Methodology

Human Rights Watch conducted more than 70 interviews with internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, including 36 women and girls, between August 2011 and December 2012. The majority of those interviewed were from Somalia’s Bay, Bakool, and Lower Shabelle regions and had arrived in Mogadishu in 2011 as a result of the famine, human rights abuses, and armed conflict in south-central Somalia.

The incidents and patterns of abuses they described occurred mostly in three Mogadishu districts—Dharkenley, Hodan, and Wadajir—where much of the displaced population is located.

Human Rights Watch visited at least 14 camps and settlements to interview displaced people between September 2011 and February 2012. Displaced individuals put Human Rights Watch in contact with other IDPs who were survivors of rape, physical abuse, or reprisals, some of whom were subsequently interviewed inside the camps. Others were interviewed outside the camps in private offices. All interviews of individuals under age 18, the internationally recognized age of children,[1] took place in the presence of a parent, with a parent’s consent. Human Rights Watch interviewed an additional 18 displaced people—including survivors of sexual and gender-based violence—camp leaders, and “gatekeepers” during a five-day visit to Mogadishu in October 2012. A Somali nongovernmental organization (NGO) assisted in the identification of witnesses to abuses and in their interviews. For security reasons Human Rights Watch was not able to interview members of militias linked to the camp gatekeepers.

Human Rights Watch conducted interviews in Somali and other local languages, and in Somali with English translation provided by members of a local NGO. Those interviewed were provided no remuneration.

Between September 2011 and December 2012 Human Rights Watch also spoke in person or by telephone with dozens of other knowledgeable individuals, including Somali local and central government officials, UN officials, representatives of international and Somali aid agencies, Somali human rights organizations, and members of the donor and diplomatic community.

The names of interviewees have been withheld and replaced by pseudonyms for security reasons. The majority of international representatives interviewed by Human Rights Watch also requested that their names and organizations be withheld. Names of alleged perpetrators are omitted except when sufficient eyewitness accounts, collected independently, pointed to the same individual being responsible for abuses.

The report is not a comprehensive description of the situation of all displaced communities in Mogadishu given restrictions on access to some city districts. Nor does it document all the human rights issues faced by IDPs in Mogadishu; rather, it highlights the most significant rights concerns of displaced people who have fled to Mogadishu over the last 18 months.