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Shelter provision in Mogadishu: Understanding politics for a more inclusive city - Working Paper September 2019

Países
Somalia
Fuentes
IIED
Fecha de publicación
Origen
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Erik Bryld, Christine Kamau, Charlotte Bonnet, Mohamed A Mohamoud and Fatiah Farah

Summary

This working paper is one of a series of three reports covering the main findings from a research project led by IIED on shelter in East Africa. This research project examines systems of shelter provision in three East African cities: Nairobi, Hawassa and Mogadishu. It was designed to identify policy-relevant, locally driven solutions to improve shelter at scale for vulnerable groups, including low-income women and men, displaced people, and people with disabilities. The methodology underpinning the study recognises that gender, poverty, displacement and ethnicity can act as major axes of discrimination that impede access to land, shelter and services in East African cities.

The research has explored the three cities’ histories, political settlements and variations in housing in order to generate new insights that can inform more inclusive, affordable shelter interventions. In addition, the research process has provided opportunities for knowledgesharing and spaces for dialogue between communities and local officials, using shelter as an entry point to foster more responsive local governance.

It is believed that the history of Mogadishu goes back at least as far as the 10th century, when Iranians from Shiraz founded a coastal city to trade with the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, India and China (Marchal 2006). Like in many African countries, Somalia’s current borders have little resemblance to the distribution of the ethnic Somali people who, apart from Somalia, are also present in the neighbouring countries of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. During the colonial period, Somalia was divided into northern British Somaliland and southern Italian Somaliland. On 26 June 1960, Britain granted independence to the north and four days later, the Italian-administered United Nations (UN) Trusteeship Territory of Somalia achieved independence. On 1 July 1960, the people of the former British and Italian territories united to form the Somali Republic (Gardner and El-Bushra 2004).

At independence, the population of Mogadishu was estimated to be 90,000, growing to 250,000 by 1969 (Davies 1987). By the 1980s, shortly before the collapse of the Siad Barre government, this was estimated to have risen to one million, with informal settlements mushrooming with no planning and their inhabitants living in cramped, unhygienic conditions with no access to basic services. Donor-funded initiatives — such as the National Housing Agency’s attempt to establish apartment blocks for migrants, or housing projects for low-income families in an area known today as Casa Popolare — were unable to keep up with the flow of newcomers to the city. Outbreaks of violence were common between differing clan members, who had come to live side by side in the city (ibid). Between 1970 and 1984, the central area grew more than fivefold, from 1,500 to 8,000 hectares (ibid). The city was divided into 13 districts and subdivided into departments (waah), sections (laan) and neighbourhoods with most districts becoming dominated by a particular clan (or clans) (ibid). The number of districts has now grown to 17, including the accession of Daynile and Kaxda districts, which are dominated by internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Somalia adopted a Provisional Federal Constitution in 2012 that envisages the setting up of a federal system of government through the creation of regional states.

In addition to the self-declared state of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous regional state of Puntland, four other regional member states have been formed since then: the Jubaland, South West, Galmudug and Hirshabelle administrations. The status and boundaries of Benadir region, whose capital is Mogadishu, remains unclear and highly contested in the ongoing federalisation process. Not only is Mogadishu the capital of Benadir region, but historically it is also the capital of Somalia, and some argue that it deserves special status as a state of Somalia (Bryden and Thomas 2016). The Provisional Constitution is silent on the issue of Mogadishu and it is hoped that the ongoing constitutional review process will find a way to resolve it.

Unlike in many other countries afflicted by conflict and displacement, Somalia does not have any UNadministered IDP camps. The high levels of insecurity after the collapse of the government in 1991, as well as the eventual withdrawal of the UN operations from the country in 1995, meant that there was no UN presence to organise housing and support for those displaced by the conflict. Instead, local Somalis took on this task — leading to the eventual growth of the gatekeeper system (Bryld et al. 2014; see also Section 2.4). The extremely restricted humanitarian space IIED and the control of Mogadishu by various warlords who engaged in frequent clashes with each other curtailed any meaningful ventures into the capital by humanitarian agencies. The UN started negotiating access to Mogadishu in 2006, but with the fall of the Islamic Courts Union (which attempted to break the strangle-hold of the warlords over the city) and the rise of al-Shabaab, security again degenerated.
With the famine of 2011–2012, agencies again had access to the city, by which time the gatekeeper system was well established in the face of weak or un-operational government structures (Bryld et al. 2013;
Drumtra 2015).

Mogadishu was selected as one of the case-study countries for the East Africa Research Fund (EARF) research on shelter provisions in East African countries as it presents a case of high need for low-cost shelter accessibility and a unique mix of longstanding formal and informal processes governing access to land and shelter. The shelter situation is exacerbated by decades of civil war since the fall of the government in 1991 that have resulted in high levels of internal displacement, with approximately 25 per cent of the city’s population comprising IDPs. As a result, and going back over 25 years, informal settlements have been appearing in and around the city, densely populated by these displaced populations but also by refugees from neighbouring countries (some Ethiopians, and more recently, a number of Yemenis), returnees and urban poor who cannot afford to reside anywhere else. With this research, the team hopes to shed more light on the practices and provision of shelter in the city and provide recommendations for enhancing the response by the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS), the Benadir Regional Administration (BRA) (the city administration), the international community and development practitioners.

The research was divided into three phases:

• A desk-study phase assessed existing legislation and previous research and identified gaps that needed to be addressed in the field research stage.

• A first field research phase focused on the production of shelter across the city. This included (a) semi-structured interviews with key informants, from government and development practitioners to representatives from banks, notaries, real-estate developers, and private utility companies (25 respondents); (b) a number of cross-city excursions aimed at identifying shelter types and spatial patterns in Mogadishu; and (c) a crosscity questionnaire survey (using KoBo1 tablet data collection and processing) interviewing residents of different shelter types across the city identified in the excursions (35 respondents). The findings from Phase I were validated through a workshop with government, BRA and private-sector representatives.

• A second field research phase focused on selected settlements comprising poor urban residents or people classified in Mogadishu as IDPs in three districts ranging from the centre to the periphery of the city (63 respondents). Key tools for data collection in the second fieldwork phase included semi-structured interviews with residents (male- and female-headed households and youth) and focus group discussions (FGDs) (with mixed groups, women and youth), followed by social mapping exercises where groups of women and young men from Hodan and Kaxda districts were asked to draw their settlements, describe their external living spaces and identify social spatial patterns (40 participants).

Specific sessions were held with women as well as young single men, who comprise some of the most vulnerable groups in Mogadishu.