Government Response

I know we are soldiers to enforce the law, but the law enforcement doesn’t come from the soldiers, it must come from the top government members and the parliament. They steal our salaries, they give us one month and don’t give two months, so who is responsible for the law enforcement? A hungry soldier can’t enforce a law, instead he takes a bribe and tries to manage his daily life alone.[179]

—Government soldier, Mogadishu, September 2011

The Transitional Federal Government

The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia failed to provide even the most basic services, protection, and security to the displaced population in Mogadishu in the course of the famine.

Apparently more preoccupied with the end of the transitional political process than with providing basic services to the population under its control, the TFG took few limited measures to address the needs of displaced communities. According to the 2012 UN Monitoring Group report, the TFG’s establishment of a series of entities with unclear mandates and roles during the famine heightened confusion for humanitarian actors and undermined transparency and accountability.[180] In August 2011 the TFG set up the Somali National Disaster Management Agency (DMA) to coordinate the drought response. In April 2012, the chairperson of the DMA, prominent civil society activist Abdullahi Mohammed Shirwa, resigned citing government mismanagement and failure to provide the DMA with necessary assistance and funds.[181] According to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Real-Time Evaluation, which assessed the humanitarian response to the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa, the DMA lacked resources and organization.[182]

More positively, the TFG replaced the unpopular commander of Badbaado camp, Captain Jimale, with a Rahanweyn police commander. Several IDPs who had been living in Badbaado since August 2011 said the security situation had improved since Jimale’s removal.[183] This step should be taken as a good practice and as an example for other IDP camps and areas where efforts are being made to strengthen the police presence. However, the district commissioner’s militia, which is believed to have been responsible for a number of the abuses that took place when the camp was initially set up, is still in the vicinity.

In December 2011 a task force on sexual violence was set up by then-Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed following pressure by the United Nations, but the task force never met.[184]

More prevalent were the TFG’s failures to address the serious problems facing the IDPs in Mogadishu. Many within the higher ranks of the TFG and local authorities have tried to deny abuses against IDPs, including rape. According to the 2012 UN Monitoring Group report, the TFG generally denied that rape was occurring, or questioned the truth of the allegations.[185] The lack of baseline data on SGBV has also been used by officials as a pretext to question allegations.[186]

Due to significant media attention to abuses against displaced women and girls in the midst of the famine, high-profile members of the TFG, including the president and local and regional administrations, visited Badbaado camp in the second half of 2011. Several displaced people told Human Rights Watch that they had attended meetings with TFG authorities, including the prime minister, the minister of interior, the president, and the mayor, as well as with relevant district commissioners, in order to raise concerns about their situation.[187] IDPs also staged demonstrations outside the mayor’s office and on October 4, 2011, organized a protest outside the Presidential Palace but were thwarted on their way by a suicide explosion. On October 21, 2012, IDPs held another demonstration to raise awareness of their situation.[188] However, most complained that nothing resulted from these meetings. A group of IDPs from Rajo camp described the response of the Wadajir district commissioner to their complaint: “He listened to us and he told us that he will sort out all the problems, but he has never addressed our concerns, Mohamud [head of security at Rajo] and the rest including the district commissioner are connected.”[189]

Despite the public reports of abuses against IDPs by national and international human rights and humanitarian organizations, the UN Monitoring Group, and the media, the TFG largely failed to respond in any substantive manner to these abuses. Transitional government officials failed to take measures to rein in abusive troops, the increasingly powerful district commissioners, or deal with militias.[190]

This culture of cover-up and denial appears to persist among certain local-level authorities. The police commissioner of Hodan district, for example, told Human Rights Watch in October 2012, at a time when certain Somali NGOs monitoring SGBV were reporting an increase in incidents of rape, that he had not heard of any cases of rape in recent months and accused NGOs of making fake claims to attract foreign funding.[191] Similarly, according to a local Somali news outlet, in July 2011, where reports of rape by government affiliated forces in Badbaado were particularly high, the district commissioner of Dharkenley denied the involvement of government soldiers in the abuses.[192] According to a UN official, denial of rape is one of the main obstacles to tackling the culture of impunity surrounding the abuse.[193] Local NGOs and UN agency staff told Human Rights Watch that the police are reluctant to arrest clan militia, particularly those linked to district commissioners.[194] While Human Rights Watch was not able to corroborate this allegation, independent analyses and investigations have shown that it is not unusual that police from majority clans are unwilling to act on allegations brought to them by victims from weaker clans or minorities.[195]

