Reforming the Somali Penal Code: what modernisation would have to address

The Penal Code (Law No. 5 of 1962) remains the backbone of criminal law in Somalia. It was drafted for a different state, a different economy and a different set of offences. Courts apply it daily alongside Islamic law principles and, in practice, alongside customary settlement.

Where the gaps show

The clearest gaps are in conduct the 1962 drafters had no reason to consider. Offences committed through mobile money and electronic communications have no natural home in the Code. Financial crime provisions predate the current banking framework. Provisions on evidence and procedure sit in separate instruments that have not been revised in step.

Alignment with Islamic law

Any revision has to state its relationship to Sharia clearly rather than leave it to be worked out case by case. This is not only a question of substantive offences. It affects sentencing, the treatment of compensation to victims and their families, and the role of settlement between the parties in offences that also carry a public interest.

The procedural half

Substantive reform without procedural reform produces little. Detention time limits, access to counsel at the investigation stage, the treatment of confessions and the handling of physical evidence determine what happens to most defendants long before a code provision is applied.

A drafting question, not only a policy one

Reform work of this kind tends to stall between the policy paper and the drafted text. The practical requirement is a bill with defined offences, coherent sentencing, transitional provisions for pending cases, and consequential amendments to every instrument that cross-refers to the current Code. Without that last part, a new code creates as much uncertainty as it removes.

Published 25 September 2025. General information on Somali law, not legal advice on any particular matter.