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Burgess Management Associates
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UNDP Horn of Africa Programme
Refugee Reintegration Programme (1999)
for North-West Ethiopia and Somaliland
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About the Programme
TPB Note: This work was led by DeeDee Angagaw of UNDP. I provided a range of technical support activities to assist in converting all the input from two teams of local consultants into a coherent integrated plan with related documentation. One of the consulting teams was comprised of local consultants from Somaliland (sometimes referred to as Northwest Somalia) and another team came from Ethiopia. This was the first time that professional teams from Somalia and Ethiopia had worked together in cooperation since the Somalia / Ethiopia war of 1978 about 20 years before.
The team visited the affected region of Eastern Ethiopia and ran a three day workshop in Jijiga to coordinate the initial findings. The team then travelled to Somaliland, and after visiting key locations ran a second three day workshop in Hargeisa. The team leaders coordinated closely with key Government leaders in Somaliland, and integrated critical views of the government into the plans. This active feedback was appreciated by the Government, with the result that the President of Somaliland gave his support for the team's work within hours of the final draft report becoming available. We were told that it was the first time that international experts had taken into consideration the multiple difficulties and realities and this was much appreciated.
When the draft final report was presented to the UN Resident Representative in Addis Ababa at the conclusion of the field work, the UNDP Assistant Res Rep opined that it was impossible for our team to have done the work in the time we had taken. This might have been true if we had only relied on international experts from outside the region, but by involving very experienced local consultants our time was highly productive. My 'push-back' to the criticism was simply that we could have done the work in half the time, if I had been able to type twice as fast. This was a perfect example of local experts knowing what needed to be done ... with the contribution of international experts merely to coordinate and make it possible to get the work done.
Outside the direct scope of this UNDP work, I travelled to the African Development Bank (ADP) in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire to try to enable ODA funding for the programme. The issue was that Somaliland was not an independent country, according to international conventions, but legally still a part of Somalia. Even though it was totally governed from Hargeisa, independent of Mogadisha and with no involvement whatsoever from Mogadishu, international organizations were obliged to consider it as part of Somalia. These discussions proved fruitless, even though several high level ADB staff were from Somaliland. The SDB was pointed out over and over again that the precedent of giving any sort of official recognition to a 'breakaway' part of territory not matter how reasonable was not something that could be accepted by the major nations of the world. Reference was made to Canada with Quebec, the UK within the British Isles not to mention the colonial legacy, and the list went on and on! My efforts proved fruitless.
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UNDP Horn of Africa Programme
Sustainable Develoment Programme for Reintegration of Displaced Persons and Returned Refugees and the Rehabilitation of Host Communities in Northwest Somalia and Eastern Ethiopia
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