On this page, you will find:
To find organisations working for LGBTQI+ rights, visit our Somalia LGBTQI+ Resources page.
To find organisations providing legal or other types of assistance to refugees in Somalia, visit our Somalia Legal Assistance page.
COI Experts
Email: benrawlence@gmail.com
Mr Rawlence is a Country of Origin expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritea, and Somalia. He has written numerous articles on issues occuring in the region and also written two BOOKS
including City of Thorns: Fear and Longing in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp (forthcoming, 2015) and Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War. Mr Rawlence can speak Swahili. He supervised work on Somalia for Human Rights Watch from 2011-2013, visiting the country several times and researching abuses of the laws of war and the treatment of internally displaced persons. Since 2013 he has been working on a book about Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and have a good current understanding of the dynamics of conflict in Somalia and of rights violations there.
Senior Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, UK
Email: lh4@soas.ac.uk
Forced migration, diasporas, food security and conflict
Dr Laura Hammond has conducted extensive research in areas of forced migration, diasporas, food security, and conflict. She has worked in the Horn of Africa – particularly Ethiopia and Somalia/Somaliland – for the past eighteen years, and has done consultancy for a wide range of development and humanitarian organizations, including UNDP, USAID, DfID, Oxfam, Medécins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the British Red Cross and the World Food Programme. She is a member of the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information (IAGCI). She is also the author of This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia (Cornell University Press: 2004) and several other book and journal articles.
Email:prorightsllp@gmail.com
Laura is a US-trained human rights lawyer based in Nairobi, Kenya who works across sub-Saharan Africa as a consultant on governance and human rights for USAID, the UN, governments, and international NGOs. Laura has published numerous articles and reports focused on conflict dynamics, gender, minority rights, transitional justice, migration, health, and other human rights issues in the African context. Laura has provided expert input for immigration and asylum cases in both the US and UK, focused on LGBT, FGM/C, domestic violence, trafficking, access to health services (including mental health and HIV), ex-combatants, ethnic minorities, disability access, police protection, and other key issues.
Email: mmohamud0@gmail.com
Tel: +974 33 464 294
Email: msarkis@gmail.com
Professor Marianne Sarkis founded and continues to direct the FGM Education and Networking Project, an outreach project and information clearinghouse on FGM/C which has been in existence since 1995. Professor Sarkis’ research in Massachusetts focuses on the intersection of culture and biomedicine in women’s reproductive experiences, especially those who have resettled or emigrated from FGM/C-producing countries. Her community-based participatory research has allowed her to engage in respectful yet transformative community dialogues about the implications of abandoning FGM/C on cultural continuity and identity. She has served as a consultant for physicians, nurses, public health practitioners and ethics committees at hospitals in Florida and in Massachusetts to identify best practices in providing care to women who have undergone FGM/C. In 2010, Dr Sarkis was invited to participate at a Briefing at the NGO Relations Cluster of the Department of Public Information at the United Nations in New York City.
Dr Sarkis has provided expert testimonies on behalf of women who were either at risk of experiencing FGM/C once they returned home or persecution because they belonged to minority clans. She has extensive experience in the history and current status of clan relations in Somalia, gender roles and expectations in kinship, majority-minority clan relations, and the pressure to conform that women face at home and after resettlement. Dr Sarkis has provided testimonies on behalf of women from Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Djibouti. However, her primary expertise is in Somalia, especially among the dominant and minority clans (Somali and Somali Bantus). Dr Sarkis is assistant professor of international development and social change at Clark University in Worcester, MA.
Email: markebradbury@googlemail.com
Tel: (+44) (0)1544230178 / (0)7762108044
Somalia and Somaliland
Mr Mark Bradbury is a social analyst who has worked extensively in Somalia and Somaliland since the late 1980s with a range of Somali and international humanitarian and development organizations. He has authored a book, Becoming Somaliland (2008), and a number of other publications on Somalia and Somaliland including Accord 21, a journal focused on current events and issues in Somalia.
