1.5. Individuals involved in blood feuds/clan disputes and other clan issues

Clan conflicts can be triggered by various reasons, including access to resources (water, grazing land or pasture), competition over land and land rights, access to jobs and markets (e.g., the local qaad market), breach of women’s or other vulnerable categories’ protection status (see below), insults, competition over political and administrative power.500 For more background information on clan conflict drivers see the EASO COI Report Somalia: Targeted profiles (September 2021).501

Clan conflicts and disputes can be settled through traditional reconciliation mechanisms based on customary law and managed by clan elders. However, without a proper enforcement of the compensation or peace-agreement, in the absence of implementation follow-ups, or in case of failure to address the root causes of the dispute, clan conflicts tend to recur.502 Within this context, another shortcoming of the traditional reconciliation mechanism, which is based on the diya institute, or mag in Somali – see for further details the EUAA Somalia: Targeted profiles (September 2021) and EUAA Somalia: Actors (June 2021) – lies in the fact that ‘blood compensation’ is paid to the victim’s clan,503 or, as Hoehne puts it, to the victim’s extended patrilineal family – the diya paying group - not to the victim’s closest family.504 This may work as a trigger for revenge at a later stage.505 Moreover, ‘blood debts can be put on hold, banked, sometimes for years, until an appropriately respected figure comes of age to be murdered’.506

Clan status and power also determine, same as in other contexts, the level of ‘blood compensation’ or revenge, with victims of minority or marginalised clans ‘worth’ less than their counterparts from more powerful clans.507 Minority or marginalised groups have less negotiation power, and capacity to enforce agreements, and often need to rely on more powerful clans for protection.508 
 

• 1.5.1.    Mapping of major clan conflicts/feuds
  (a)    Jubbaland
  (b)    South-West State
  (c)    Benadir Regional Administration (BRA) – Mogadishu
  (d)    Hirshabelle
  (e)    Galmudug
  (f)    Puntland
  (g)    Sool, Sanaag and contested regions
  (h)    Somaliland
• 1.5.2.    Clan revenge and vulnerability in clan conflicts
  (a)    For men
  (b)    For women and girls