Somalia Supplement: Did Puntland Declare Independence?

This article is a supplement to PolGeoNow’s series of professional reports on territorial control in Somalia’s decades-long civil war. For more context, see that report series. However, this article is written to be accessible to general audiences.

Puntland's Not-quite "Declaration of Independence" 

Part of PolGeoNow's 2024 Somalia control map, showing Puntland state and surroundings. Click on the image to see the full map, complete with detailed legend (free for all readers). The larger blue area on the right represents land solidly controlled by Puntland, while the state's official claimed borders are marked by the dotted while line through Mudug region in the south, and by the left-hand side of the western zone labeled "Area claimed by both Somaliland and Puntland".

As Somalia’s original self-governing state – founded in the chaos of the 1990s before today's Somali federal government even existed – Puntland is in many ways the equivalent of an independent country. Somalia’s federal military has rarely been allowed to operate there, the federal government has little influence over the selection of state or local Puntland officials, and the state government tends to pick and choose to what degree it participates in the federal system. However, unlike neighboring Somaliland, which declared independence in 1991, Puntland has insisted since its founding that it's part of Somalia.

It caught the attention of political geography enthusiasts, then, when in March 2024, Puntland’s government was quoted as saying that it would begin operating with the “full powers of an independent state”. This came amid a dispute over constitutional reforms in Somalia's federal government – a government whose legitimacy Puntland said it no longer recognized. And it’s followed through in practice, refusing to even attend political talks on Somalia’s political future in the year since, continuing its own international relations with countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and fighting a successful war against an important branch of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS/ISIL) all on its own (except for some air support from the UAE and US).

Still, though this might have been the most strongly-worded one yet, it wasn’t the first of Puntland’s breakups with the Somali government – and it shouldn’t be taken to mean Puntland now considers itself a separate country from Somalia, despite that usually being what we mean by "independent". On the contrary, the state's own government has continued to insist that Puntland is officially part of Somalia. In fact, these two seemingly contradictory ways to describe the state are both already represented in Puntland’s 2009 constitution. Article 4 of that document says first that “Puntland State is part of Somalia”, and only later that “Pending the completion of the Federal Constitution…Puntland State shall have the status of an independent state”.

Puntland's Complicated Relationship with the Word "Independent" 

It’s worth understanding that in technical terms, there’s a difference between “independence”, which means being free to operate on your own terms (not dependent on anyone else), and “sovereignty”, which is the legal right to be the highest authority in the land. That’s why in international law lingo, what we usually call “independent countries” tend to instead be called “sovereign states” – they’re not only doing what they want, but (in general) they also officially have the right to do that.

Learn More: How many sovereign states are there in the world? 

Short Name:   • Puntland (English, Somali) • Arḍ al-Bunṭ (Arabic) Full Name:   • Puntland State of Somalia (English) • Dowladda Puntland ee Soomaaliya (Somali) • Wilāyat Arḍ al-Bunṭ aṣ-Ṣūmāliyyah (Arabic) Capital: Garowe Status according to Puntland: Autonomous state in Somalia Status according to Somalia: Federal member state of Somalia

So it's important that Article 4 of the Puntland constitution doesn’t claim that the state is “sovereign”, which would more strongly contradict it being “part of Somalia”. Another part of the document does claim “territorial sovereignty”, but seems to only be saying that no one else can redraw the state’s borders. So we can understand Article 4 to be saying that Puntland does what it wants for now (acts independently), without claiming that it’s at the same legal level as “Somalia” as a country. Over the past two decades, Puntland has often chosen to participate somewhat in Somalia's federal government system (especially when choosing the federal president), but the idea is that it's been doing that by choice, not by any legal obligation from its own end.

Of course, it’s common to use the worlds “independent” and “sovereign” interchangeably in everyday discussions of world politics – we do it in PolGeoNow articles too – and it seems likely Puntland knows exactly what its doing by throwing the word “independent” in there. Leaving legal documents and official statements a little unclear can be a deliberate strategy to allow for different interpretations, often as a compromise between your own contradictory interests, or between the opposing visions of the different people involved.

A clearer way to say that part of a country acts of its own accord is to say it's "autonomous" (a fancy word for self-governing), though it's become common to use this label even in the official names of country subdivisions that have only the most minimal amount of self-governance. Ironically, there's a longstanding convention in news media to call Puntland a "semi-autonomous region" of Somalia, even though it's actually about as autonomous as you can get – and much more autonomous than than most official "autonomous regions" in other countries. In PolGeoNow's opinion, this convention is flatly incorrect.

Could Puntland declare independence from Somalia in the future? 

Though its current government doesn't seem to want that, the Puntland constitution actually does seem to leave open the possibility of becoming a separate country one day: Later in Article 4 it says Puntland will “reserve the right to review” the clause calling itself part of Somalia. But it also says that decision can’t take effect without a two-thirds majority vote in the state parliament, plus a people’s referendum – something that certainly hasn’t happened so far. Between this and the state government’s continued statements that it’s part of Somalia, it’s clear that Puntland isn’t (yet) claiming to be what we would usually an “independent country”.

Of course, it’s possible to make decent arguments in either direction for how much true independence or sovereignty Puntland really has – for that matter, you can do the same for any of the world's countries – but that’s a different question from whether a “declaration of independence” has been made.

Want to follow changes to Puntland state's political status and on-the-ground territorial control? View all Somalia control map reports on PolGeoNow. 

Graphic of the Puntland flag (source) is in the public domain.