III. Forced Marriage and Rape of Girls by al-Shabaab

In addition to recruiting girls and young women to provide domestic work and other forms of direct support for its fighters in camps and on the front lines, al-Shabaab has also targeted them for rape and forced marriage.[164] Al-Shabaab members have assaulted girls and young women in schools, public spaces, and their homes. Because perpetrators of rape and other violence in Somalia enjoy almost total impunity, the victims and their families often have very little power to resist, and those who do face great risks. Victims of rape and their families rarely have anywhere to turn to for support and are at times stigmatized and ostracized within their own communities. Flight is often the only form of protection that remains: many refugee families told Human Rights Watch that one of the main reasons they left Somalia was fear of forced marriage.

Rape by al-Shabaab occurs both within the context of such forced marriages and outside. Sexual and gender-based violence in Somalia is believed to be widespread but significantly underreported and committed both by combatants and civilians.[165]

International human rights law places significant obligations on states to specify the minimum age of marriage and to prevent child marriage.[166] Human Rights Watch opposes all non-consensual, or forced, marriages of women and girls, and calls on states to set the minimum legal age of marriage at 18.[167] International humanitarian law and international human rights law both prohibit rape and other sexual violence.[168] When crimes of sexual violence are committed as part of armed conflict, they can be prosecuted as war crimes.[169]

Forced and Early Marriage by al-Shabaab

Al-Shabaab has imposed forced and early marriage as part of the group’s effort to impose its harsh version of Sharia on every aspect of the personal lives of women and girls. The practices described to Human Rights Watch were not simply the actions of individual fighters taking advantage of impunity to impose marriage on individual girls. Rather, both girls who were targeted and other eyewitnesses consistently described a more organized practice in which al-Shabaab preached marriage with fighters to girls still in school (see below), and abducted and detained girls under the group’s auspices for this purpose. Human Rights Watch did not interview any girls forced to marry fighters in 2010 and 2011, but did interview eyewitnesses, girls who had been repeatedly threatened by al-Shabaab with forced marriage, and a young woman who escaped after being abducted but before being forcibly married. According to the children interviewed, escape from al-Shabaab is difficult, and likely more so once married. The forced marriage of girls and young women to al-Shabaab fighters has also been widely reported by others.[170]

The difference between forced marriages by al-Shabaab and marriages that might have been somewhat more voluntary in nature were not always clear, particularly in witness accounts. However, the context under which these marriages are taking place—under al-Shabaab’s brutal repression and often direct threats—and the involvement of children under 18 makes the very notion of voluntariness questionable. As a 17-year-old boy from Mogadishu pointed out: “Usually they [al-Shabaab] were in town and when they would see girls from school they would find one, confront her, say they want to marry her. Sometimes they would go to the parents but if the parents refuse they just take her. I saw it all the time. If she accepts, good. If she refuses, she’s kidnapped. Either way, it’s better to take the option of agreeing.”[171]

Al-Shabaab abducted girls from school, en route, in public places, and from their homes, often through threats and violence against them and their family members. A teacher, 46, from Mogadishu described how al-Shabaab rounded-up girls from his school in January 2010:

It was tea break, exactly at 10 a.m. The girls and boys were separated [by al-Shabaab] at break and they were not allowed to play. They asked the girls to stand and paraded them. They looked and picked 15- and 16-year-old girls, one was 17 years old. They took 12 girls in total. These girls were taken to be wives. They were told they should join. They said … the girls were to become al-Shabaab wives. After this incident all the girls over age 15 ran away or dropped out of school. One hundred fifty girls dropped out of school.[172]

The mother of a young woman from Hawlwadaq in Mogadishu said that four al-Shabaab fighters approached her one evening in early 2010 at her tea kiosk and told her that they wanted to marry off her daughter, who was 17-years-old at the time: “They told the girl that they had fallen in love with her. I complained that she was too young. But they said, ‘If you don’t accept our demand, we will slaughter you in front of her.’ We locked the kiosk and fled to Afgooye right then.”[173]

