On 26 June 1960, four days before granting British Somaliland independence, the British government declared that all Somali areas should be unified in one administrative region.

To help the destitute in less stable Somali areas, the United States wants the Red Cross to increase the 600 soup kitchens that it has already established there and which are feeding about 1.1 million people every day.

The party was fiercely nationalist and called for the unification of all Somali areas into one state.

Although Hussein had supported militant pan-Somalism, he was portrayed as willing to accept the continued sovereignty of Ethiopia and Kenya over Somali areas.

In July 1977, sensing the disarray in Ethiopia, Somalia attacked across the Ogaden in pursuit of its irredentist claims to the ethnic Somali areas of Ethiopia (see Ogaden War).

Nevertheless there were common ethnicity, language, culture, Muslim religion, and pastoral life - bonds that were shared with other Somali people in all Somali areas in the Horn of Africa including the Italian-administered Somalia to the East and South of the Protectorate.