Max Planck Foundation facilitates retreat in Nairobi
The retreat was an internal work meeting of the Constitutional Review and Implementation Oversight Committee (OC) to discuss current challenges of the Somali constitutional review process and to draft the OC’s internal work plan. The retreat lasted from 30 August to 4 September 2017.
At the start of the retreat, the Max Planck Foundation was requested to provide basic background information on the process of constitution making in Somalia as well as the past four years of constitutional review following the adoption of the Somali Provisional Constitution in August 2012. For this purpose, also the former Chairlady of the OC, Mariam Arif, and former OC member, Fawziya Aden, as well as Chairman Mohamed Afrah and Commissioner Mohamed Salah from the Independent Constitutional Review and Implementation Commission (ICRIC) were invited to attend the meeting in order to share their experience and knowledge on the constitutional review process. The First Deputy Speaker of the Upper House of the Somali Federal Parliament, Abshir Mohamed Ahmed as well as representatives from the EU Delegation to Somalia, including the newly appointed Head of Political Section, Mr. Garrido Ruiz Fulgencio, paid the participants a courtesy visit during their deliberations.
The retreat provided newly elected OC members of both Houses of the Somali Federal Parliament under the leadership of Chairman Abdi Awale with the opportunity to get acquainted with their role in the constitutional review structure and to develop their own approach and work plan. Thereby, the newly elected OC members based their deliberations on the comprehensive review report that was submitted to the Somali Federal Parliament by the former OC and ICRIC in July 2016. This comprehensive review report now requires extensive public and political consultations, which the OC is constitutionally mandated and determined to initiate.