A 19-year-old student from Bakara in Mogadishu described how girls were taken from his school:

They came and took many girls from my school. If they refused they were taken by force. I saw three girls taken by force. They were around 14 or 15 [years old] and it was on the seventh day of Ramadan 2010 [when there was heavy fighting]. Girls were taken at gunpoint and forced to become wives of combatants. One parent who protested was killed. One girl said she could not go and al-Shabaab shot her in the forehead in front of my class. When the school asked why they did that, al-Shabaab said that she was a spy for the government. She was 19 years old.[174]

Girls may be targeted both by unknown al-Shabaab fighters as well as by people very close to them. The wife of an al-Shabaab fighter described the anxiety of seeing her son taken away to fight by her husband and then facing attempts by her husband to marry-off their 14-year-old daughter to an al-Shabaab member:

Then he started talking about marrying off my daughter. I pleaded with him, telling him he had taken my son, at least leave me and spare my daughter. She was 14 years old. One day he brought a man back to the house. He was 30 and Somali. I think he was part of the group who had come to my house when they took [my son]. My daughter was there when he came. The man then left. A few days later two men came inside the house and one came inside the house and started hitting me with a rifle butt and told me to go to the bedroom. But I refused. Then they left. I left the following day with six of my children.[175]

The risk of repercussions for girls or their families who resist marriage is serious and very real. An 18-year-old woman from Karan, Mogadishu, described how, shortly before Ramadan in 2010, her brother was stabbed in the eye when he tried to stop three al-Shabaab fighters from taking her from their home, saying they wanted to marry her off. She fled Mogadishu the following day, leaving her brother, who was still in the hospital, behind. [176]

The 46-year-old teacher from Mogadishu quoted above described the fate of one girl they took from the school who resisted a forced marriage:

She was given to a commander. He was an old man. She was taken to El Ashabiya. He told his men to kill her and they filmed it and sent it to mobile phones. My students saw it. They saw the mutilation. They brought back her head to the school and assembled all of the girls and said, “This is an example of what will happen if you misbehave.” The girl was 16 years old.[177]

While Human Rights Watch primarily heard cases of girls 15 and above taken by al-Shabaab for marriage, a 17-year-old boy from Jilib described how the wife of a local al-Shabaab leader in Jilib, Middle Juba, prepared his friend, a 13-year-old girl, to become the wife of a combatant:

There is a new district commissioner now and he is an al-Shabaab boss. His wife has a big building and girls are brought there and they learn about jihad. They go there and then learn about jihad and are married to fighters. There are girls as young as 15 years old. They go every Friday to her house. Salima [not her real name] went, she is 13 and she told me.[178]

Human Rights Watch received several reports of girls and young women being prepared for or already married off to al-Shabaab fighters being kept in al-Shabaab camps or houses of combatants. Several boys recruited by al-Shabaab spoke of the presence of girls and young women married to combatants in the camps. Girls are also kept in specific houses for combatants. A 17-year-old boy from Wardigley in Mogadishu explained how al-Shabaab buys houses and furnishes them and then combatants use them: “If one combatant dies another uses it.”[179]

A 16-year-old girl from Bondhere, Mogadishu, who was to be forcibly married off to an al-Shabaab fighter, described her ordeal and being locked up:

In mid-2010 al-Shabaab took me from my house. They were controlling the entire neighborhood and locked me in a house. They told me, “We will marry you to our leader.” I was in that house for a month. I was crying day and night. Then I said they should go and ask my father. My father said, “I will discuss it with my daughter, let her come to me first.” They released me. I told my mother I didn’t want it. After that I went to live with my grandmother in a different neighborhood controlled by the TFG, Hamer Wayne. After that when they came to our house, they took my two brothers.[180]

Girls and their families have very limited means of protection against abduction for forced marriage. Some girls drop out of school and are often then confined to the home. Girls also move, although generally temporarily, to their extended family or acquaintances in the TFG controlled areas.

