Somaliland ministers hold discussions with donors

Ministers from Somaliland have held unprecedented talks with international donors and the United Nations. Foreign Minister Edna Adan Ismail described the meeting, held on Wednesday, as a breakthrough for the self-declared republic, which is seeking international recognition. “It gives us status and it gives us political importance that we have never been accorded before,” she told IRIN at the end of the talks. Officials from Ethiopia and Djibouti also attended the day-long talks, which focused primarily on the 600,000 displaced people in Somaliland. Other participants included the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF, the World Bank and embassy officials from the US, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Finland. The talks, held in Addis Ababa, form part of preparations for a consolidated appeal by the United Nations and NGOs for humanitarian assistance for Somalia. Somaliland unilaterally declared independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 after the fall of former leader Muhammad Siyad Barre. It has remained relatively free from the chaos and war that have ravaged other parts of Somalia, but has failed to gain recognition as an independent country. One diplomat at the talks - which have been a year in the making - told IRIN: “If state recognition is an incremental process then this is one step in that process.” Maxwell Gaylard, head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative for Somalia, who initiated the discussions, said the trend for donor support was slowly increasing. “It is the first time that we have brought together, or been able to bring together, the authorities of Somaliland directly with the international donor community,” he said. But he played down claims by the 12-strong Somaliland delegation, which included four ministers, that the talks were a step towards recognition of the self-declared republic. “We are trying to build peace and Somaliland is an oasis of peace and stability, certainly much more than southern Somalia and I think we are coming at it from that angle,” he said.