Africa Editor, BBC World Service News
Email: maryharper44@gmail.com
Ms Mary Harper is a journalist and author who has reported on Somalia and Somaliland since the early 1990s. She is the author of the books Everything You Have Told Me is True: The Many Faces of Al Shabaab (2019) and Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, Hope and War in a Shattered State (2012). She has done consultancy on Somali issues for a wide range of organisations, and speaks regularly about Somalia at public events.
Email: samuelayele90@gmail.com
Dr Samuel A Bekalo has conducted research and published widely on Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. He has lived and worked in the region and regularly visits the area since the 1960s. He has written over 100 expert and documentation authentication reports on these countries. His scholarly reports are based on first-hand experience and benefit from his knowledge of Amharic, Oromo, Arabic, Tigrinya, and Kiswahili. In recent years, Dr Bekalo has worked as a Research Fellow at the International School of Education of the University of Leeds (UK), where he was involved in the capacity building project North-South Higher Education Institutions Link programme for Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.
Email: zjinnah@uvic.ca
Dr Zaheera Jinnah is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada, and a research associate at the African Centre for Migration and Society, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She has a decade of experience as a researcher in migration and refugee studies in Africa, and has published extensively in this area. Her research interests focus on Somalia, gender and FGM.
COI Resources
The following sections contain documents that can be consulted when looking for country of origin information.
The purpose of this report is to provide relevant context information in view of the assessment of international protection status determination, including refugee status and subsidiary protection. Among others, the report is intended to inform the update of EUAA’s country guidance on Somalia (2023).
The report provides an update on and mapping of the security situation at both country and regional level, namely for the 18 administrative regions foreseen by the Somali provisional constitution as they existed before 1991. 1 The report builds upon preceding EASO COI reports, notably the Somalia: Security Situation from September 2021,2 but also Actors, 3 Targeted profiles4 and Key socio-economic indicators. 5 They were published in the period JulySeptember 2021.
The report provides an overview of the main security trends and conflict dynamics at country level in the reference period (1 July 2021 – 30 November 2022). Within this context it includes information on crucial developments that were already visible as of December 2022.
Additionally, the report provides an update on the main changes regarding state and nonstate (armed) actors and their control areas or presence during the same reporting period. For the full overview of these actors see the report on Somalia: Actors. 6 Finally, the report engages with conflict dynamics and security developments at the regional level. In this section, it provides information about incidents and their impact on civilian life, including conflict related humanitarian issues.
UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines offer a legal interpretation of the refugee criteria in respect of specific profiles on the basis of social, economic, security, human rights, and humanitarian conditions in the country/territory of origin concerned.
‘All parties to Somalia’s conflict continued to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law with impunity. Al-Shabaab increased its unlawful attacks against civilians. Conflict along with severe drought caused by lack of rain led to the displacement of over 1.8 million people and a new wave of humanitarian crisis. Internally displaced people faced significant human rights violations; women and girls were particularly exposed to gender-based violence. The government increased the health budget but healthcare provision remained poor and access to water, sanitation and food was severely inadequate. Freedom of expression was restricted, and journalists were attacked, beaten and arbitrarily arrested and prosecuted. Media houses were suspended. In Somaliland, authorities severely restricted the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.’
Somalia: Targeted Profiles, Country of Origin Information Report, September 2021. Published by the European Asylum Support Office. The report details context information in view of the assessment of international protection status determination. Specifically, the report provides information on selected potentially targeted profiles in Somalia.
Somalia: Security Situation, Country of Origin Information Report, September 2021. Published by the European Asylum Support Office. The report details context information in view of the assessment of international protection status determination. Specifically, the report maps the security situation in Somalia at a regional level.
Somalia: Key Socio-Economic Indicators, Country of Origin Information Report, September 2021. Published by the European Asylum Support Office. The report details context information in view of the assessment of international protection status determination. Specifically, the report focuses on key socio-economic indicators in the Somali cities of Mogadishu, Garowe, and Hargeisa.
Somalia Legal Assistance
Find organisations offering legal and other types of assistance to refugees in Somalia.
Somalia LGBTQI+ Resources
Find organisations working for refugee LGBTQI+ rights in Somalia.
We are always looking to expand the resources on our platform. If you know about relevant experts, or you are aware of organisations and/or resources to include in our directories, please get in touch.
Last updated January 2024