Updated October 2026: this post was first published in December 2017 to share the report. We have expanded it with a summary drawn from the workshop report.
At the end of 2017, several multi-year resilience and durable solutions programmes were about to start in Somalia. Before they did, ReDSS worked with the Rift Valley Institute, the Centre for Humanitarian Change and the Somalia NGO Consortium to bring practitioners together for a half-day learning event on durable solutions, resilience and Somali-led processes. The aim was to work out how to support a collaborative, participatory process that would build collective engagement in durable solutions approaches across organisations, rather than each programme developing its own.
Who took part
The report, dated December 2017, lists participants from international NGOs and agencies, including the Danish Refugee Council, INTERSOS, the Norwegian Refugee Council, CARE, the International Rescue Committee and the World Food Programme; from donors, including DFID; from Somali organisations, including the Somalia NGO Consortium, Save Somali Women and Children and the Somalia National NGO Forum; and from research and coordination bodies such as the Centre for Humanitarian Change and the Durable Solutions Initiative. The Somalia NGO Consortium is described as the convenor of the workshop series. The report does not give the total number of participants.
Two sessions, four questions
The event used participatory and consensus-building methods to draw on experience from different organisations and approaches. It was organised around four questions: how to get on the same page as a first step towards common approaches; what resilience means for durable solutions in the Somali context, and the other way round; what a common vision for Somali-driven solutions would look like; and how to take that vision forward to inform collective approaches and area-based programming.
Resilience and durable solutions
Participants concluded that resilience building and protection are part of durable solutions rather than separate agendas. Durable solutions frameworks already cover social cohesion, access to basic services, economic opportunities and jobs, and participation in public affairs, all of which resilience programmes also work on. The report describes both approaches as being about how you work rather than what you do, and as concerned with long-term outcomes and sustainability. That shared ground matters in Somalia, where the same communities are often the target of resilience, humanitarian and durable solutions programmes at once.
A common vision for Somali-driven solutions
Participants agreed two collective outcomes. For policy, the outcome is representative and transparent governance that is equally accountable to all citizens. For programming, it is to work within the National Development Plan on area-based, cross-sectoral and collaborative programmes that take account of the specific needs of displacement-affected communities. Principles for working towards these outcomes included putting displacement-affected communities at the centre, working within the National Development Plan, and asking donors to allow longer inception phases for integrated approaches.
What happened next
Participants committed to continue the dialogue with the same organisations where possible, to focus on three themes (localisation, capacity building and development; safety, security and protection; and housing, land, property and residence), to widen participation to include security and conflict-prevention organisations, and to look for ways to hold the discussions inside Somalia. Individual organisations also made commitments, such as integrating resilience and durable solutions into their strategies, sharing more knowledge, and building the capacity of local partners. The Durable Solutions Initiative offered to help actors, including local NGOs, reach Professor Walter Kälin for advice. These themes ran through the work that followed, including the durable solutions programming principles later endorsed by the Federal Government.
Read the workshop report. Background documents on durable solutions, resilience and localisation in Somalia are available in this shared folder.
References
Somalia NGO Consortium and partners (2017). Workshop report: resilience, durable solutions and Somali-led processes. December 2017. https://www.regionaldss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Workshop-Report-resilience-durable-solutions-and-Somali-led-processes.pdf
