Danish Demining Group has cleared 1,4 million square meters of land in Somaliland.

Somaliland has been contaminated by explosive remnants of war (ERW) since the early 70’s when the Ogaden war broke out between Somalia and Ethiopia. In the early 80’s violence broke out once again between the Somali National Movement and the Somali government, led by General Said Barre. The resulting conflict led eventually to Somaliland declaring independence in 1991. Inter-clan rivalries beset the region for some time, but since 1997 Somaliland has enjoyed relative peace and stability.

In the early 1990s a commercial mine clearance organisation called Rimfire conducted mine clearance of high impacted areas throughout Somaliland, reducing the immediate threat to the local communities under difficult circumstances. However, there remained a significant threat from ERW in Somaliland, so DDG started a humanitarian mine action programme in Somaliland in 1999. Since then DDG has:

• Cleared 30 minefields
• Conducted 90 Battle Area Clearance Tasks
• Conducted more than 4,500 community visits under a village by village clearance program for unexploded ordnances (UXO)
• Surveyed more than 150 individual sites for landmine & UXO contamination
• Cleared more than 11,000 landmines and 124,000 UXOs
• Delivered mine risk education to more than 34,000 persons
• Conducted the Somalia Phase One Landmine Impact Survey (LIS) 

As the threat from landmines and UXOs has decreased, DDG has refocused its work in Somaliland to ensure that its work continues to achieve maximum impact for the communities it works with. To this end, in 2006 DDG ceased its mine-clearance activities in Somaliland, while continuing with small scale village-by-village clearance of UXOs. A Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) assessment carried out by DDG in 2007 showed that Somaliland suffers from an excess of uncontrolled arms (i.e. an estimated 80% of all households owns at least 1 firearm) which far too often results in unintended accidents and exacerbates the seriousness of low level disagreements. Therefore, in April 2008, DDG launched a new Community Safety (CS) Programme aimed at promoting greater community safety and reducing armed violence through improved attitudes and behaviour with regards to SALW, ERW and conflict management. 

The programme is culturally sensitive and respects Somalilanders’ perceived right to self-protection and need to maintain ownership and control over their firearms. Thus, the programme aims not to disarm people, but to facilitate and promote improved SALW management at community level and to capacitate community members to take responsibility for enhancing their own safety and security.  The CS Programme encompasses the following components:

Strengthening local institutions and enhancing local capacity for addressing safety needs
- Implementation of participatory community safety plan processes where the community identify and develop solutions to their safety needs
- Training of community members in organisational management, fundraising, proposal writing and community mobilisation in order to enable them to actively use the community safety plans to improve their safety

Addressing small arms as a tool of violence
- Production and distribution of safe storage devices for firearms to introduce a systematic and safe firearms management regime, prevent thefts by criminal elements and restrict accessibility for children and others who are vulnerable to accidents
- Firearms safety education to firearm owners and dependants to encourage safe behaviour when handling and storing firearms in order to prevent accidents and foster a wider ethos of responsibility

Building capacity for conflict management and peace
- Conflict management education to community members to enable settlement of minor conflicts peacefully and discourage the use of armed violence

Addressing immediate threats to life and limbs by explosive remnants of war (ERW)
- Village by village spot clearance of ERW and destruction of private stockpiles of ERW
- Mine risk education for community members to teach safe behaviour in potentially contaminated areas

Strengthening relationships between security providers and communities
- Advocacy activities and establishment and training of community based policing committees who facilitates improved communication and cooperation (implemented in conjunction with our institutional partner the Danish Refugee Council)

Since the launch of the CS programme in 2008, DDG has destroyed more than 350 ERW from private stockpiles and more than 500 from spot clearance activities, delivered firearms safety and mine risk education to more than 7000 people, trained more than 350 people in conflict management and provided more than 600 firearm owners with safe storage devices for their. In addition to this the population in DDG’s seven target areas have actively engaged in safety enhancing activities and have begun providing education to fellow community members, improving their collaboration with police etc. 

In addition DDG Somaliland in conjunction with the Small Arms Survey has published the report ”Community Safety and Small Arms in Somaliland”. The report is based on data collected from 157 communities in 32 districts, including 2846 household questionnaires and 281 focus group and key informant interviews with players in the field of community safety. It is available for use by other actors in Somaliland and the wider development community.