Somalia experiences one of the world’s most complex protracted displacement situations, fuelled by armed conflict and the impact of climate change-induced droughts and floods. The country now has an estimated four million internally displaced persons (IDPs), with a significant trend in IDPs fleeing rural areas towards IDP settlements in urban areas. Humanitarian response in Somalia drives the production of data on internal displacement, coordinated through the humanitarian cluster system. Efforts primarily concentrate on estimating IDPs in the country to guide aid provision. To tackle displacement challenges, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) has issued a National Durable Solutions Strategy (NDSS) for 2020 to 2024, including a monitoring and evaluation framework for its five strategic objectives. One year after the launch of the United Nation’s Secretary General’s Action Agenda on Internal Displacement, the FGS, in coordination with the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office , have framed a commitment to provide solutions pathways for up to 1 million IDPs to overcome their displacement related vulnerabilities and progress toward durable solutions.
Data for solutions in Somalia requires improved coordination between the state and federal levels as well as across the humanitarian and development nexus. On the 25th and 26th of October 2023, 40 data experts representing Somali government institutions, UN agencies, and international non-governmental organisations working in Somalia met in Mogadishu to discuss a common approach to measuring progress towards durable solutions to internal displacement. The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Planning, Investment and Economic Development (MoPIED), the Somalia National Bureau of Statistics (SNBS), the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Joint Internal Displacement Profiling Service (JIPS), the Regional Durable Solutions Secretariat (ReDSS), and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
This report provides an overview of the key outcomes of the multi-stakeholder workshop, including enhanced coordination on data for solutions; improved understanding of data needs to inform development interventions, monitor the implementation of public policies, and preparing the next round of policy development as Somalia plans for an update of the NDSS and moves into a new National Development Plan in 2025.
This report has been prepared by JIPS (1) and UNDP who facilitated the workshop.
The FGS will continue to lead the use of common international and national standards to produce more harmonized IDP data across levels and actors, including the Federal Members States (FMS) and international actors. Workshop participants agreed that two complementary data systems and subsequent coordination platforms should co-exist to respond to the different data needs in the country: i) an independent IDP statistical system, led by the SNBS, to guide the production of official statistics, including stocks and progress towards solutions as well as methodological refinement of existing standards; and ii) an operational data system for solutions, led by the MoPIED, to coordinate operational responses to internal displacement within the government and with international actors. Different data sources should be used for reporting towards different policy frameworks (NDSS, National Development Plan, SDGs, Action Agenda). Given the lack of robustness of these sources today, it is useful to consider several sources to triangulate data; a precondition for such triangulation is the standardisation of key concepts and methodological approaches. Annex 1 provides an overview of key methodological elements that need to be addressed. Priority elements include:
The key recommendations are relevant to two related yet separate efforts to build official statistics on IDPs and ensure alignment around data for solutions efforts. Find out more in the workshop report.
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(1) JIPS’ support in Somalia was made possible through the generous co-funding and multi-donor partnership with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), and USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).
