Somalia 140 Puntland 141 Somaliland 141 Laws relating to land 143 Somalia 144 8 Puntland 146 Somaliland 147 International law issues 150 Recognition of a Somali government 150 State failure and international law obligations 151 Somalia’s human rights and international humanitarian law ratifications 153 Section 2: Sharia law 155 The basics 155 Islamic land law principles 155 The sharia courts 156 Section 3: Customary law 157 Basic concepts and structures 157 Principles relating to land 158 Limitations and problems 159 Section 4: The overall legal picture 161 Inter-relationships among the three systems 161 Women and other disadvantaged groups 163 Integration and other ways forward 164 Part F: Conclusions 166 The clan system 166 Land and the environment 167 Major land disputes 168 General programming issues 169 Law and legal systems 170 Areas for further research 172 Part G: Explanations 173 List of Somali words 173 List of Arabic words 176 Sources and bibliography 177 Note on sources 177 Texts read for the report 177 Other texts 199 Research materials 201 9 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: A user’s guide to this report 16 Figure 2: Map of Somalia 25 Figure 3: Map of Somali regions and districts 30 Figure 4: Map showing livestock movements and grazing areas 35 Figure 5: Map of land use in Jubba and Shabelle valleys 37 Figure 6: Key environmental issues 37 Figure 7: Map showing risks of natural hazards 41 Figure 8: Map showing population density in Somalia 43 Figure 9: Major Somali lineages 45 Figure 10: Map of Somali refugee populations in adjoining countries 70 Figure 11: Map of IDPs in Somalia 72 Figure 12: Map showing Mogadishu public buildings occupied by IDPs 75 Figure 13: Operational issues to consider in programme design and implementation 78 Figure 14: Map showing humanitarian agency access 81 Figure 15: Map showing “clan areas” 85 Figure 16: Landmine Impact Survey for Somaliland 110 Figure 17: The right to adequate housing 122 Figure 18: Some housing, land, and property technical terms 124 Figure 19: Options for recognizing customary tenure 125 Figure 20: Somalia’s ratification of UN human rights instruments 154 Figure 21: Map showing provision of justice 162 10 Photo © UN-HABITAT Somalia Office Photo © UN-HABITAT PART A: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report focuses on the Somali legal nation state structures on to existing frameworks and institutional systems relating decentralized and egalitarian systems, leading to land and on the historical background of the eventually to a zero-sum struggle between current landholding and ownership patterns in clans for control of the state apparatus and Somalia. However, it also looks at a much wider its resources, including land. Following the range of social, cultural, political, economic, collapse of the Somali state, a number of groups and environmental contexts relating to land and have had political or economic incentives to examines some of the theoretical debates on oppose the process of building (or rebuilding) land issues, in order to apply them to Somalia. the state and to act as “spoilers” in any peace Due to security issues and time constraints, it is process. Considerable sums of money can be primarily a summary and synthesis of existing made by control of key real estate in a conflict literature on these subjects (which has a number economy. Formal governance structures have of limitations), but some field research was also either limited capacity (as in the north of carried out as a “reality check” of the desk review. Somalia) or virtually no control at all (as in the It does not necessarily represent the views or south) and there has been a process of political policy of the three agencies that commissioned fragmentation and “radical localization”. or funded the research − United Nations High Traditional governance structures remain Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), very influential, especially in the north. Lack Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and of state control or any other effective form United Nations Human Settlements Programme of governance has led to widespread misuse (UN-HABITAT). or overuse of Somalia’s natural resources and therefore to environmental degradation and Many of Somalia’s political problems can be damage. Deforestation resulting from the traced back to the imposition of centralized charcoal trade and increasing water scarcity 11 are particular concerns. Somalia is heavily a failing and aid-dependent formal economy, dependent on food imports (especially in the a corrupt, centralized, and inefficient public form of food aid, which distorts local markets); sector, a thriving and mostly extra-legal private agricultural production and general food sector, and strong transnational trade links. The security are highly vulnerable to external shocks peculiarities of the pre-civil situation ironically such as natural disasters (which for climatic made the configuration of the economy and other reasons are relatively frequent) or relatively well suited to the conflict economy bans on the export of livestock. that developed during the civil wars, but it remains heavily dependent on a high level of Somalia’s human development indicators remittances and on foreign aid, which has had relating to housing and shelter (and related generally negative social and political effects. matters) are generally very poor but disguise Public