IDP return and durable solutions: observations from South-Central Somalia
Somalia hosts one of the world's largest internally displaced populations. Durable solutions programming has moved up the donor agenda, but field conditions in South-Central Somalia impose constraints that programme designs routinely understate. These observations come from assessment and evaluation work across multiple displacement-affected districts.
Land tenure is the binding constraint
Most return and local-integration programming assumes a resolvable land question. In the districts we have assessed, land occupied by IDP settlements is typically subject to layered claims: customary title, private purchase during displacement, and municipal allocation, often over the same parcel. Programmes that build services on contested land create assets whose ownership disputes outlast the programme. The operational implication is uncomfortable but consistent: tenure due diligence must precede infrastructure commitment, and where tenure cannot be secured in writing with all claim-holders, relocation-based models fail quietly through gradual eviction.
Services access drives settlement choice more than origin attachment
Programme theory often assumes displaced households prefer return to their area of origin. Our household-level data consistently shows settlement decisions tracking services and livelihoods access: proximity to markets, schools, and health facilities outweighs origin attachment for a majority of respondents, particularly for households displaced longer than five years and for youth-headed households with no direct memory of the place of origin. Durable solutions portfolios weighted heavily toward return support are, in effect, funding the least preferred of the three settlement pathways.
Reintegration is a host-community transaction
Where local integration succeeds, it is because the host community extracted a visible benefit: shared infrastructure, expanded markets, or negotiated political inclusion of IDP representatives in district structures. Programming that targets IDP households exclusively generates resentment that surfaces as blocked access, rent extraction, or violence. The workable ratio in our observation is close to parity: for every programme dollar visible to displaced households, a comparable benefit must be visible to the host community, negotiated openly rather than assumed.
Donor coordination remains the persistent gap. Displacement-affected districts routinely host parallel durable solutions initiatives with separate targeting, separate committees, and separate data systems. The transaction costs fall on district administrations least equipped to carry them.
- 01Complete tenure due diligence before committing infrastructure.
- 02Weight portfolios toward the settlement pathways households actually choose.
- 03Design host-community benefit in from the start, at close to parity.
- 04Consolidate targeting and data systems at district level.