From 1991 to 1993, approximately 300,000 Somalis fled across the 800-mile Kenyan-Somali border.27 Most refugees walked miles over Somalia's desolate savanna into Kenya's North Eastern Province; others risked their lives in makeshift boats to reach Kenya's coastline further south. As of this writing, most of the refugees continue to remain in camps in Kenya, and over 80 percent are women and children.28 Many were the victims of violence, including rape, as they fled war-torn Somalia. They went to Kenya to escape these dangers, only to face similar abuse upon arrival.
In July 1993 Human Rights Watch visited Kenya to investigate reports of widespread rape of Somali women refugees. While in Kenya, our researcher met with relief workers, Kenyan government officials and others working on refugee protection issues and traveled to Dagahaley, Liboi, Marafa and Hatimy camps, where she interviewed Somali refugee women who were raped.
Human Rights Watch found that hundreds of Somali women in the refugee camps in Kenya's North Eastern Province have been raped in Somalia and in Kenya. In 1993 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) documented close to 300 rape cases. Of these cases, almost one hundred had occurred in Somalia, while the remainder took place in the Kenyan refugee camps. Between January and August 1994, forty-five more cases of rape in the camps were reported. While these figures are profoundly disturbing, they represent only the cases actually reported to UNHCR, which believes the actual incidence of rape in that period could be as much as ten times higher.29
In an overwhelming number of cases, Somali refugee women and girls were violently attacked by unknown armed bandits at night or when they went to the outskirts of the refugee camp to herd goats or collect firewood. According to the UNHCR, nearly all the rape cases that occurred in theKenyan camps were committed by bandits. Increasingly, these bandits join forces with former Somali military men or fighters from the various warring factions who launch raids across the Kenyan-Somali border. To a lesser extent, refugee women were also vulnerable to attack by Kenyan police officers posted in the area. Between January and August 1993, the Kenyan police were responsible for seven reported rape cases.
Somali women as old as fifty years of age and girls as young as four have been subjected to violence and sexual assault. Most of the women whose cases we investigated were gang-raped at gunpoint, some by as many as seven men at a time. Frequently, the agony was repeated; some women were raped twice or three times in the camps. In the vast majority of cases, female rape survivors were also robbed, severely beaten, knifed or shot. Those who had been circumcised often had their vaginal openings torn or cut by their attackers. Many we interviewed were suffering ongoing medical problems.
Kenya's North Eastern Province is an arid, barren area sparsely populated by nomadic pastoralist groups such as the Somali, Boran, Rendilles, and Turkana. Because of the artificially constructed colonial border between Kenya and Somalia, the area is inhabited almost exclusively by ethnic Somalis who are classified as Kenyan citizens but retain strong cultural, political and economic ties to Somalia. The rise of a secessionist movement to join Somalia between 1963-1967 resulted in the Kenyan government's committing widespread human rights abuses by the Kenyan authorities against large numbers of Somali-Kenyans. Indiscriminate government killings, arrests and security crackdowns in turn generated widespread suspicion and hatred of the government among the area's inhabitants. Emergency powers in North Eastern Province remained fully operational until 1993, when they were finally repealed.30
Throughout this period, the government deliberately invested little or nothing in the infrastructure of the North Eastern Province, with the result that the province experienced barely any economic growth. The area has remained undeveloped and isolated, and its population politically marginalized. Much of the nomadic population has increasingly resorted to cattle-rustling, banditry,and poaching. These local bandits, known as shiftas, make a living from robbing local inhabitants.31
The outbreak of the Somali civil war in 1991 dramatically increased the insecurity in North Eastern Province. After January 1991, when former Somali President Siad Barre was forced from power, the situation in Somalia degenerated, as rival clan factions vied for power. The fighting continues, and as the Somali government collapsed in 1991, there are no recognized authorities to restore order. Meanwhile, the fighting has resulted in the deaths of at least 300,000 of its citizens based on the political manipulation of clan and sub-clan allegiances, and prompted another 300,000 to flee.32 Over 80 percent of these refugees are women and children.
