The Role of Remittance in Further Undermining Gender Equality and Women Participation in the Somali Peace Process

This study highlights how remittance undermines Gender equality and women participation in the Somali peace process. Although the Sixth Clan coalition, a Somali women movement, made substantial gains during the 2000 Arta peace process managing to gain at least 12 percent of the seats in a 245 member parliament, the ineffectiveness of the custodians of the peace process that is the IGAD Technical Committee members’ states Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia in implementing those gains was a setback for the Somali women’s movement. Even so, this research identifies how the lack of a gender perspective in the much applauded Somali diaspora remittance activities further undermines Somali women’s right to participate in the peace process. In its analysis it highlights how intra-household relations influence the control and access of migrant funded resources such as education, with girls often being the victims of this development initiative. The resultant outcome is that Somali boys gain an added advantage in future peace deliberations while female illiteracy is exacerbated exposing young girls to early marriage and oppression which continues to perpetuate Gender inequality in future generations. The study further discusses how remittance sustaining the militarization of the Somali economy denies Somali women and girls involved in peace building their political voice by exposing them to rape. This research draws its analysis from secondary data in form of published text books, policy papers, workshop; organizational publications as well as online and print journals. The data was obtained primarily from the United States International University library. In order to operationalize each objective, this study utilized a deductive approach of the case study of Somalia comparing two groups; Somali women and men and exactly how traditional gender roles and responsibilities negatively affect the outcome of diaspora remittance activities.