Perpetrators of abuses against IDPs, whatever their status, are rarely prosecuted. In October 2011 the TFG arrested the district commissioners of Hamar Jabjab and Karan and the military court convicted them to 15 and 10 years, respectively, for diversion of aid destined for IDPs. However, the district commissioners, who are civilians, were tried in a military court, and both were released within a month following a presidential pardon in November 2011.[196]

Response of the New Government

The new Somali government has many challenges ahead, but it is crucial that it ensures that basic protection and services are provided to the capital’s sizeable displaced population. In the longer-term it is also vital that Somalia ends the culture of impunity in which abuses against displaced persons occur. In the few months since the government came to power, the signals have been mixed.

In his September 16, 2012 inaugural address the new Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, identified security as one of his main priorities.[197] Improving security and equally important, developing professional and accountable security forces, is clearly critical in any effort to protect IDPs—and Somali citizens more broadly. On November 25, 2012, President Hassan Sheikh also publicly committed to hold to account government forces responsible for abuses, including rape, although he said that the death penalty would be applied.[198] A commitment to end impunity is a positive step towards ensuring justice for victims and deterring future abuses, but the new Somali government should place a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty, and instead focus on improving the quality of police response and investigations, as well as the functioning of the judiciary.[199] In February 2013 the prime minister set up a human rights task force reportedly to examine issues of sexual violence and attacks on the media; the exact mandate and role of the task force is unclear.

While the president and some other senior officials seem committed to changing the culture of impunity and ending the denial of abuses by security forces, some parts of the government, particularly the police, appear reluctant to change. The urgent need for wide-ranging and profound police reform is exemplified by the police response to a January 2013 case that gained international notoriety. A 27-year-old displaced woman alleged she was raped in Burdubo camp by five men in uniform, possibly government soldiers, in August 2012. Months later, on January 8, 2013, the woman was interviewed by a freelance journalist, Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, in the wake of growing reports of sexual violence by security forces in the IDP camps of Mogadishu, including a January 6 article by Al-Jazeera.[200]

Police arrested the woman on January 10 and interrogated her at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Using her phone, the authorities telephoned journalists who had either interviewed her or were thought to have been involved in the research for the Al-Jazeera article. Rather than investigating the perpetrators of the alleged rape, the police focused their time and resources on investigating the woman, the journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur, and three other individuals, including the woman’s husband, who eventually spent between 14-19 days in detention without charge. All five were eventually charged on January 29 with a range of crimes, including insulting the government, simulating a criminal offense, and making a false accusation, among others.[201] On February 5, the woman and the journalist were sentenced to one-year imprisonment, convicted of falsely accusing a government body of committing a crime that damages state security. The woman's sentence was later overturned by a court of appeals, while the journalist's sentence was finally quashed by the Supreme Court after he had spent 66 days in detention.

The police conduct in the case—and that of the police commissioner and the minister of the interior, in particular—was a disturbing effort to blame the victim and the media, and divert attention from the very real and alarming prevalence of sexual violence in Mogadishu. It also highlighted serious violations of due process in the police and judicial handling of the case, and raised concerns that the police response could deter victims from reporting sexual violence, as well as chill efforts by media to report on these and other human rights abuses involving security forces.[202]

In January 2013 the government released a draft plan to relocate Mogadishu’s displaced communities from the city center to bigger settlements in districts outside the center. The draft states that by August 20, 2013, the one-year anniversary of the end of the transition, there will be no more IDPs in Mogadishu. Following the release of this draft, a joint UN- Ministry of Interior and National Security chaired task force was established, along with three technical sub-groups to examine specific issues on socio-demographic data of the population, site planning, and communications.

While the government’s decision to tackle the situation of the displaced in Mogadishu is a positive step, key questions remain regarding the protection of the displaced and the provision of basic services. The time frame of the relocation plan is unrealistic and while the government is reported to have expressed flexibility on this question, it should publicly address key concerns about access to protection, the deployment of competent police, and assistance in the new sites before any such relocations start.

To better understand the protection needs of the displaced, the government should carry out a profiling exercise with the assistance of the United Nations to determine people’s needs and to identify the most vulnerable—such as female headed households, unaccompanied children, the elderly, and the disabled. The authorities and humanitarian actors involved will also need to consult with the displaced throughout the process and ensure that they are informed about the reasons for the relocation and the location so as to make free and informed choices.