Specific information on the above-mentioned subjects is limited among the sources consulted by the DIRB.

The following information was obtained in a telephone interview on 20 March 1996 with an anthropologist specializing in Somalia at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

The anthropologist stated that marriages between higher status clans and lower status clans were not common, but neither were they rare. The source added that the circumstances of the clans involved in the marriage and the individual circumstances of the marriage partners would determine the treatment accorded to the couple. Divorce is common in Somali society and there is usually no stigma attached to those who are divorced. For women, one of the usual consequences is a loss of economic security, since the divorced woman must depend on her brothers for support. A divorced woman is able to remarry.

The consequences for a man marrying someone of a lower caste clan would very much depend on the circumstances of the marriage. The anthropologist stated that opposition to such a marriage and possible consequences would vary in Somali society as much as it would in American society, according to the particular circumstance. Similarly, treatment of the divorced individuals would depend on the personal circumstances governing the marriage dissolution.

According to "The Profile of the Somali Woman," a document prepared for the IRB Working Group on Women Refugee Claimants in June 1990, a lower urban class woman who marries a man of higher class usually sees her economic well-being improve (83). This source also corroborates the anthropologists statement that divorce is common in Somali society, adding that it is the husband's prerogative (ibid., 81).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the DIRB within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.

Anthropologist specializing in Somalia, Colby College, Waterville, Me. 20 March 1996. Telephone interview.

Shire, Safia Abdullahi. 21 June 1990. "The Profile of the Somali Woman." Workshops on Women Refugee Claimants. Toronto: IRB Working Group on Women Refugee Claimants.
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