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Civil Society Priorities for Democratization
Representatives of Somaliland civil society – drawn primarily from Hargeisa-based
organizations engaged in encouraging Somaliland’s democratic development, advocating on
behalf of/representing marginalized constituencies or promoting peaceful political participation
– participated in a strategy workshop on April 29, 2013, to inform the development of this
strategy for international democratization support to Somaliland. In the workshop, participants
collectively identified the following as their vision for civil society in Somaliland:
An independent and sustainable civil society with the capacity to engage and
effectively represent the citizens of Somaliland and participate in decision making
in a well-coordinated, professional and ethical way.
The participatory workshops conducted as part of this assessment aimed to discuss civil society
needs and priorities, as they contribute to the achievement of their articulated vision, through
four separate prisms representing different levels of organization and composition:
1)
Enabling environment: which provides the overall conditions under which civil society
operates;
2)
Sector capacity:
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which addresses issues that cut across civil society as a sector, but that
remain internal to it;
3)
Organizational capacity: which focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of individual
organizations; and
4)
Professional skills: which targets the individual members of organizations.
Civil society participants, through interviews, strategy workshop outputs and discussions,
prioritized different subcategories of civil society influences, roles and responsibilities. The
prioritized subcategories are highlighted below with red boxes:
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This category was added over the course of the workshop, to capture elements that did not fit into existing
categories. An earlier category of internal organization was then merged with organizational capacity.
