what steps are somali government taking to stop sexual violence
For more than 2 decades, sexual violence against women in Somalia has become more pervasive equally the country has been torn by civil disharmonize and state collapse. Nonetheless, after an alarming 80 percent increase in the number of confirmed cases of sexual violence from 2019 to 2020, the Un is calling for urgent action to tackle the rampant problem.
The UN attributes the increase in sexual assault of girls and women in Somalia to the standing armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in the state. In 1991, sexual violence of Somali girls and women was used as a weapon of war past militias in response to the authorities's plummet. Since and so, Somalia has been mired in fighting between federal regime forces and various militant groups, including the most well-known, Al Shabab. Most recently, clashes betweeen the country's prime number minister and president almost gear up off more fighting.
Throughout the decades, women and girls have been paying a loftier cost for the relentless volatility, experts who follow the situation say.
According to Hawa Aden Mohamed, the founder and executive director of the Somali nonprofit group Galkayo Center for Peace and Development, besides rape and sexual abuse, girls and women have tragically been victims of defilement, incest and sexual molestation.
"We have witnessed cases where victims are killed by their assailants in a bid to hide evidence" in Somalia'southward Puntland region, Aden Mohamed noted in an email with PassBlue. "3 such cases accept been reported over the terminal 3 years."
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Political tensions between Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ("Farmajo") and the Mogadishu-based Hawiye clan opposition grouping as well as land-based disputes and attacks by Al Shabab are responsible for the ascent sexual violence. Intense flooding, locust attacks and fears associated with the pandemic have also left more than a meg Somalis displaced, leading to sexual abuse of women and children who alive in the temporary camps.
"Conflict-related sexual violence never occurs in a vacuum, only is always linked with wider security factors, many of which have been exacerbated by the advent of COVID-xix and its ensuing consequences, such as economical hardship, social tensions, impunity, and institutional weakness," Pramila Patten, the Un special envoy for sexual violence in conflict, said in an email to PassBlue.
A General Assembly/Security Quango study roofing children and armed conflict from Jan to Dec 2020 establish that 406 Somali children, 6 boys and 400 girls, were victims of sexual violence past government security forces equally well every bit by armed groups.
The report establish that more than than 10 percent of incidents were instigated past national and regional war machine or law forces, with the rest tied to armed groups. Al Shabab was responsible for lx cases, while well-nigh sixty per centum of incidents were committed by unidentified armed groups.
Working with local and international organizations to collect data after the incidents of gender-based violence, the UN identified that two-thirds of these accounts were rapes or attempted rapes and that there were more than than 40 accounts of forced marriage and more than than 30 of sexual harassment or assault.
The number of victims is likely much college, however, as survivors of sexual violence struggle to report rape and assault considering of lack of confidence in the Somali justice system, no admission to health and justice services and stigma and fear associated with reporting sexual violence, the UN said. Aden Mohamed said that protection of survivors confronting reprisal attacks is not ever guaranteed, leading victims not to publicly place their abusers.
"I remember a case 3 years ago where constabulary officers raided an IDP settlement, harassed residents and raped women," Aden Mohamed said. "No proper investigations were conducted and the officers in question fled to a place known by the authorities merely was never pursued. To appointment he has gone scot complimentary."
Since the early on 2000s, Al Shabab has fought to create an Islamic country in Somalia. Now, more than ii.6 million Somalis have been displaced and live in more than 2,300 camps in urban and semi-urban areas due to military pressure by the group, floods and drought. With many of the camps overcrowded, the people accept been subjected to violence, with women and girls most vulnerable. Perpetrators have preyed on girls, for example, as they leave the camps to have goats out for grazing or collect firewood in the grasslands that are often raided by assailants due to the area's lack of shelter.
"For small girls, information technology happens in the hands of their caregivers at times," Aden Mohamed said. "We besides have instances where the girls have been abducted and raped in places outside their homes. Victims are always threatened with weapons such equally guns and daggers against raising an alarm."
The Covid-19 pandemic has besides led to more than sexual violence in Somalia because of a decrease in monitoring and reporting from lockdowns, quarantines and curfews as well as a drib in the prosecution of sexual violence cases. A 2021 report of Patten'due south office explained that pandemic-related restrictions take also limited access to education and services for survivors.
"Protracted conflict, structural gender inequality and successive humanitarian crises further worsened by the pandemic are exposing Somali women and girls to heightened levels of conflict-related sexual violence," Patten said. "Moreover, Al-Shabaab continues to apply sexual violence, in particular forced and early marriage, in areas under its de facto command."
When girls are assaulted, they often don't accept support systems. According to Aden Mohamed, due to feet or shame, families may determine to relocate their daughters.
"In worse example scenarios, if the girl has reached puberty then they are married off to their assailants," she said. "Information technology is in very few instances that the cases are taken to conventional courts and law applied. This is despite the fact that we have a sexual offenses constabulary in place."
When the victims get meaning, they are either forced to marry their perpetrator or, if the attacker is unknown, they must heighten the child lone, since abortion is a criminal law-breaking. In Somalia, begetting a child alone is extremely frowned upon.
"Such girls may never become suitors in their lifetime and the children they bear will forever exist considered outcasts and could even be killed," Aden Mohamed said. "Over the by calendar month nosotros have meet 2 such cases involving 15 and xvi year old girls respectively. The male parent of one of the girls has vowed to impale the infant and the girl is in hiding. The other daughter has withal to deliver but has been expelled from the family."
Patten and Virginia Gamba, the Un special envoy for children and armed conflict, issued a articulation press release terminal month, pushing for the Somali government to prevent and address sexual violence.
They asked the authorities to carry out its 2012 national activeness plans on preventing the killing and maiming of children and the recruitment of child soldiers and to adopt the Somalia-UN 2019 road map, outlining ways to prevent and reply to sexual violence against children.
Patten and Gamba too called for the Somali government to fast-track enactment of its 2017 Kid Rights Beak and reintroduce and enact its 2018 Sexual Offenses Nib, which the UN argues will guarantee a better time to come for Somali children.
The representatives too asked the Somali government to implement the Joint Communiqué on the Prevention and Response to Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, signed in 2013, reinforcing a zero-tolerance sexual violence policy in the security sector — national military and police force.
"A law addressing the rights of children comprehensively and fully in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, if implemented adequately, can become a long manner in protecting these daughter victims of sexual violence," Patten said.
She added: "It likewise sends a stiff message that such violence will never be tolerated, and that Somalia takes seriously its international and regional commitments. Such a legal framework may help to encourage the filing of complaints and forms the ground for more robust investigations and prosecutions of sexual violence crimes."
Nevertheless, messaging from the UN's various loftier-profile leaders on the sexual abuse crisis in Somalia was missing a top voice recently, as it was not mentioned in a trip there in September by Amina Mohammed, the deputy secretary-general. The master objective of her trip, a press release said, was a show of "solidarity with Somali women's calls for total and equal participation in political life, and to express the support of the international community for timely, inclusive, peaceful and credible elections" — but no reference to the big jump in confirmed cases of sexual assail final year.
Catherine Morrison
Catherine Morrison is a recent graduate of the Columbia University Graduate Schoolhouse of Journalism in New York City. She has a B.A. in social justice studies from McGill University in Montreal.
Source: https://www.passblue.com/2021/09/15/the-un-urges-the-somali-government-to-stop-a-surge-in-sexual-assault-cases/
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