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“The problem is not always that the world has misunderstood Somalia, but that we have misunderstood how and why it sees us.” By Ali Halane
As the United Nations Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNTMIS) concludes its mandate on October 31, 2026, an important chapter in Somalia’s relationship with the world body comes to an end. The closure does not mean the UN is leaving Somalia. It does, however, invite a question deeper than whether the mission succeeded: after decades of engagement, how well did either side understand the other?
Over the years, I have met UN officials and advisers who arrived in Somalia equipped with reports, briefings and professional expertise. Several acknowledged that direct encounters with ordinary Somalis challenged the picture they had formed through documents and official meetings. Their experiences do not prove institutional failure. They reveal the distance that can separate knowing about a society from understanding how it lives.
Since the collapse of the central government in 1991, Somalia has often been portrayed through famine, clan conflict, piracy, terrorism and institutional weakness. These crises are real. But when repeated as the country’s defining characteristics, they obscure its history of trade, social organization and cultural exchange, as well as the resilience of networks connecting Somalis at home and abroad.
Somalis carry a sense of nationhood even when they disagree about government, representation and resources. Cultural cohesion does not erase political divisions; nor should those divisions erase the foundations of a shared identity.
That identity also resists convenient labels. Somalia is geographically African, historically connected to the Arab and Islamic worlds, and distinctively Somali in language, memory and social traditions.
None of these dimensions alone explains the whole. International institutions understandably rely on classifications to design programmes and compare countries. Problems arise when administrative categories replace curiosity about the society itself.
The United Nations has accumulated extensive knowledge of Somalia, much of it produced by capable Somali and international researchers. The difficulty lies not in a shortage of information but in how that information is gathered and interpreted.
Institutional understanding commonly rests on reports, accounts supplied by officials and intermediaries, and direct engagement with communities. Security restrictions, staff protection arrangements and frequent rotations can make the third source the weakest. An official may know humanitarian indicators in detail yet have little contact with the daily experiences that give those numbers meaning.
Local Somali staff, interpreters and advisers help bridge this gap. Many bring valuable international experience, including years spent in the diaspora. Yet speaking Somali and sharing a national background do not automatically confer intimate knowledge of every community. Some professionals may be more familiar with international institutional culture than with the everyday realities they are asked to interpret.
This is not a criticism of their loyalty or competence. It is a reason to broaden the voices international organizations hear. Institutions depend on local intermediaries for expertise and access; intermediaries depend on institutions for employment and professional opportunity. Without deliberate efforts to diversify sources, a relatively small circle can shape the outside world’s understanding of an entire country.
Political leaders add another complication. Somali officials may speak from national positions while also reflecting regional, clan or partisan interests. When international partners hear competing accounts from representatives of the same state, they may mistake political rivalry for the defining character of Somali society. Somalia’s elites therefore share responsibility for the narratives they later accuse outsiders of accepting.
The misunderstanding also runs in the opposite direction. Some Somali politicians have treated the United Nations as though it were a world government capable of settling domestic disputes or delivering political recognition. Others have called it biased whenever its decisions conflicted with their interests.
Among many ordinary Somalis, a different perception has taken hold: the UN as a slow, expensive bureaucracy offering contracts to well-connected insiders and generous compensation to consultants whose work seems remote from daily needs. In this view, operational costs and privileges consume resources that should reach communities directly.
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Such perceptions do not tell the whole story, and they should not be presented as established facts about every agency or employee. They nevertheless expose a genuine problem of public confidence: institutions measure achievements through programmes, reports and statistics, while citizens judge them by changes they can see in their lives.
The UN is not independent of its member states. Its political missions operate under Security Council mandates, financial constraints and competing international interests. Understanding those limits does not remove the need to scrutinize spending, transparency or effectiveness. It simply makes criticism more precise.
Thus, some international personnel viewed Somalia through crisis reports; some politicians viewed the UN through its presumed influence over domestic power struggles; and some citizens viewed it through its costs and privileges. Each perspective captured something, but none offered a complete picture.
The critique of Orientalism offers a useful lens on the relationship between knowledge and power: those who classify a society and identify its problems can influence how others see it. Yet modern bureaucratic simplification should not automatically be equated with colonial intent. Large organizations need categories and indicators to allocate resources and assess results. Repeated often enough, however, provisional assumptions can harden into institutional truths.
Somalis are not passive in this process. Political actors and local organizations may themselves emphasize fragility, conflict or need to secure funding and support, reinforcing the stereotypes they criticize. A more accurate account requires self-examination on both sides.
UN missions have supported Somali institutions, political processes, reconciliation and the rule of law at times when the state struggled to fulfil its responsibilities. Their contribution should not be dismissed. Equally, the departure of a political mission does not establish that Somalia has achieved sovereignty in every practical sense.
Sovereignty means more than the legal authority to decide. It also means possessing the institutional, economic and security capacity to act. Another dimension matters just as much: the ability to produce knowledge about ourselves and explain our priorities to the world.
Somalia cannot fully own its future if outsiders remain its principal interpreters. Stronger universities, independent research centres and meaningful community participation would help shift that balance. International partners, in turn, should seek perspectives beyond familiar officials and intermediaries. Somali professionals must also understand how multilateral institutions actually work, while political elites must present a country neither stripped of its difficulties nor reduced to them.
This change also requires a different understanding of partnership. International expertise should complement, rather than displace, Somali knowledge. Local voices should not be invited merely to validate decisions already made elsewhere. They should help identify problems, shape priorities and assess outcomes. Without that shift, old patterns of dependence may continue under new institutional arrangements.
The mission’s closure should therefore mark more than a transfer of responsibilities. It should open a relationship in which knowledge and accountability move in both directions.
The question left behind is not simply what the United Nations achieved in Somalia, but what Somalis and international officials learned about one another. Both have too often relied on inherited assumptions. Offices close and mandates expire, but those assumptions can survive for decades. Real progress will come when Somalis are equal partners in defining their country, and equally willing to understand the world with which they engage.
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*Ali Halane is a Somali journalist and researcher specializing in African and Middle Eastern affairs. He is a founding member of the Somali Cultural Parliament.
**The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Dawan Africa.