Project Case Study
Developing Somaliland’s national security architecture
Improving security planning, decision making and coordination at the heart of government
Since 1991 the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland has steadily recovered from civil war to make impressive strides towards democratic governance and political stability.
However the state remains fragile and faces substantial threats to safety such as violent crime, arms trafficking and terrorism. In 2011 the country’s national security architecture suffered from a confusion of mandates, weak capacity for verification and analysis of data and little sharing of information across agencies that acted independently of each other.
The purpose of this project was to strengthen the capacity of national security authorities – comprising a national council, its coordination-committee, police, military, intelligence and border agencies – to coordinate their security decision making and operations. The project focused its support on the National Security Coordination Committee whilst frequently liaising with the heads of individual agencies and the National Security Adviser.
We supported the committee to prepare a national counter-terrorist strategy and to secure its approval by the national leadership. We assisted in establishing a technical secretariat tasked with collecting, verifying and analysing information that would support the committee’s decision making. We subsequently provided training and mentoring to the secretariat and facilitated the first interagency workshop for sharing information. This assistance was delivered in close coordination with our project providing training to the Counter Terrorist Unit of the Police in investigation and forensic skills.
