January 7, 2025 0 Comments
By Dr. Suleiman Walhad
The Somali Xeer is often said to be the soul of the Somali nation, a people who live across many countries today, but mostly in Somalia proper, the Republic of Djibouti, the Federal Republic of Ethiopia and the Republic of Kenya. Many critics of the Somali Xeer limit its application and applicability to Somalia only and ignoring the fact that the Somali nation and territory was divided during the colonial times into these four countries. Although the Somali Xeer, was largely replaced by state legal and court systems, it still remains the core legal system, which governs the Somali way of life.
The Somali Xeer is wide and covers many aspects of life including conduct of marriages, festivals, sharing, facing calamities, wars, crime, and many others. However, the Somali Xeer is said to fall short of addressing some issues including the issue of individual responsibility, where a perpetrator of a crime is not individually responsible for his transgression, exclusion of women from the Tree or the court, and the unfair treatment of marginalized groups and minorities.
The Somali Xeer is a framework which keeps communities to live together. Communities are often families and protection of family honor was and is the basis of a typical Somali way of life. If a member of a family commits an error, it is treated as a collective error of the family, and they all bear responsibility together. The Somali is the only insured person in the world not by an insurance company but by his family or clan affiliation. It is a sword with two edges, where on the one hand, the individual receives help of the whole family, while a family shares the benefit or compensation received as a result of a member being a victim. However, as state-building resumes and state-legal systems develop, this collective responsibility can and will be transformed into individual responsibility. The Somali Xeer is not static but adaptable and handles all issues. The core system of an issue is first to check whether a situation has occurred before or is new. This is called the Curad (Precedence) or Ugub (New) issue of matters.
Similarly the issue exclusion of women is not as generally presented. Women were always involved in Somali affairs and even played prominent roles in determining the life systems of the Somali people. However, issues of women modesty and honor was also respected but they were and still are allowed to participate through giving evidence or observe discussions and hearings under the Tree. There is nothing that prevents them from participating in a Somali court system today and the Somali Xeer can easily adapt a renovation in this regard. As noted earlier, it is an adaptable system which accepts new situations and conditions, and which creates solutions for these new situations and conditions. One should note that it is man-made, and that, therefore, it is not perfect. There is no reason, why it should not address all aspects of modern life systems.
Contrary to defining the Somali Xeer as a system of addressing only peace issues and conflict resolution mechanisms, it is much wider and covers all aspects of life. Unlike more modern legal systems, it protects the interests of all, without undue pressure on an individual and provides a healing process for a community. The Somali Xeer or the Laws of Somalis is an effective way of providing justice and is said to be superior to democratic laws in many ways. One could read the book “The law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa – January 1, 2012, by Michael Van Notten) for more details. Financial news subscriptions
The Somali Xeer addresses property rights, laws of contracting, and delivers justice and this was done much earlier than modern democratic societies. It has, indeed, no foreign words in the delivery of its processes and procedures evidencing that it was developed locally in the very Horn of Africa in the Somali language.
It would appear that there is a need for applying the Somali Xeer with respect to settling the current ongoing civil conflict in the country. This would be good for both Somalia and the countries interested in it. Its geostrategic location, its resources which include its resilient population and others, in terms of minerals, agriculture, blue economy, all need a peaceful place and not the turbulent country, it currently presents itself.
It is clear the political class of Somalia today, both in governance and in the opposition, is corrupt and unpatriotic and would not bring forth a stable, peaceful, and developing country. It is why the silent majority, the really good people of Somalia, should come forward to reclaim their country and reform it through the application of its traditional legal systems and conflict resolution mechanisms, which have kept the Somali way of life for millennia before.
This does not mean that the current political class should be punished as in non-Somali legal systems. Offenders of the system according to the Somali Xeer, are not generally punished but rehabilitated and victims are compensated. Perhaps an innovation could be added where the wrong gains they made at the expense of the nation can be recovered to build schools and medical facilities and roads for the people, but allowing them enough to live off comfortably, as previous leaders of the country, who erred. We should not ignore the fact that a Somali is insured under the Somali Xeer through the clan or family infrastructure, who collectively assume the wrong doings of one of theirs. It was considered shameful for a clan member to cause such distress for the clan. This should still be the case under the current circumstances, if the nation has to recover from the chaos and its shameful situation.
The Somali Xeer or the Law of the Somalis was and is perfectly capable of making and maintaining peace and always protected the Somali nation from within and from without. But it appears that democratic processes which the Somalis hardly understand have been imposed on the people, which divides them even more – to differing classes, which Somalis have no experience of handling – ruling and ruled classes. No wonder there is chaos in the country and in the political system.
The Somali people are a people who learned how to live in peace through consensus and compromise throughout history in the harsh environment in which they live. They lived and thrived through this system. Even the greetings among Somalis is “Ma Nabadbaa?” or “Is it Peaceful?” when one encounters another. They attached a lot of importance to peace among themselves to even call the title of their chieftains the “Nabad-doon” or the “Peacemaker.” It is when there is peace that life grows, and people go about their normal daily chores like farming, animal husbandry, fishing, building, irrigation, drilling for water wells and so on.
The beauty of the system is that it is acceptable from one corner of the Somali territories to the other, i.e., from Djibouti to the Estuary of Tana River in Kenya to Moyale and Haadamo in Ethiopia to Ras Asyer in the very Horn of Africa and everywhere in between – some 1.3 million square kilometers of land. Complimented by the singularity of their faith, Islam, and their tongue, Somali, there was no reason to have been divided. However, divided now, they are and we are dealing only with present day Somalia, which should revisit the application of the traditional legal system of the country and people, the Laws of the Somalis or the Somali Xeer.
It is the system which enables Somalis to survive through situations many other nations would have by now succumbed and perished. Somalis still look after each other through this system across the globe and this solidarity is the basis of the Somali Xeer, which should be deployed to solve the seemingly intractable political chaos of the current political class.
Dr. Suleiman Walhad
Dr. Suleiman Walhad writes on the Horn of Africa economies and politics. He can be reached at suleimanwalhad@yahoo.com.
