Somali Pastoralists’ Right of Access to Cross-Border Ancestral Pastureland: An Assessment of International Law and African Union Regional Policy on Pastoralists

Abstract

The right of peoples to self-determination is a legal entitlement under international law that grants communities the right to freedom as peoples. The Somali way of life as pastoralists, including other nomadic tribes, is confined to the nationality and citizenship of different state jurisdictions in which they live in the Horn of Africa. The Somali peoples remain divided and scattered across the four states: Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti, where they encounter territorial restrictions, including access to transnational border pasture for their livestock and markets for their livestock and products. Because of international border imposition and state citizenship, the Somali people are unable to freely move from one state to another legally without being subjected to the immigration procedures to access inter-state ancestral pastureland. This article contends that, under international law, the Somali people and other nomadic communities should be granted the right to reside, trade, work, and graze their animals in their ancestral land without restriction and without being subjected to the inter-states’ immigration and customs requirements within their ancestral land in the Horn of Africa States.