Does Someone Like FarhanYare Support This Just So He Can Say ‘UnuKA LeH’ ??

[Murax]

“The Power These Men Have Over Us”
Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by African Union Forces in Somalia
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AMISOM troops patrolling the Zona-K camp for displaced people in Mogadishu’s Hodan district in June 2012. ©2012 Clar Ni Chonghaile
“The Power These Men Have Over Us”

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by African Union Forces in Somalia

Map
Summary
Key Recommendations
To AMISOM Troop-Contributing Countries (Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Sierra Leone) and Police Contingents
To the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
To the African Union Commission
To the African Union Peace Support Operations Division
To AMISOM Donors including the UN, EU, UK, and US
Methodology
I. Background
Vulnerability of Displaced Women and Girls in Mogadishu
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
II. Sexual Abuse and Exploitation by AMISOM
Rape and Sexual Assault by AMISOM Soldiers
Sexual Exploitation by AMISOM Soldiers
Fear of Reporting
III. Jurisdiction over Abuses by AMISOM Forces
IV. Troop-Contributing Countries and Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Ensuring Accountability for Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Investigations and Prosecutions
Criminal Investigations into Rape of Girl in Baidoa
Other Disciplinary Mechanisms
Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
V. AU, AMISOM Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Allegations
Ensuring Accountability for Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
VI. UN Standards and International Law
UN Standards
International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law
Recommendations
To AMISOM Troop-Contributing Countries (Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Sierra Leone) and Police Contingents
To the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)
To the African Union Peace and Security Council
To the African Union Commission
To the African Union Peace Support Operations Division
To AMISOM Donors including the UN, EU, UK, and US
To the Government of Somalia
To the UN Country Team (UNCT) and United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM)
To the UNSOM Human Rights Section
Acknowledgments
Annex 1: Human Rights Watch Letter to the then Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia (SRCC), Ambassador Mahamat Saleh Annadif
Annex 2:Response of the Chief of Staff of the Burundian National Defense Forces, Général Prime Niyongabo, to Human Rights Watch’s Letter
Annex 3: Response from Ambassador Mahamat Saleh Annadif’s to Human Rights Watch’s Letter
Related Content

September 8, 2014 News Release
Somalia: Sexual Abuse by African Union Soldiers
Troop-Contributing Countries, Donors Should Promote Justice for Victims
Map

Click to expand Image
Summary

I was scared he would come back and rape me again or kill me. I want the government to recognize the power these men have over us and for them to protect us from them.
—Farha A., victim of rape by an AMISOM soldier, Mogadishu, February 2014
In June 2013, a Somali interpreter working at the headquarters of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) approached 17-year-old Aziza D.—not her real name—and asked her to “befriend” a Ugandan soldier. He told the girl, who had been struggling to survive in one of Mogadishu’s camps for displaced people, that the soldier could get her anything she needed if she treated him like “he was her husband” and “made him feel comfortable.”

After she met the soldier and it was clear that she was expected to have sex with him, she had second thoughts. The interpreter told her she could not leave and ignored her cries and pleas not to be left alone with him. “When I resisted the soldier’s advances, he became angry and brought back the interpreter who threatened me in Somali,” she told Human Rights Watch.

Years of conflict and famine in Somalia have increased the vulnerability of women and girls like Aziza D., displacing tens of thousands from their communities, often leaving them without their husbands’ or fathers’ or clan protection. Without resources or employment, many women and girls are reliant on outside assistance and forced to do whatever they can to sustain themselves and their families.

The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations have documented high levels of sexual and gender-based violence against Somali women and girls, particularly the displaced. But the involvement of AMISOM soldiers has largely been overlooked, including by the mission’s leadership and international donors. As this report shows, some AMISOM soldiers, deployed to Somalia since 2007 to help restore stability in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu, have abused their positions of power to prey on the city’s most vulnerable women and girls. Soldiers have committed acts of rape and other forms of sexual abuse, as well as sexual exploitation—the abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust, for sexual purposes.

This report is based on research in Somalia, Uganda, and Burundi. Its findings are based on 50 interviews including 21 interviews with survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse as well as interviews with witnesses, foreign observers including officials from troop-contributing countries, and other military personnel. The research documents incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, predominantly by personnel of the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) at and around AMISOM’s headquarters, the AMISOM base camp, and at the camp of the Burundian National Defense Forces (BNDF) contingent in Mogadishu. All of the incidents documented in this report occurred since 2013.