By 1993 approximately 200,000 Somali refugees were housed in six camps set up by the UNHCR along the Kenya-Somali border.33 Refugees in these camps were housed in appalling conditions in squalid "igloo"-type hovels made of branches covered with patches of plastic, burlap or cloth.34 These large refugee camps soon became targets of the often well-armed shiftas in search of money and food and—all too frequently—sex. As a relief official told Human Rights Watch, one reason the refugee camps were constantly attacked was that the local nomadic population was as indigent as the refugee population, but was not receiving relief assistance.35 Relief workers also speculated that some of the shiftas might even have been refugees who took up arms at night and terrorized their compatriots.36
The location of these camps, just a few miles from the Kenya-Somali border, also exposed refugees to attacks from Somali fighters. Former Somali government soldiers or combatants with the warring factions routinely staged raids into North Eastern Kenya and then retreated over the border, eluding capture by Kenyan security forces. Often, these shiftas were better armed than the Kenyan security forces. It is difficult to distinguish the Somali shiftas from those of Kenyan origin, and the term shifta is used by the refugees broadly to describe any attacker of Somali ethnicity in that area. As these armed gangs joined forces with local bandits, law and order in the area broke down.37
Gradually the area turned into a virtual free-for-all zone because of the mounting insecurity and increasing number of weapons. Shiftas regularly terrorized the relief community, the refugees, and even the Kenyan police force. Relief workers began to travel with an armed escort for protection. In 1992 bandits attacked the compound of an international relief organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and gang-raped a female doctor.38 In response, MSF temporarily withdrew its workers, until assured of increased security. Kenyan police themselves did not leave their compounds at night for fear of being shot. In January 1993 the Kenyan government reported fifty-three attacks by shiftas in the refugee camps resulting in the deaths of nine security personnel and thirty-eight refugees.39 In the following six months, approximately twenty-five other police officers were killed by shiftas in search of the officers' weapons and ammunition.
The refugees were particularly vulnerable to abuses from all sides. They complained of looting, beatings and killings by shiftas and Kenyan police alike. Often, refugees also became the helpless victims of police brutality after attacks by shiftas were carried out against the Kenyan police. In one particularly egregious incident on March 3, 1993, Kenyan police fired without provocation into a crowd of refugees waiting in line at a food distribution center, killing three and wounding several others. This unprovoked assault came the day after four policemen were killed in a shifta attack. The overallsecurity situation was deplorable, but sexual assault and rape affected almost exclusively women and girls.
27 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Information Bulletin, (June 1993) p. 4. The following material was adapted from Africa Watch and Women's Rights Project, "Seeking Refuge, Finding Terror: The Widespread Rape of Somali Women Refugees in North Eastern Kenya," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 5, no. 13 (October 1993).
28 UNHCR, Information Bulletin, p. 10.
29 Interview with Fauzia Musse, UNHCR consultant on sexual violence, Nairobi, Kenya, July 16, 1993.
30 Africa Watch, Kenya: Taking Liberties (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991), p. 269.
31 The term shifta, meaning bandit in Kiswahili, was deliberately used by the Kenyan government to describe the secessionists in the 1960s and downplay the political significance of the movement. Shifta has since become a catch-all term to describe any ethnic Somali criminal in Kenya and has acquired a derogatory connotation.
32 U.S. Department of State, Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Somalia - Civil Strife, Situation Report no. 19, March 12, 1993.
33 The camps housing Somali refugees in 1993 were: Mandera (pop. 44,841); El-Wak (pop. 8,200); Dagahaley (39,441); Ifo (48,476); Hagadera (43,829); and Liboi (pop. 44,841). UNHCR, Information Bulletin, (June 1993) p. 4.
34 In 1993, another 70,000 Somali refugees were housed in noticeably better conditions in three camps at Kenya's Coast Province. These camps were further from the Somali border and therefore safer. The camps were Marafa (pop. 29,392 Somali and non-Somali refugees); Hatimy (pop. 2,935); and Utange (pop. 42,361 Somali and Ethiopian refugees). Ibid.
35 Interview with relief worker, Dadaab, Kenya, July 1993.
36 Interview with UNHCR official, Nairobi, Kenya, July 16, 1993.
37 "Refugee Criminal Gangs wreak `Havoc' in Kenya," Reuters Information Services, August 11, 1993.
38 Interview with relief official, Dagahaley camp, Kenya, July 26, 1993; see also "Belgian Charity Withdraws Workers from Refugee Camps," Associated Press, July 7, 1992.
39 Letter from the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, New York, to Kenyan authorities, May 11, 1993.
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