Sunday September 8, 2024
By Chinedu Okafor
Somalia has warned that corporations recognizing Somaliland as an independent state would be met with some penalty. Tensions between Somalia and Somaliland escalated further when Ethiopia signed an MoU with Somaliland, recognizing the country as independent. Since then, Somalia has gone on to repel the deal in an attempt to make it illegitimate.
Somalia had issued that by the 1st of September, all companies with operations in Somalia, should have revised any information they have on their platform which recognizes Somaliland as an independent territory.
They warned that this would be taken seriously.
The country advised that information put out by said organizations should permeate that Somaliland still remains a territory of Somalia, otherwise, punishments would follow.
As seen in the East African, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) in Somalia used the country's provisional constitution to compel corporations into removing the name of Somaliland off their network information sites.
Paysii, Dahabshil Jubba Express and Ethiopian Airlines, are some of the companies that were called out, and asked to cease using the name Somaliland and instead go with Somalia.
In the case of Ethiopian Airlines which flies from the capital city of Somalia; Mogadishu to the capital city of Somaliland; Hargeisa, Somalia asked that it should stop listing the Somaliland destination as a separate country.
“Use Somalia only in your systems as from 1st of September (this year),” Commerce and Industry Minister Jibril Abdirashid Haji Abdi had said .
The Somali Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) additionally called upon airlines using Somali airports to cease referring to places like Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, as separate from Somalia.
Tension sparked by Ethiopia
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ignited a diplomatic storm in January 2024 when he announced plans to obtain access to a port in Somaliland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia, in exchange for a stake in state-owned Ethiopia Airlines.
In reaction to Ethiopia's agreement with the Republic of Somaliland, Somalia said that it will stop at nothing to maintain its territorial integrity.
The Somali government at the time called the deal irrelevant, stating that the MOU between Ethiopia and Somaliland is “null and void with no legal basis.
Somaliland broke away from Somalia more than 30 years ago. However, to this day it has not been recognized as an independent state by the African Union (AU) or the United Nations (UN).