Given the particularly complex and sensitive nature of this research topic, security concerns, as well as the profound reluctance of survivors and witnesses to speak out about their experience, Human Rights Watch did not asses the scale or prevalence of the abuse. Nonetheless, the findings raise serious concerns about abuses by AMISOM soldiers against Somali women and girls that suggest a much larger problem.

Human Rights Watch documented 10 separate incidents of sexual abuse, including rape and sexual assault, and 14 cases of sexual exploitation. Four of the rape cases and one sexual assault involved girls under eighteen. The youngest victim in the cases we investigated was a 12-year-old girl in the outskirts of Baidoa in May 2013 who was allegedly raped by a Ugandan soldier. According to court-martial officials in Uganda, there is a rape case of a minor pending before Uganda’s military courts, but it is not clear if this is the same case.

Members of African Union (AU) forces, making use of Somali intermediaries, have employed a range of tactics to get private access to Somali women and then abuse them. Some AMISOM soldiers have used humanitarian assistance, provided by the mission, to coerce vulnerable women and girls into sexual activity. A number of the women and girls interviewed for this report said that they were initially approached for sex in return for money or raped while seeking medical assistance and water on the AMISOM bases, particularly the Burundian contingent’s base. Others were enticed directly from internally displaced persons (IDP) camps to start working on the AMISOM base camp by female friends and neighbors, some of whom were already working on the base. Some of the women who were raped said that the soldiers gave them food or money afterwards in an apparent attempt to frame the assault as transactional sex or discourage them from filing a complaint or seeking redress.

The women and girls exploited by the soldiers are entering into the AMISOM camps through official and guarded gates, and into areas that are in theory protected zones. Human Rights Watch was aware of a few cases in which the women were given official badges to facilitate their entrance. Sexual exploitation has also taken place within official AMISOM housing. These practices all point toward the exploitation and abuse being organized and even tolerated by senior officials.

Most of the women interviewed for the report were sexually exploited by a single soldier over a period of weeks and even months, although some had sex with several soldiers, notably at the Burundian contingent’s base.

The line between sexual exploitation and sexual abuse is a fine one given the vulnerabilities of the women and the power and financial disparities between them and the soldiers. The women who are sexually exploited become vulnerable to further abuse at the hands of the soldiers, and are also exposed to serious health risks. Several women said that the soldiers refused to wear condoms and that they had caught sexually transmitted infections as a result. Several also described being slapped and beaten by the soldiers with whom they had sex.

Only 2 out of the 21 women and girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch had filed a complaint with Somali or other authorities. Survivors of sexual violence fear reprisals from perpetrators, the government authorities, and the Islamist insurgent group Al-Shabaab, as well as retribution from their own families. Some said they felt powerless and worried about the social stigma they would face if their complaint was to be made public. Others questioned the purpose of complaining when such limited recourse is available. Some were reluctant to lose their only source of income.

The UN secretary-general’s 2003 Bulletin on special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, a groundbreaking policy document that catalyzed a range of policy statements on sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping missions, explicitly prohibits peacekeepers from exchanging any money, goods, or services for sex. Its definition of exploitation encompasses situations where women and girls are vulnerable and a differential power relationship exists. This definition, which has become the international norm, means that whether a woman has consented to engage in sex for money is irrelevant in the peacekeeping context. The African Union Commission’s Reviewed Code of Conduct (AUC Code of Conduct), with which AMISOM troop-contributing countries must comply, prohibits sexual exploitation and abuse.

Until displaced women and girls in Somalia obtain the means to move beyond mere survival, they will remain vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse. They should no longer be faced with the same predicament as 19-year-old Kassa D.: “I was worried, I wanted to run but I knew that the same thing that brought me here would get me through this—my hunger,” she said. “I had made a choice and I couldn't turn back now.”

As in international peacekeeping operations, all AMISOM personnel, including locally recruited Somalis, are immune from local legal processes in the country of deployment for any acts they perform in their official capacity. The troop-contributing countries—the countries from which the troops originate—have exclusive jurisdiction over their personnel for any criminal offenses they commit. However, they are bound both by memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed with the AU prior to deployment and by their international human rights and humanitarian obligations to investigate and prosecute serious allegations of misconduct and crimes.

