By Ali Mohamed Omar
Saturday May 9, 2026
A Response to the Heritage Institute’s Assessment of Somalia’s Diplomacy
There is a difference between analysis and cynicism. Between honest critique and institutional self-harm. Between research meant to strengthen a country and commentary that ends up undercutting the very institutions carrying that country’s flag in the toughest diplomatic rooms in the world.
A recent policy paper invites the Somali public, and our international partners, to question what Somalia has accomplished in its first year on the United Nations Security Council. On the legitimate questions about institutional capacity, the Federal Government welcomes the scrutiny. Indeed, we are the first to admit that rebuilding our foreign service is an ongoing process. We are also the first to demand more of ourselves. But the paper makes claims that misread the facts, misrepresent the work of our diplomats, and blur the line between an analyst’s role and a political candidate’s ambitions. This deserves a clear public response.
Let me start with the facts.
Somalia did not return to the UN Security Council by accident, accommodation, or sympathy: Somalia returned through a rigorous and competitive election. The same goes for our seat on the African Union Peace and Security Council, where the sovereign representatives of the nations of our continent entrusted Somalia with the serious peace and security responsibility through a process no candidate can shortcut and no commentator can wish away.
On 6th June 2024, in a secret ballot of the UN General Assembly, more than two-thirds of the world’s nations gave Somalia their confidence to take a seat in the most prominent diplomatic body on earth. On 11 February 2026, in another vote, this time where African foreign ministers gathered in Addis Ababa, Somalia was elected to the African Union Peace and Security Council for the very first time in our history. Two ballots and two clear answers to one question: is Somalia ready to lead? The world said yes but The Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, in its April 2026 report, appears to have said no.
This response is not written in anger but for the record because this matters. The world watched Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman take the gavel as President of the UN Security Council in January 2026 and run the Council’s business with composure, command of procedure, and discipline of message.
The world watched Somalia stand alone and then stand vindicated when a UN member state moved unilaterally to recognise a breakaway claim on Somali soil. Within hours, the African Union, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the United States, China and the European Union all reaffirmed their commitment to Somali sovereignty. That global chorus did not happen by accident but because Somali diplomacy had laid the groundwork for it, diplomat by diplomat, mission by mission and capital by capital for months.
The world watched Somalia articulate and vote with conviction at the UN Security Council on the questions that define our challenging times including on Gaza, Sudan, counterterrorism, and the integrity of borders. Somalia is clearly not a passive seat-warmer or a diplomatic decoration but a real voice with purpose and diplomatic weight.
The world watched Africa entrust Somalia with a place on the continent’s premier security body for the first time in the body’s twenty-three-year history. Africa does not hand that seat to a state whose diplomatic apparatus, as the report claims, is merely visible without capacity. Arguably, African Union member states watched Somalia for a year on the UN Security Council and reached their own conclusions after witnessing our strong, principled and professional performance. The world has seen Somalia’s diplomatic capabilities. The question is what the Heritage Institute has chosen not to see.
The Heritage report struggles to be consistent even with itself. On one hand, it repeatedly acknowledges Somalia’s “credible and visible presence” on the Security Council and recognises that we have restored our international standing after decades of state collapse. On the other, it sets out to diminish those same accomplishments by painting Somali diplomacy as structurally incapable of meaningful agency. However, the facts say otherwise.
Somalia has chaired Security Council sessions with professionalism and composure. Somalia has led African positions on issues affecting the continent. Somalia has defended the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity at a moment when those principles face direct pressure in the Horn of Africa. Somalia has navigated one of the most polarised periods in modern multilateral diplomacy while balancing relationships with global powers, regional actors, and African partners. And we have done all of this while still rebuilding our state after a destructive prolonged period of collapse. This reality should inspire measured national confidence not intellectual contempt dressed up as academic sophistication.
No serious observer denies that Somalia still faces institutional challenges. This is true and nobody can deny this. In fact, State-building is an arduous process of incremental development and progress which is not finalised in a decade, or after a single election cycle, or under conditions of insecurity, terrorism, economic fragility, and external interference. Rebuilding our diplomatic institutions is an ongoing national project which we are truly committed to.
There is a profound difference between recognising institutional gaps and dismissing national achievements. Impartial researchers focus on the former while political commentators excel in the latter.