Fleeing to Kenya or another part of Somalia is often the only choice families have to protect their daughters. Human Rights Watch spoke to 12 parents and children who said they fled Somalia either out of fear of seeing their daughters or sisters forcibly married or after al-Shabaab visited their homes threatening to do so.

A 48-year-old mother from Yaqshiid, Mogadishu, for example, explained why her family fled Mogadishu in November 2010: “Al-Shabaab came directly to my husband and said, ‘You bring your two boys to fight for us and the two girls to marry fighters and bring two machine guns.’ My husband is a businessman and is wealthy. Because of this scenario we ran. Up until now we have been running. How can I give my girls?” [181]

Rape by al-Shabaab

The issue of rape in Somalia is taboo. There is profound stigma associated with sexual violence and, therefore, victims and their families rarely speak out. Human Rights Watch interviewed one girl and one young woman in the course of this research who described their rape by al-Shabaab members, the former the victim of a gang rape, the latter in the context of a planned forced marriage. A handful of Somali refugees also spoke to us about other incidents of rape perpetuated by al-Shabaab forces, and Human Rights Watch and others have documented sexual violence by TFG forces and TFG-affiliated militias.[182] Our individual interviews, as well as secondary evidence, raise grave concerns that sexual and gender-based violence in Somalia is widespread and perpetuated not only by combatants but also by civilians.[183]

A 17-year-old girl from Mogadishu described to Human Rights Watch how al-Shabaab fighters raped her one evening as she went to buy food:

My younger sister and I were sent one night to go to the store to buy things. Then al-Shabaab appeared in front of us. There were very many. They caught us. They beat us but my sister managed to escape from them. They told me, “You will be taken to the station. Why are you walking around at this hour? We will arrest you.” But they didn’t take me to the station. They raped me. I got pregnant and have this small baby. There were six but I went unconscious after two so I don’t know if all six raped me. They used the butt of the gun to pierce my eye [indicating her left eye which was obviously damaged and which she said was blind]. Then they just left me.[184]

The girl became pregnant from the attack and her 16-year-old sister, who was severely beaten, became mentally unstable. Both girls dropped out of school after that.[185]

A 16-year-old boy from Yaaqshiid, Mogadishu, who was forcibly recruited and sent to an al-Shabaab training camp, described seeing fighters rape girls who came into the camp in search of food:

There were ladies in the camp. Al-Shabaab fighters raped them. They were teenagers, they don’t like older ladies. I saw it when I was in the camp. There were girls who went to the camp to look for food, and they are kept there and then released. I saw 20 girls that this happened to. I was providing food to them. The girls I saw were all between 15 and 20 years old.[186]

Given the situation of widespread violence and impunity in which rape takes place, girls, young women, and their families often have very little power and means, notably in al-Shabaab controlled areas, to resist rape or to speak out against the violation. One woman from Bakara, Mogadishu, for example, described attending the funeral of a girl who had been shot dead by an al-Shabaab fighter after he tried to rape her and she resisted.[187]

Victims of rape and, at times, their families may also face severe stigma and repercussions in their communities. The mother of the 17-year-old victim of rape told Human Rights Watch how she was attacked after speaking out about the rape of her daughter:

Women who sympathized with al-Shabaab threatened me and said, “We will beat you for saying that al-Shabaab raped your daughter.” They cut me with a knife. They even told me that if I didn’t leave they would kill me for saying al-Shabaab raped my daughter.[188]

The girl herself spoke of the stigma that she faced after becoming pregnant as a result of the rape:

I was going to a private school, class 1 [before the rape]. I stopped after that when people heard my story. I had many problems with the community. Some people told me to abort the child and I feared for my life. Some were laughing at me and I said that it was not my fault. That it had happened accidentally and I didn’t wish to get pregnant. After I delivered the baby I was hiding so I didn’t go to school.[189]

Facing stigma, insecurity, and lack of access to the necessary health facilities, flight is often the only option. The girl left Mogadishu and fled to Kenya as a result:

I came to Kenya six months ago with the baby. The baby was sick and also because of the stigma and discrimination in the community. And seeing al-Shabaab made me even more traumatized.[190]