In the face of nearly three decades of conflict, Somalia remains one of the world’s most fragile and impoverished states. Amidst the turmoil, accurate and comprehensive census data is crucial to effectively address development needs and enable accountable programme delivery.
Through our Third-Party Monitoring and Learning work under the FCDO’s Somalia Monitoring Programme III (SMP III), we provide the UK Government with insights into programme delivery, risk management, and evidence of effective strategies that guide their Somalia programming.
In this blog, Fredrick Otieno, our SMP III Team Leader, explains the challenges of counting the population of Somaliland and the importance of including the hard to count (HTC) individuals in the national census.
The context
The inclusion of marginalised populations in international development has gained momentum in the recent past, with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development placing it at the forefront of development and committing to leave no one behind – ensuring that people who are hardest to reach are given priority.
Whilst this has been the motivation in many countries, inclusion of HTC individuals in national censuses remain a challenge. When national censuses miss members of HTC populations, it can lead to skewed demographic estimates, underrepresentation within government, and inefficient allocation of public and private resources [1].
In sub-Saharan Africa, HTC individuals are even harder to reach because of poor infrastructure and limited resources. Further, in countries like Somalia (and Somaliland), which is ranked towards the bottom of the global scale on Statistical Capacity, lack of technical expertise exacerbates the exclusion of HTC individuals.
Scholars have identified various typical characteristics of HTC individuals, including those that are:
- Hard to Locate (e.g., nomadic peoples and those hard to identify)
- Hard to Contact (challenges with access, network coverage etc.)
- Hard to Persuade (reluctance to being enumerated)
- Hard to Interview (due to any barriers such as language, low literacy, or some form of disability)
In our experience as researchers in Somalia and Somaliland, all four categories of HTC individuals appear to exist in different geographical settings across the country. This is because Somalia has experienced numerous waves of displacement over the past 30 years, caused by multiple and overlapping sequences of drivers and factors, including protracted conflict, recurrent climate shocks, and floods that force thousands of families to leave their homes and, in some cases, livelihoods. For others, it is their lifestyle as nomads to move from place to place in search of water and pasture for their animals.
What FCDO is currently supporting
In its business case for providing support to the Statistical Capacity Building programme for Somalia, FCDO Somalia recognises that data availability and reliability in the country is poor, which limits how authorities and the international community plan and deliver services to the Somali population. To date, FCDO has supported the Population Estimation Survey Somalia (PESS) project, which recorded the population figure of 12.3 million. The data from PESS is still being used for planning and programming purposes despite Somalia having one of the world’s fastest growing populations. Without a census, Somali authorities have rejected efforts to produce up-to-date data population estimates with sufficient geographic detail.
In Somaliland, which has large areas in the north and north-east inhabited by HTC individuals, there are many challenges when attempting to count everyone. To address some of the issues with counting HTC individuals, especially in Somaliland where the challenge is more pronounced, FCDO’s statistics programme (with UNFPA as the project manager) is implementing a nomadic methodology development project. This project aims to design a robust enumeration technique for the upcoming census.
The targeted activities are to organise a consultation process with key government and non-government institutions, list all nomadic settlements and municipalities in Somaliland, and organise focus group discussions with Nomadic Link Workers (NLW) or related groups who may be closer to nomads and might have more current information on them. In addition, UNFPA have hired a Census Coordination Consultant to conduct nomadic consultation workshops across Somaliland’s six regions. These workshops have brought together key stakeholders, including the Ministry of Livestock, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Interior and Municipalities, and Ministry of Planning, regional coordinators and resources, and academics, cultural representatives, and nomads.
How SMP III’s TPM work is supporting the efforts
The Statistics Capacity Building Programme (by UNFPA) and third-party monitoring work (by Tetra Tech) are both nested under the FCDO’s SMP III programme. While the UNFPA does the implementation in preparation for the census, the TPM component (known as SMP III), provides programme delivery, risk assurance and strong independent evidence of what works to inform programme design and adaptation across the Somalia portfolio.
Multiple activities, consultations, and benchmarking initiatives are currently taking place as part of the implementation of the census preparatory work. These are happening in multiple locations with diverse peoples across the country. All the work across multiple geographies and with diverse populations offers a good opportunity for the UNFPA to build upon the success of PESS 2014 and collect rich data to help find a working strategy to count HTC individuals in Somaliland (and Somalia at large).
SMP III work provides support to this initiative through the following activities:
a) Verification and monitoring of activities
SMP III has conducted several monitoring and verification visits to collate learning from selected preparatory activities implemented by UNFPA. Our TPM team has monitored community consultation workshops, training of enumerators, pilot nomadic surveys, use of technology and capacity building of statistics departments. In addition, we have conducted benchmarking activities in other countries (such as Kenya, Nigeria, and Rwanda), where statistics departments are more mature. This monitoring contributes to the efforts by FCDO and UNFPA to ensure that FCDO remains aware of implementation, progress remains on track, and, more importantly, lessons learned and best practices are collated, providing a view to implementing strategies that work to enumerate HTCs.
b) Meetings with Stakeholders during and prior to activities
We also meet with stakeholders including community leaders, local authority representatives, government officials, and NGO and CSO representatives, among others. These stakeholders use the opportunity afforded to them during the monitoring to share their ideas and provide context for the census. While SMP III’s understanding of context is limited to the number of people that have been engaged with, the general perception is that stakeholders are willing to champion the enumeration of HTC individuals they have influence over. With adequate buy-in, it is possible that the all hands-on deck approach will work out when the census is ready.
c) Engagement with community during verifications
Our teams also engage community members during verifications, especially during pilot surveys and nomadic consultation activities. We see this as having a three-pronged positive effect on conducting a census of HTC individuals:
i) Extending the voice of the enumerators (hence UNFPA/Somaliland Statistics Departments) around why it is important to conduct a census. In the process contributing to deepening awareness around these issues.
ii) As verifications are conducted, there is an increased buy-in into the process, providing a reflection point for communities.
iii) Nomadic communities start to become familiar with being enumerated and what it means for them, including giving them an opportunity to give independent feedback on what their expectations are.
d) Sharing lessons learnt
Most importantly, what SMP III’s work does is ensure that all monitoring and verification insight and feedback is shared with the UNFPA. This means that the perception and ideas of those involved can have an influence on how enumerator training and community work is carried out, while also promoting a culture of learning from other comparable African contexts.
e) Platform to engage donors
Our findings hopefully enable FCDO (and other donors) to not only interrogate what is in the field, but also inform how they support the UNFPA and its government partners to conduct census and population work. Other implementers can also use the lessons shared to triangulate what they see as a contextual reality for Somaliland.
In conclusion, all these efforts are focused on ensuring that we all play a small part in meeting the key goals for a more equitable world, especially for vulnerable, marginalised nomadic people in one of the most fragile locations in the world. SMP III is doing its part.