Ref. SF/RT001-1999 Date. September 27th, 1999
The Honorable Secretary General of the United Nations,
Ref. SF/RT001-1999, Date. September 27th, 1999
Dear Sir:
We are writing to you on the occasion of the visit of Somaliland’s President, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, to the United States, and his prospective meeting with the United Nations, to appeal to you of the urgency and necessity of granting full diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Somaliland and making Somaliland a full-fledged member of the UN. Such a move would be the proper thing to do on legal, moral, and practical grounds.
From a legal standpoint, the declaration of Somaliland’s independence is on solid ground, since Somaliland has a history of existing as an internationally recognized state as a protectorate of Britain, and briefly as the state of Somaliland. The fact that the UN has immediately recognized the East European states, which resulted from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, has made many Somalilanders question the objectivity and fairness of the United Nations. Such disenchantment with the UN is reinforced by the fact that many of the new East European countries that were recognized by the United Nations had no history of statehood. Most Somalilanders attribute this disparity in the treatment of Somaliland and the East European countries to the fact that these countries are European and Somaliland is African. The irony of this saga is compounded by the fact that this is happening under an African secretary general.
Somaliland’s moral claim is based on the principle that people have an inherent right to revolt against oppression, and to establish a new order when the old order fails. We realize that the UN should be the last place to be reminded of the failure of the old order in Somalia, since that failure later became the UN’s own failure. We feel justified, however, in reminding this august body that at the heart of the new order is the reality of the restoration of Somaliland’s independence. This reality has been attested to by a growing number of foreign observers of Somali affairs who see in Somaliland a repudiation of the usual stereotype of Somalis as a politically irresponsible and immature people who are having too much fun killing each other to worry about such thing as governing themselves.
Your Honour, these same observers of the Somali affairs have also confirmed the new empirical facts on the ground in today’s Somaliland with regards to the prevailing peace in our country and development in our economic front. For instance, the Economist News Magazine has recently reported that “Wages for unskilled labour in Hargeisa, the Capital City of Somaliland, are twice higher than that of Naibori, Kenya.” In the social realm, there are new universities such as the University of Amoud and the University of Hargeisa, which is currently under construction, as well as primary and secondary schools that have already sprung up in all over our territory. Our grass-roots organizations and professional associations are clearly visible in Somaliland, and are dedicated to construct a civil society through bottom-up approach. Such issues as gender equality, environmental protection, and preservation of an environment conducive to free press and open society are some of the major pre-occupations of our local NGOs and associations. Your Honour, the people of Somaliland have achieved all these successes in less than a decade with little or no assistance at all from the outside world.
But despite the fact that Somaliland has proved to the world that what applies to Somalia does not apply there; that Somaliland is a nascent democracy with courts, police, parliament, and government; that it is a state with a permanent population and internationally recognizable borders; the United Nations has yet to recognize these facts. We appeal to the United Nations and its secretary general to listen to the pleas of the people of Somaliland, and to grant full diplomatic recognition to their beloved nation, the Republic of Somaliland.
Somaliland Forum