On Monday, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) posted a report about sexual abuse and exploitation of Somali women by soldiers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The report by the HRW includes interviews with victims of the sexual abuse and exploitation, all of them being young Somali women. There were 10 individual cases of sexual abuse and 14 cases of sexual exploitation that were recorded.
The cases were taken from two AMISOM bases in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, since 2013. There are a total of 50 interviews that brought about the findings. The Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and other organizations have reported sexual exploitation and gender-based violence towards Somali women and girls in the past, but according to the HRW, “the involvement of AMISOM soldiers has largely been overlooked, including by the mission’s leadership and international donors.” The soldiers from AMISOM have been deployed to “Somalia since 2007 to help restore stability in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu” and “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.”
Most of the women are either in poverty or other positions of vulnerability; many of them are uprooted from their homes and families. “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,” according to the HRW.
According to the AMISOM website, "AMISOM is an active, regional peacekeeping mission operated by the African Union with the approval of the United Nations. It was created by the African Union’s Peace and Security Council on 19th January 2007 with an initial six month mandate."
For the sake of security and privacy of the victims, HRW did not release the actual names of the interviewed victims. One of these victims, given the alias Qamar R., is a 15-year-old Somali girl who visited an AMISOM camp with soldiers from Burundi to get medicine from her mother. An interpreter told her to follow two soldiers to get the medicine. The HRW report says, “They took her to a remote area and one of the soldiers raped her … as she was leaving, the second Burundian soldier gave her US$10.”
The Human Rights Watch is recommending that the UN, AMISOM, and the Somali government have tighter regulations to prevent further incidents of sexual abuse and exploitation, and to provide more research for investigation into the incidents. The HRW commented, “They also should ensure, along with AMISOM and the UN, that survivors receive adequate medical and psychosocial care and protection, particularly during investigations and prosecutions.”
