Somaliland

A self-declared republic on the Gulf of Aden — heir to an ancient trading coast and a former British protectorate — that has governed itself in peace since 1991 while the question of its international recognition remains unresolved.

Somaliland is a territory in the north-west of the Horn of Africa, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Aden, centred on its capital Hargeisa. Its coast holds one of the region's oldest trading histories: the port of Zeila was a gateway of medieval Islamic commerce and, by some accounts, an early seat of the Adal Sultanate. From the 1880s Britain governed the area as the Somaliland Protectorate, distinct from Italian Somaliland to the south. The protectorate became the independent State of Somaliland on 26 June 1960 and, five days later, voluntarily united with the former Italian Somaliland to form the Somali Republic. Northern grievances within that union deepened over the following decades and erupted into rebellion led by the Somali National Movement; in the late 1980s the government of Siad Barre answered the insurgency with the aerial bombardment of Hargeisa and Burao and mass killings of Isaaq civilians, an episode a 2001 United Nations inquiry described as genocide. As the Somali state collapsed, leaders meeting in Burao declared on 18 May 1991 that the north was restoring the independence it had briefly held in 1960. Since then Somaliland has built a relatively stable, self-governing polity with its own government, a constitution approved by referendum in 2001, the Somaliland shilling, and multiparty elections. No outcome of its quest for recognition is presumed here: Somalia regards the territory as one of its regions, the African Union and almost all states have withheld recognition, and although Israel recognised Somaliland in December 2025 it remains, as of mid-2026, the only United Nations member state to have done so.