Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with his Somali counterpart on the level of voter participation in elections in that country.

​I discussed the electoral process with the President of Somalia when we met in Mogadishu on 2 August. Our Ambassador in Mogadishu maintains a regular dialogue with key players across the Somali leadership on this subject.

Somalia is in transition and partway through an electoral process due to culminate with the election of a new President by the end of the year. It is vital that the process is transparent, credible and safe; and that commitments to make the process more inclusive, including increasing female representation, are fully respected. With electoral colleges voting in regional states as well as Mogadishu comprising a total of over 14,000 voters, the 2016 process is a stepping stone to one person one vote elections scheduled for 2020, and builds on the 2012 process when only 135 elders voted. This is a big step forward, and presents a significant logistical and security challenge, but clearly the Government's ambition of universal suffrage remains.