The Burao & Borama Model
A rigorous record of the conferences and local settlements that ended the fighting — who convened them, how they were financed, and why the agreements held.
05
Peace & Reconciliation
The peace Somaliland built is a model the world should study.
Overview
Documenting, strengthening, and exporting the homegrown dialogue model that rebuilt a nation from the ashes of war.
Somaliland's peace was not delivered by a foreign conference or a peacekeeping mission. It was negotiated clan by clan, community by community — at Burao, at Borama — through patient, homegrown dialogue that fused traditional authority with modern institutions. That inheritance is both a national treasure and a diplomatic asset.
We work to codify this model: what made it succeed, how its institutions can be renewed for a new generation, and how its lessons can serve conflict-affected societies elsewhere — with Somalilanders at the table as teachers, not case studies.
Why It Matters
A nation that can teach peace is hard to dismiss
The international peacebuilding field is actively searching for alternatives to imported templates that fail. Somaliland holds three decades of practical evidence about what works when a society repairs itself from within. Documented and shared properly, that record is both a public good and a credential.
Inside This Area
The strands of our work
Traditional Authority & Modern Institutions
The hybrid settlement that gave elders a constitutional home rather than forcing tradition and statehood to compete.
Inter-generational Renewal
Adapting dialogue institutions for an urban, digital, young population with no direct memory of the conferences that made the peace.
Sharing the Model
Practitioner exchanges and research partnerships that put Somaliland's peacebuilders in front of societies facing what Somaliland already survived.
Key Questions
What we're trying to answer
01
What precisely made the Somaliland settlements hold where externally brokered agreements failed?
02
How are dialogue institutions renewed for a generation that did not live through the war?
03
Which elements of the model transfer to other conflict-affected societies, and which are specific to Somaliland?
04
How can Somaliland's peacebuilders be positioned as teachers within international practice?
Workstreams
What we're working on
An authoritative record of Somaliland's peace conferences and settlements
Renewing dialogue institutions for inter-generational resilience
Sharing the Somaliland model with peacebuilders across Africa and beyond
Publications
Published work in this area
Research74 pp
Documenting the Settlements: The Burao and Borama Conferences Revisited
A structured documentation of the conferences and local settlements that ended Somaliland's civil conflict — convening authority, financing, participation, sequencing, and enforcement — assembled from primary accounts and participant interviews, and assessed against the international peacebuilding literature.
18 March 2026Peace & Reconciliation
Insights
Analysis from this area
Peace & Reconciliation
Thirty Years of Peace: What Somaliland's Reconciliation Model Teaches
Built at Burao and Borama without foreign peacekeepers, Somaliland's peace is one of the most instructive — and least studied — settlements of the modern era.
12 May 2026 · 6 min read
Working on peace & reconciliation?
MAAN partners with researchers, institutions, and governments across all five focus areas.