Responds to Heritage Institute on Research Versus Political Campaign

By Ali Mohamed Omar Saturday May 9, 2026

A Response to the Heritage Institute’s Assessment of Somalia’s Diplomacy

There is a sharp line between rigorous analysis and reflexive cynicism, between constructive criticism and the kind of commentary that weakens the very institutions a country depends on abroad. When that line is crossed, scholarship can become a liability instead of a public service.

A recent policy paper has asked Somalis, along with our international partners, to judge what the country has achieved during its first year on the United Nations Security Council. The Federal Government welcomes serious scrutiny on matters of institutional capacity. Rebuilding a foreign service is a long-term task, and no one in government pretends otherwise. We also expect more from ourselves than anyone else does. But the paper in question distorts the facts, undercuts the work of Somali diplomats, and blurs the boundary between independent research and political ambition. That warrants a firm public reply.

Start with the record.

Somalia did not reclaim a seat on the UN Security Council through chance, favoritism, or sentiment. It won its place in a competitive election. The same is true of our seat on the African Union Peace and Security Council, where Somalia was entrusted by sovereign African states with a major responsibility for peace and security through a process that cannot be bypassed and cannot be rewritten by commentary.

On 6th June 2024, more than two-thirds of the world’s countries backed Somalia in a secret ballot at the UN General Assembly, giving the country a place on the world’s most important diplomatic stage. Then, on 11 February 2026, African foreign ministers meeting in Addis Ababa elected Somalia to the African Union Peace and Security Council for the first time in our history. Those two votes answered the same question in two different forums: is Somalia ready to lead? The answer from the world was yes. The Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, in its April 2026 report, appears to have reached the opposite conclusion.

This response is offered not in anger, but to set out the facts clearly, because they matter. In January 2026, the world saw Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman preside over the UN Security Council as its president, handling the Council’s work with calm authority, procedural discipline, and a clear command of the agenda.

The world also watched Somalia face down an attempt by one UN member state to unilaterally recognise a breakaway claim on Somali territory, and then watched that position collapse under the weight of international support for Somalia’s sovereignty. Within hours, the African Union, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the United States, China and the European Union all restated their backing for Somali territorial integrity. That response did not emerge by chance; it reflected months of groundwork laid by Somali diplomats in mission after mission and capital after capital.

The world saw Somalia speak and vote firmly at the Security Council on the defining issues of this period, including Gaza, Sudan, counterterrorism and the protection of borders. Somalia was not a symbolic presence, nor a diplomatic ornament. It was an engaged member with a clear voice and real weight.

Africa, meanwhile, placed Somalia on the continent’s top security body for the first time in the council’s 23-year history. That is not the kind of vote a continent gives to a state whose diplomatic system, as the report suggests, merely appears visible without possessing substance. If anything, African Union member states spent a year watching Somalia in the Security Council and arrived at their own judgment after seeing a professional, principled performance. The world has seen what Somali diplomacy can do. What the Heritage Institute seems to have missed is another matter.

Even on its own terms, the Heritage report is hard to reconcile. At points it acknowledges Somalia’s “credible and visible presence” on the Security Council and accepts that the country has recovered standing in the international system after years of state collapse. Yet elsewhere it works to minimize those gains, portraying Somali diplomacy as structurally incapable of meaningful influence. The facts point in a different direction.

Somalia has chaired Security Council meetings professionally and with restraint. It has helped shape African positions on issues affecting the continent. It has defended sovereignty and territorial integrity at a time when both face direct pressure in the Horn of Africa. It has done so while navigating one of the most polarized moments in modern multilateral diplomacy and while balancing relations with major powers, regional actors and African partners. All of that has happened while the country continues the difficult work of rebuilding after a prolonged collapse. That reality should invite measured confidence, not the kind of intellectual disdain sometimes dressed up as academic rigor.

No serious observer denies that Somalia still faces institutional weaknesses. Of course it does. State-building is slow, uneven work. It does not end in a decade, or in one election cycle, or under the strain of insecurity, terrorism, economic fragility and external interference. Rebuilding diplomatic institutions remains an unfinished national project, and the government remains committed to it.

