Claims circulating on social media and picked up by some online outlets suggest the United Arab Emirates has begun accepting visa applications from Somaliland passport holders while blocking those from the Republic of Somalia—framed as a sudden act of diplomatic recognition.
That is not what happened.
The UAE has accepted Somaliland passports in its electronic visa system for years. What is new—and politically significant—is the restriction placed on Somalia, not any change in Somaliland’s status.
What changed, and what didn’t
Contrary to claims on X, Facebook and Instagram, the UAE’s visa eChannels have processed Republic of Somaliland passports since at least April 2018. This administrative acceptance followed deepening security cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Hargeisa and has been publicly documented for years.
There was no recent policy shift recognizing Somaliland.
What did change is Somalia’s position. In 2025, Somalia was placed on the UAE’s temporary travel restriction list through 2026, preventing Somali passport holders from applying for tourist or work visas. Somaliland passport holders—already present in the system—were unaffected.
The contrast looks political, but it results from exclusion rather than recognition.
Why does the UAE accept Somaliland passports at all?
The arrangement is rooted in the UAE’s strategic engagement with Somaliland.
In 2016, DP World signed a $422 million concession to develop and operate the Port of Berbera for 30 years, acquiring a controlling stake and securing Red Sea access. The following year, Somaliland’s parliament approved a 30-year lease for a UAE military base in Berbera, placing Emirati forces less than 300 km south of Yemen.
By 2018, the UAE had committed to training Somaliland’s security forces. Around the same time, the Ministry of Interior formalized the bureaucratic framework for this cooperation by listing Somaliland as a distinct jurisdiction in its visa system.
This did not constitute diplomatic recognition. But it did embed Somaliland as a separate operational entity within the UAE state databases.
Why has this become a story now?
The travel ban on Somalia, but not Somaliland, transformed a long-standing technical distinction into a visible political contrast. What had been routine administration became legible as differential treatment.
The timing mattered. Israel’s announcement in late December that it would recognize Somaliland primed regional media to read any administrative differentiation through the lens of recognition politics. In that climate, UAE visa procedures were misread as covert diplomatic signalling.
Much of the online coverage collapsed unrelated developments—Israeli recognition, UAE migration controls, and Somalia’s diplomatic decline—into a single narrative of cascading recognitions, despite the absence of any formal UAE declaration.
Why do Somalilanders have their own passports anyway?
Since 1991, Somaliland has functioned as a de facto state, enforcing borders and governing a population despite lacking international recognition. Passports in this context are administrative tools, not declarations of sovereignty.
Comparable arrangements exist elsewhere. The Palestinian Authority began issuing its own passports on April 2, 1995 in the self-ruled areas of Gaza and Jericho, under powers delegated to it by the 1993 Oslo accords and formalized in the 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement. Taiwan’s passport is widely accepted despite limited recognition. Similar dynamics have applied to Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, and Western Sahara.
Also, the Somaliland passport is not recognized by the United Nations as a valid international travel document, and its acceptance remains highly limited. The majority of Somaliland residents hold Somali passports as well for international travel, as only a small number of states accept Somaliland documents at all. Where they are accepted, it is as a matter of administrative convenience or security cooperation—not an acknowledgement of statehood.