AMISOM troop-contributing countries, to varying degrees, have established procedures to deal with their forces’ misconduct. Troops have received pre-deployment trainings on the AUC Code of Conduct, and legal advisors and military investigators have been deployed to Somalia to follow-up on allegations of misconduct. Most importantly, the Ugandan forces deployed a court martial to Mogadishu for a year in 2013. Holding in-country courts martial can help to facilitate evidence gathering, serve as a deterrent, ensure that witnesses are available to testify, and assure victims that justice has been served. The court has since been called back to Uganda.

After initially denying allegations of sexual abuse, the AMISOM leadership has started to take some measures to tackle the problem. In particular, AMISOM developed a draft Policy on prevention and response to sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA policy) in 2013 and has also begun to put in place structures to follow-up on sexual exploitation and abuse.

However, the draft policy will need to be significantly strengthened if it is to be effective. In addition, outreach activities carried out so far appear primarily focused on protecting AMISOM’s image rather than addressing the problem. There are still no complaint mechanisms and little or no capacity to investigate abuses. Above all, there is not enough political will among AMISOM troop-contributing countries to make the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse a priority and proactively deploy the necessary resources to tackle the problem.

Ending sexual violence and exploitation by AMISOM forces should start with developing the political will among the political and military leadership in troop-contributing countries to end impunity for perpetrators of abuse, and ensure survivors are adequately supported. First and foremost, troop-contributing countries should significantly reinforce their capacities to pursue investigations and prosecutions inside Somalia. They should send adequate numbers of trained investigators and prosecutors to Somalia and, where appropriate, hold courts martial inside Somalia.

The AU and AMISOM need to foster an organizational culture of “zero tolerance” where force commanders do not turn a blind eye to unlawful activities on their bases. Commanding officers should do more to prevent, identify, and punish such behavior.

The AU should promptly set up conduct and discipline units within peace support operations and an independent and adequately resourced investigative unit that is staffed by independent and qualified members. AMISOM should also ensure systematic collection of information on allegations, investigations, and prosecutions of sexual exploitation and abuse, and commit to publicly report on an annual basis to the AU on this issue.

These measures will also need to go hand-in-hand with efforts to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse on AMISOM bases, including systematic vetting of all forces to ensure those implicated in sexual exploitation and abuse in the past are not deployed, and proactively recruiting more women into their forces, particularly the military police.

Greater independent oversight of the conduct of AMISOM troops is also needed. AMISOM’s international donors, particularly the United Nations, European Union, United States, and United Kingdom should ensure that the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) has a strong human rights unit and is able to implement the secretary-general’s Human Rights Due Diligence Policy, which seeks to ensure that the UN does not support abusive non-UN forces. International donors should ensure that if there are substantial grounds to believe that forces they support are committing widespread or systematic violations of international human rights or humanitarian law, including sexual exploitation and abuse, and the relevant authorities have failed to take the necessary corrective or mitigating measures, this support should be withdrawn.

Abuse of Power: Defining Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

The UN secretary-general’s 2003 Bulletin on special measures for the protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse by UN and related personnel states that:

Sexual abuse is “the actual or threatened physical intrusion of a sexual nature, whether by force or under unequal or coercive conditions.”
Sexual exploitation is “any actual or attempted abuse of a position of vulnerability, differential power, or trust, for sexual purposes, including, but not limited to, profiting monetarily, socially or politically from the sexual exploitation of another.”
The Bulletin explicitly prohibits any “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex, including sexual favours or other forms of humiliating, degrading or exploitative behavior.” It further prohibits peacekeepers from engaging in any sexual activity with persons under the age of 18, regardless of the age of sexual consent in the country. [1]

[FarhanYare]

I doubt sex raging jareer were keeping it in their pants under farmajos term too.. I wish we had a president that takes sexual violence seriously. Why is Culusow keeping these xayawaan still in xamar? Can we get the AU to switch job contract to somalis themselves? I dont even know waxeey qabtaan they are only vissible at and around the airport bas with their sniffing dogs.