Still, there is a difference between acknowledging gaps and dismissing national progress. Impartial researchers focus on the former. Political operators tend to trade in the latter.

The Somali diplomats now serving in New York, Addis Ababa, London, Washington, Geneva, Nairobi, Doha, Ankara, Riyadh, Brussels, New Delhi, Beijing, Cairo and other capitals are working under intense pressure. Many are doing so with limited staff, thin technical support and heavy political demands. Even so, they represent Somalia with professionalism and resolve every day. To reduce that work to a story of dysfunction is not constructive criticism. It is unfair to public servants carrying the responsibility of national representation during one of the most consequential periods in Somalia’s diplomatic history.

One passage in the report deserves a direct answer. It describes the Permanent Mission in New York as hardworking and experienced, then immediately labels the same diplomats reactive, under-resourced and unable to influence outcomes. Yet the report offers no named failed negotiation, no example of a resolution Somalia could have shaped but did not, and no coalition it failed to assemble.

The Somali diplomats at the UN are not abstractions. They are people with names and families. They spend long nights in a city far from home, handling files that range from sanctions and maritime law to the defense of Somalia’s coastline. They do so while larger missions often have many times the personnel and vastly greater budgets. To dismiss their record in a public report, based on three anonymous interviews and an acknowledged inability to speak with current officials, is not careful research. It is thin, misleading analysis that weakens national diplomatic efforts.

So where does scholarship end and politics begin?

The founders of the Heritage Institute are openly preparing to seek the country’s highest office. That is their right. But it raises a difficult question: what does it mean when those who aspire to lead public institutions use a research platform to diminish those institutions in the public eye?

The report did not emerge in a vacuum. It comes at a moment when its authors appear to have one foot in academia and the other in campaign politics. That means every paragraph must be read twice: once for what it says, and again for what it is designed to do.

A research institute must earn trust. Its legitimacy depends on a clear separation between analysis and the pursuit of political power. When the leadership of an independent research body begins positioning itself for top state offices while continuing to publish assessments of the government they may one day replace, the public deserves a simple answer: which role is being played, and when? This is not only a Somali dilemma.

Across the world, the line between research and candidacy is what gives policy analysis its credibility. When that line disappears, two things happen. First, even carefully written findings start to look like campaign material. Second, the institution itself loses standing because the public can no longer distinguish analysis from ambition. That is bad for public debate, bad for knowledge and bad for politics, which becomes little more than theatre wrapped in academic language.

Honest criticism is necessary. Manufactured criticism is not.

To be clear, no one at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims the rebuilding process is complete. No one says every appointment has been perfect, every briefing filed on time, or every coordination meeting successful. Somalia is a state under reconstruction, and we have said so openly, including before the Security Council. That is a fact.

Good-faith critique should identify weaknesses and propose remedies grounded in evidence. It should recognize what has been achieved before turning to what still needs work. It also requires accurate facts, a transparent method and honesty about the difference between holding a government accountable and trying to replace it. By those standards, the Heritage report falls short.

A country returning to the table

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Somalia’s diplomats are not asking for sympathy or a softened assessment. We are asking for the same standard of evidence from those who write about us, especially those writing from within Somalia, that they expect from the diplomats they are judging. That is only fair.

The young Somali diplomat in New York, drafting a statement at 3 a.m. 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 before, was doing the work of the nation. The world has already weighed that effort. The votes are on the record, and they reflect the success of Somalia’s regional, continental and global diplomacy. It is notable that some at home still struggle to acknowledge what much of the international community already sees.

In the end, Somali diplomacy is stronger, more respected, more confident and more consequential than it has been in decades. That achievement belongs not to one administration, one minister or one faction. It belongs to the Somali state and the Somali people. It is a source of national pride.

To our diplomats: the country sees you. Africa sees you. The world sees you. The work goes on.

To the authors of the report: research is a vocation. So is candidacy. They are not the same thing. The public deserves to know which one you are practicing each time you sit down to write.

And to readers: when a report tells a story that no other observer in the world is telling, the question is not whether the world overlooked something. The question is what the report was meant to accomplish, and on whose behalf.

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.