Experience / Case study
Drafting the laws of a rebuilding state.
CAPABILITY
Government & Institutional Advisory
PARTIES
The Federal Ministry of Justice; ministries across government
SPAN
From inside the ministry to firm mandates — a continuous thread
STATUS
Engagements concluded
THE SITUATION
When Somalia's federal institutions were re-established, the state needed something more basic than policy. It needed laws — drafted, harmonised with the Provisional Constitution, and moved through government to Parliament.
It also needed the capacity to keep drafting them. A statute that cannot survive constitutional screening, or that contradicts the code next to it, is not a law — it is a future dispute. Somebody had to hold the pen, and hold the standard.
WHAT WE DID
From inside the Ministry.
Before co-founding Insaaf, Hamza I. Abdullahi headed the Policy and Legislative Drafting Unit at the Federal Ministry of Justice — the unit that drafts, reviews and screens legislation across government before it reaches the Council of Ministers. He led the drafting and review of foundational instruments: the review of the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code; the Anti-Corruption Commission establishment bill — enacted in 2019; the Judicial Organisation and Constitutional Court establishment bills; and the Advocates Bill. He came to the role from the bench: a former supreme-court judge who had helped draft a regional constitution and translate federal codes into Somali.
Then, as a firm.
Insaaf carried that capability into consultancy: the Federal Government's first Legislative Drafting Manual, produced in English and Somali with ministries trained on its use; political-economy analysis for legal reform for the Ministry of Justice; the national policy on Traditional Dispute Resolution, reviewed and edited through federal and regional consultations; and the National Legal Aid Policy. The state's drafting capacity did not just get documents — it got a method.
THE OUTCOME
Legislative drafting is the rarest legal skill in any market and the most consequential in a rebuilding one. Clients dealing with Somali statutes — complying with them, negotiating under them, proposing changes to them — work with a team that has written the genre.
The team — Hamza I. Abdullahi (lead)
Every statute passes through a drafting unit. Our partner ran it.
Constitutional screening, drafting standards, the path from bill to law — held to standard for the instruments a state runs on.
WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU
Whether you are a government drafting a bill, a development institution funding reform, or a company trying to understand what a Somali statute actually requires — the answer reads differently when it comes from people who have written the statutes themselves.
Discuss a drafting or reform mandate