[Khalid Ali]

Deep inside he doesn’t support how ever farhan maskax yare and being a qabiliste and iksa caabin xaga daaroodka he will try to put this under the rug now let’s say if there were amisom in buntlland or so on he would say look darood u got ur fair share of the rape two calaahaan weynu wadda qabna dawashyo ceeb. But the majority of the Bantus are in the hawiye territory the xabahsis are in eeley regions. And the kikiyus are in jubbaland so only the Ogaden are under bantu the rest of the jebertis are not not sure if the Kikuyus rape the Ogaden does any one have reports about that . Though I don’t think. Ogaden care about kikiyu raping their tall qalanjos they only care about or hate xabashis they seem to love the kikiyus .in contrast to the xabashis . In a normal world If the xabahsis rape at least the xabashi garac can blend in to the Somali society and won’t be detected since they basically look like us how are ver the bantu Garac who looks like joseph kabila or mabuto seeko seeko. Will easily be detected by Somalis . Having said waxan xasuusta wa labba iyo lixdanki a soldier from the mushunguli jareer was stationed in burco and his daughter got lost in burco and he went to the burco square and asked the elders of burco inantaydi ba luntay iiso raadiya. Walugu so heleysa. Markasu ku yidhi maydan ii weydiinayn siday eegtahay maxay xidhnayd etc. Thé elders of burco smiled and said dhegeyso inantadu so Adiga kuma eeka dee walugu so helya reer burco walaga. So dhex heleya ileen dadka uma eeka inantadu soo sankeedu . Bakhaarki ina ithaan ma leeka. Wala so helaya is dedji maghribki ba wala so heley jareerti yarayd

[theyuusuf143]

Shaw khaalid is a racist. I think without amisom " Somalia will get lost" I don't think they rape any one. It's normal men always try to exploit women under their command through protection, finance or false promises. When the terms of the agreement expires biitchs always complain. Then these western organisations spread exaggerated information.

[FarhanYare]

If am qabilste what is the emperor aka khalid ali aka xigmaawi? stop hijacking this thread. Horta look at yourself first.

[jac7283]

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[Murax]

Deep inside he doesn’t support how ever farhan maskax yare and being a qabiliste and iksa caabin xaga daaroodka he will try to put this under the rug now let’s say if there were amisom in buntlland or so on he would say look darood u got ur fair share of the rape two calaahaan weynu wadda qabna dawashyo ceeb. But the majority of the Bantus are in the hawiye territory the xabahsis are in eeley regions. And the kikiyus are in jubbaland so only the Ogaden are under bantu the rest of the jebertis are not not sure if the Kikuyus rape the Ogaden does any one have reports about that . Though I don’t think. Ogaden care about kikiyu raping their tall qalanjos they only care about or hate xabashis they seem to love the kikiyus .in contrast to the xabashis . In a normal world If the xabahsis rape at least the xabashi garac can blend in to the Somali society and won’t be detected since they basically look like us how are ver the bantu Garac who looks like joseph kabila or mabuto seeko seeko. Will easily be detected by Somalis . Having said waxan xasuusta wa labba iyo lixdanki a soldier from the mushunguli jareer was stationed in burco and his daughter got lost in burco and he went to the burco square and asked the elders of burco inantaydi ba luntay iiso raadiya. Walugu so heleysa. Markasu ku yidhi maydan ii weydiinayn siday eegtahay maxay xidhnayd etc. Thé elders of burco smiled and said dhegeyso inantadu so Adiga kuma eeka dee walugu so helya reer burco walaga. So dhex heleya ileen dadka uma eeka inantadu soo sankeedu . Bakhaarki ina ithaan ma leeka. Wala so helaya is dedji maghribki ba wala so heley jareerti yarayd

Interesting point these Burundi, Ugandan, san wayne are in the Hawiye regions. Yes Gedo MX have Ethiopians, but tbh Ethiopian women are more beautiful than Somalis so I don’t know think they come as thirsty for Somalis as these other Bantus. Don’t also forget Ethiopia is 55% Muslim, and many are in the army.

[barbarossa]

Farxaan waa laandheere, so there is no way laws intended for those of us in the lower stratum of society loogu apply garey karo isaga. He can literally, much like another celebrated laandheere, Donald Trump, has once boasted, shoot someone, in cold blood, at any major public square in Mogadishu and environs, and walk away as if nothing happened, and without the least concern or care for repercussions.

[original dervish]

Will we ever get out of this mess?

[Murax]

Will we ever get out of this mess?

As long as Xamar is the capital hell no