Somalis in the self-declared state of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, will be asked on 31 May to vote on a new constitution which includes an article on territorial independence. Somaliland independence was unilaterally declared in May 1991, but has never received international recognition. The declaration followed the collapse of Muhammad Siyad Barre's military dictatorship, which had pursued brutal policies in the north during the civil war of the 1980s. During a recent visit to the capital, Hargeysa, IRIN spoke to Somaliland President Muhammad Ibrahim Egal about independence, and the issue of past atrocities. A number of sites discovered in 1997 were identified by an international forensic team as having characteristics of mass graves, but no further investigation followed.

The combined effects of the continuing livestock ban and high inflation are leading to a growing "north-south economic divide" in Somalia, said a joint report by the USAID Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET) and the European Union funded FAO/Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU). The north and central parts of the country continue to suffer the impact of lost livestock exports to the Gulf states, whereas the ban has had a "negligible impact" in the south, FSAU said in its April monthly food security report.