By Bashir M. Sheikh Ali [1]

For most Somalis outside Somaliland, secession has never been a central political concern. It appears intermittently, usually in response to external events, then recedes behind more immediate issues of security, livelihoods, and governance. In Somaliland, the dynamic is different. Support for independence is sustained, emotionally grounded, and treated as settled after decades of separation from Mogadishu. [2] This imbalance of attention matters. It helps explain why the dispute has endured without resolution. One side experiences the issue as existential and final, while the other engages it episodically and largely in abstract terms.

That asymmetry has legal consequences. Because Somaliland was never treated as an urgent or determinative issue by Mogadishu, Somalia’s claim has relied almost entirely on inherited legal status rather than on administration, effective control, or negotiated settlement. Over time, two parallel realities solidified. Somaliland consolidated control and built institutions without interference. Somalia retained international recognition without exercising authority. The result is a prolonged drift in which law and factual governance moved in opposite directions without direct confrontation.

Under international law, sovereignty is sustained primarily through recognition. Somalia remains internationally recognized as a single state and continues to occupy the United Nations seat for the territory as a whole. That status does not depend on effective control over every region. International law is deliberately conservative on this point. If sovereignty dissolved whenever a government lost control during internal conflict, recognition would become contingent on performance and borders would shift with every crisis. To avoid that outcome, the law presumes continuity of sovereignty despite impaired governance.

By contrast, Somaliland exercises effective control.[3] Hargeisa governs its territory, conducts elections, maintains security, collects revenue, and operates institutions with no meaningful involvement from Mogadishu. This has been the case for more than three decades. From a factual perspective, Somaliland functions as a state. From a legal perspective, it lacks the decisive element required for sovereignty: recognition. Effective governance without recognition sustains de facto autonomy, but it does not produce de jure statehood.

This division explains why both positions persist. Somalia holds legal sovereignty without effective control. Somaliland holds effective control without legal sovereignty. Each satisfies one element commonly associated with statehood, but neither satisfies both. International law privileges recognition over effectiveness, while political judgment increasingly weighs effectiveness against recognition. The system tolerates this contradiction because resolving it would require either endorsing unilateral secession or compelling reintegration, both of which carry broader risks.

Seen in comparative perspective, long-running separation cases are not alike, and analogies are often misleading. Unlike Cyprus, where separation emerged from an interstate conflict and remains actively contested by neighboring states, Somaliland’s self-rule has not been shaped by external confrontation.

The analogy to Eritrea is closer but remains incomplete. Eritrea separated from Ethiopia while Ethiopia retained effective control over the rest of its territory and continued to function as a consolidated state. Somaliland’s experience differs. Its separation did not begin as a secessionist effort; the Somali state collapsed altogether following the breakdown of central authority and nationwide civil war. Somaliland’s administration emerged in the resulting vacuum. Somalia was later reconstituted through internationally mediated legal and political processes that restored recognition but not effective control. The reconstituted state assumed Somaliland to be part of Somalia as a matter of law, without taking tangible steps to reassert authority over the territory. Somalia also lacks effective authority over large parts of its own territory. These distinctions shape political judgment but do not alter the legal position, which rests on recognition rather than control.

A different comparison further clarifies the limits of analogy. Taiwan illustrates prolonged separation without recognition, but under materially different conditions. Its separation followed the Chinese civil war, in which the Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China on the mainland while the Republic of China government withdrew to Taiwan, retaining international recognition for decades and preserving institutional continuity. Even after most states shifted recognition to the PRC, Taiwan maintained effective territorial control, a functioning state apparatus, and economic viability. Somaliland shares the experience of long separation without recognition, but not the inheritance of an incumbent sovereign government or the continuity of state institutions that underpin Taiwan’s de facto autonomy. Somaliland emerged from the collapse of central authority after a war with the Siad Barre government that completely destroyed Hargeisa and resulted in large-scale civilian casualties.

