Methodology

This report is largely the result of a three-week research mission to Kenya in October 2009 by two Human Rights Watch researchers who carried out dozens of interviews in the Dadaab refugee camps and in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood. Dadaab is home to some 280,000 refugees, most of them Somali, and new refugees arrive at the rate of several thousand every month. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 70 victims of and witnesses to human rights abuses and laws-of-war violations. Most were refugees who recently arrived in Kenya after fleeing their homes in Somalia. The Human Rights Watch researchers sought to identify refugees who had recently arrived from Mogadishu as well as those from al-Shabaab-controlled areas in southern Somalia, including the port city of Kismayo and smaller, rural communities. The names and other identifying details of the victims and witnesses quoted in this report have either been withheld or changed in order to guard against possible reprisal.

Human Rights Watch researchers also interviewed or consulted with a broad range of western government, African Union, United Nations, and nongovernmental organization officials as well as independent analysts working on Somalia. The bulk of those interviews and consultations took place in Nairobi and in Washington, DC.

Security conditions in south/central Somalia did not permit Human Rights Watch researchers to conduct research inside Somalia. AMISOM officials reversed tentative plans to allow Human Rights Watch researchers to visit their base of operations in Mogadishu, citing security concerns following a devastating suicide bombing of AMISOM’s main base in September 2009.