WUNRN
Amnesty International - http://www.amnesty.org/
SOMALIA - RAPE & SEXUAL VIOLENCE
AN EPIDEMIC
Voice of America
Amnesty International said two decades of
conflict have allowed sexual violence to become endemic in Somalia. The human
rights group says most victims don’t report the attacks to authorities, fearing
stigma.
Amnesty says
rape and sexual violence are a constant threat in Somalia, especially for
displaced women and girls. Senior Crisis Adviser Donatella Rovera said
researchers spoke with dozens of victims, one as young as 13, in Mogadishu and
in camps for the displaced.
“Obviously,
the humanitarian conditions are terrible and the lack of security is very
prevalent. And this is a particular problem for women and girls because they
are very much exposed to rape and sexual violence,” she said.
The United
Nations reported in 2012 there were at least 1700 cases of rape in Somali
settlements for internally displaced people . At least 70 percent of the
attacks, it said, were carried out by armed men wearing government uniforms.
“Perpetrators
are very rarely brought to justice. Victims of these attacks are then
stigmatized within Somali society. So the combination of the fear of the
stigmatization and the lack of confidence that reporting their case would lead
to any justice means that in the majority of cases the victims don’t even
report the cases to the police,” said Rovera.
She said that
police “do not have the capacity nor the political will” to provide the
protection needed to prevent such attacks – or to bring those responsible to
justice.
Many of the
women who were attacked live in make-shift shelters, with just a piece of
plastic for a door. There’s no protection from rapists, who usually attack in
the night. She told the story of one woman, who has four children and was
abandoned by her husband.
“She told me
that she was asleep in her little shelter when a man came in. He had a knife.
It was night. She kept quiet because he threatened to kill her. The children
were sleeping next to her. He raped her and then he went away. And she told me
that she had not told anybody because she was afraid that if she spoke to the
neighbors about what had happened to her they would just laugh at her or say
bad things about her.”
Amnesty
International’s senior crisis adviser said a lot “can and must be done” to
solve the problem. She admitted it’s very difficult because the government
controls only part of the country. Many other areas are controlled by armed
groups and militias, such as al Shabab.
“But
certainly where government forces are present, it is crucial that they take
concrete measures to first of all to ensure security – and notably, if we talk
about the IDP camps, the camps for displaced people, where most of the rapes
and sexual violence occur. And secondly, more needs to be done to follow up on
those cases, which are reported,” she said.
Rovera said,
“The inability and unwillingness of Somali authorities to investigate these
crimes – and bring the attackers to justice – leaves survivors of sexual
violence even more isolated.” She added, it also contributes to a “climate of
impunity in which attackers know they can get away with these crimes.”