Somaliland’s long-standing self-rule weakens Somalia’s persuasive position, though not its legal one. When Somalia objects to recognition on sovereignty grounds, external actors measure legal claims against governance realities. Mogadishu does not administer Somaliland, provide security there, or deliver public services. It has not pursued reconquest or parallel administration and has not engaged in sustained negotiations capable of altering the status quo. As a result, Somalia’s objections often appear formal rather than practical, affecting credibility in diplomacy even while the legal claim remains intact.

The argument for recognition sharpens when considered alongside Somalia’s broader governance challenges. Large areas of southern and central Somalia remain beyond effective federal control, with access limited and governance dependent on external security support. This further weakens claims that reunification with Somaliland is feasible or beneficial. It raises a question international law does not directly answer: why a stable, self-governing territory should subordinate itself to a system unable to govern even areas that do not claim secession. The answer to whether to recognize Somaliland lies not in law, but in politics.

International law neither compels reintegration nor permits alteration of recognized sovereignty based on relative governance effectiveness. Sovereignty is a legal status, not an assessment of functionality. The law preserves the default position until states collectively decide otherwise. As long as Somalia’s recognition remains unchanged, its sovereignty persists. As long as Somaliland remains unrecognized, its autonomy remains de facto.

This explains the prolonged stalemate. Somaliland has not been forced back into Somalia. At the same time, most states have been unwilling to recognize Somaliland, given the importance attached to territorial integrity and the absence of a consensual or multilateral process. Instead, ambiguity is maintained. Somaliland is engaged pragmatically and acknowledged for its effectiveness. The international system formally reaffirms Somalia’s sovereignty while tolerating its uneven exercise in practice.

Recognition is therefore the hinge on which the political dispute between Somalia and Somaliland turns. Recognition is a political act taken by states, not a judicial determination imposed by law. States are generally free to recognize or withhold recognition, subject only to narrow limits where recognition would validate serious violations of fundamental international norms. [4] Most secession disputes, including this one, fall outside those limits. If recognition expands, legal reality will eventually follow political reality. If it does not, the current imbalance will endure.

What is unfolding is not a sudden rupture but the slow strain of a system asked to reconcile recognition without control and control without recognition. Somalia’s sovereignty endures because recognition endures. Somaliland’s exclusion endures because recognition has not shifted. International law preserves borders first and defers resolution until politics forces a change. The rest is politics.

Email: bsali@yahoo.com
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Footnotes

[1] The author is a Somali American lawyer based in Nairobi. The views expressed in this analysis are his own and do not reflect those of any organization with which he may be affiliated.

[2] Dissent within Somaliland has appeared in regions such as Awdal, where some actors contest the independence project. Critics view this dissent as evidence of weak internal cohesion within Somaliland, while supporters attribute it to ordinary clan-based political contestation rather than a defect in statehood.

[3] The eastern boundaries claimed by Somaliland are disputed and remain unsettled. In the Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn regions, control has evolved through shifting local alignments and conflict. In 2025, the Federal Government of Somalia formally recognized the North Eastern State of Somalia (also known as Waqooyi Bari), emerging from the SSC-Khatumo administration centered in Las Anod. Somaliland and Puntland both reject this development and continue to assert competing claims. The emergence of a new federal member state further complicates territorial identification and renders the precise scope of Somaliland’s claimed eastern boundaries indeterminate.

[4] While recognition is generally discretionary, international law imposes a duty of non-recognition where recognition would validate a serious breach of a peremptory norm (jus cogens). Under Article 41 of the ILC Articles on State Responsibility, States must not recognize as lawful a situation created by such a breach, nor render aid or assistance in maintaining it. This prohibition has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice, including in the Namibia advisory opinion on South Africa’s unlawful presence and Wall advisory opinion (2004) on Israel’s separation barrier. Another modern illustration is the broad refusal to recognize Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea, reflected in UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262. In practice, recognition is prohibited where it would legitimize (i) territorial acquisition or annexation achieved through the unlawful use of force, (ii) regimes founded on racial domination or apartheid, or (iii) the denial of a people’s right to self-determination. Outside these narrow circumstances, international law does not compel or forbid recognition, leaving the decision to States’ political discretion.