The young Somali diplomats now serving in New York, Addis Ababa, London, Washington, Geneva, Nairobi, Doha, Ankara, Riyadh, Brussels, New Delhi, Beijing, Cairo and elsewhere are working under extraordinary pressure. Many of them operate with limited staffing, limited technical infrastructure, and immense political demands. And yet they represent Somalia with professionalism and determination on a daily basis. To reduce their work to a story of dysfunction is not a fair or constructive criticism. It is an injustice to public servants carrying the weight of national representation through one of the most difficult and consequential periods in our modern diplomatic history.
One passage in the report deserves a direct reply. It describes the Permanent Mission in New York as hardworking and experienced and then, in the next breath, calls those same diplomats reactive, under-equipped, and unable to shape outcomes. The report does this without naming a single failed negotiation, without citing one resolution Somalia could have shaped and did not, and without offering a single example of a coalition our mission failed to build.
Our young diplomats in the UN are real people. They have names. They have families. They put in long hours in a city far from home, working files that run from sanctions regimes to maritime law to the defence of our coastline. They do this work while their counterparts from larger missions often have ten times the staff and a hundred times the budget. To dismiss their record in a public report, on the basis of three anonymous interviews and an admitted inability to reach current officials, is not rigorous research but lazy and misleading analysis which undermines our national diplomatic efforts.
Where does the researcher end and the candidate begin?
The founders of the Heritage Institute are openly positioning themselves to run for the highest office in the land. That is their right as citizens. However, it forces an uncomfortable question into the light: what does it mean when the people aspiring to lead our public institutions are using their research platform to weaken those very institutions in the eyes of the public?
This report does not arrive in a vacuum. It arrives at a moment when its authors have one foot in the academy and the other in the campaign. Given this, every paragraph has to be read twice once for what it says, and second for what it is engineered to do.
A research institute is a public entity that should be built on trust. Its credibility rests on a clear separation between the work of analysis and influence and the naked pursuit of political office. When the leadership of an independent research body starts positioning itself for the highest offices of the state while continuing to publish reports grading the very government those offices would replace, the public deserves a straight answer: which hat is being worn, and when? This is not only a Somali question.
Around the world, the firewall between research and candidacy is the foundation of policy credibility. Once that firewall comes down, two things happen. First, every finding no matter how carefully phrased starts to read like a campaign brief. Second, the institution itself shrinks, because the public can no longer separate the analysis from the ambition. This is a disaster for public knowledge and debate and it reduces politics to mere theatre wrapped in academic dishonesty.
Honest critique is welcome. Manufactured critique is not.
Let me be precise. No one at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims the process of rebuilding our institutions are finished. No one claims every appointment has been ideal, every brief filed on time, every coordination meeting producing the result we wanted. We are a state under reconstruction. We say so openly. We have said so at the Security Council itself. This is a fact.
Honest critique sharpens us. It tells us where the gaps are, and offers remedies grounded in the facts. Honest critique acknowledges what is been achieved before pointing to what needs further effort and attention. Good faith also requires three things: accurate facts, a transparent method, and intellectual honesty about the difference between holding a government accountable and seeking to replace it. Accordingly, by these measures, the Heritage report fails to meet the benchmark.
A country returning to the table
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our Diplomats are not asking for the gentle assessment a wounded country sometimes gets from its friends. We are merely requesting that those who write about us, especially those writing from inside our own country, hold themselves to the same standard of evidence they demand of the diplomats they are assessing. This is only fair.
The young Somali diplomat in New York, drafting a statement at three in the morning before a Council vote, is doing the work of the nation. The young Somali diplomat in Addis Ababa, lobbying for a Peace and Security Council seat no Somali had ever held, was doing the work of the nation. The world has weighed that work. The verdicts are on the record and manifested through casted votes which point to the success of our regional, continental and global diplomatic achievements. It is therefore striking that some among us still struggle to see what much of the international community already recognises.
In conclusion, Somali diplomacy today is stronger, more respected, more confident, and visible more consequential than it has been in decades. This does not belong to a single administration, minister, or political faction. It belongs to the Somali state and people. It is a matter of national pride.
To our diplomats: the country sees you. Africa sees you. The world sees you. The work continues.
To the authors of the report: research is a vocation. So is candidacy. The two are not the same. The public deserves to know which one you are practising, on any given day, when you sit down to write.
And to the reader: when one report tells you a story no other observer in the world is telling, the question is not whether the world has missed something. The question is what the report itself was written to achieve and for whom.
Honorable Ali Mohamed Omar MP currently serves as the State Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Somalia.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Hiiraan Online’s editorial stance.
