Updated October 2026: this post was first published in June 2017 to share the brief. We have expanded it with a summary drawn from the brief itself.
In mid-2017 Somalia faced two pressures at once: refugees returning from Kenya and a drought that was displacing hundreds of thousands of people inside the country. Our joint brief with the Somalia NGO Consortium asked how to support the self-reliance and resilience of returnees and displaced communities in that situation. Its central argument is simple: return is not a solution in itself. Reintegration is, and for reintegration to succeed it has to build on self-reliance and resilience programming.
The situation in 2017
As of 15 May 2017, 63,535 Somali refugees from Dadaab had been helped to return since December 2014, 24,221 of them in 2017 alone. Most went to Kismayo (87.7 percent), followed by Mogadishu (6.7 percent) and Baidoa (4.7 percent), all three in regions badly hit by drought. According to UNHCR’s Protection and Return Monitoring Network, more than 700,000 people had been newly displaced inside Somalia by the drought since November 2016. Unlike in 2011, the Dadaab camps were no longer an option for people seeking refuge. The brief warned that if the drought turned into famine, a major displacement crisis could follow.
Why returnees end up in IDP camps
As our solutions analyses for Lower Juba, Bay and Benadir had already shown, most returnees were not going back to their home areas but to towns. With little capacity to absorb them and almost no reintegration support beyond the return package, many were likely to end up in already overstretched IDP camps. Returnees and IDPs are highly exposed to drought because they lack the social ties that let people borrow money and reach markets, have weak connections with host communities, and often belong to minority clans. Resilience programming at the time focused mainly on material safety, such as food and livelihoods, and left out the legal and physical safety that displaced people also need.
Better data and analysis
The first set of recommendations is about knowing more. The brief calls for better data on displaced and host communities, covering skills, the environment, urban and economic conditions, markets, absorption capacity, clan dynamics and conflict. It asks for a better understanding of returnees’ profiles and skills, and for better gender data, since most returnees were women and young people. It recommends area-based solutions analysis to guide safe and dignified reintegration, and more knowledge of urban contexts, where most returnees and urban IDPs live. Together, these would allow a move away from care and maintenance towards planning based on evidence.
Self-reliance as collective action
The second set concerns programming. Legal and physical safety should be added to material safety. Development actors should be involved from the start of return, to address the specific vulnerabilities of displacement and inform medium- and long-term planning. Self-reliance should be treated as collective action, using an approach that is multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral and grounded in both rights and needs. And consortia should share learning and research and use a common framework to measure outcomes.
Communities and government in the lead
The third set asks agencies to involve displacement-affected communities, including refugees and hosts, safely and meaningfully in the decisions that affect them, and to put collective accountability to displaced people at the centre. The fourth asks agencies and donors to strengthen federal, regional and local authorities so they can lead and coordinate return and reintegration, to support the displacement pillar of the National Development Plan, and to invest in national and local institutions that can sustain solutions. The brief points to the Somalia Durable Solutions Initiative as a model for joint humanitarian and development analysis under government leadership, and calls for private sector engagement and long-term, predictable international support.
Read the full brief and the Lower Juba solutions analysis it draws on.
References
ReDSS and Somalia NGO Consortium (2017). Self-reliance and resilience of returnees and displaced communities in Somalia. June 2017. https://www.regionaldss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Self-reliance-and-resilience-Somalia-June-2017-2.pdf
