By Laetitia Bader
On Monday, Somalia’s international donors will gather to commit new assistance to the war-torn country. They should carefully oversee how their money is spent, ensuring their aid doesn’t make Somalia’s already dire human rights situation even worse.
The New Deal conference in Brussels– the second aid-pledging event for Somalia this year –will endorse the government’s peace building and state building priorities. But for any money or commitments to go beyond paper, donors are going to need to get tougher on the Somali government, carefully assessing the human rights impact of development projects to reduce the risk of abuses.
The Somali government has given priority to security sector and judicial reform, essential to improving its human rights record. Despite much heralded changes in the country, Somalis continue to face widespread abuses. While the new government has publicly committed to tackling key issues such as rampant sexual violence, it has undermined those commitments in some high-profile cases. In January, for example, the authorities prosecuted a woman who alleged she was raped by government forces and a journalist who interviewed her. Both were convicted of tarnishing the image of the government and were only acquitted after substantial international criticism.
Poorly managed foreign assistance has also led to abuse. Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch documented how aid destined for the tens of thousands of internally displaced people in Mogadishu, the capital, had been misused and stolen. In many cases, the funds went to abusive militia, government forces, and camp managers known as “gatekeepers.”
The New Deal’s draft compact as seen by Human Rights Watch includes some important human rights targets, including plans to vet security forces and remove children from the army. But donors should insist on immediate improvements, including a moratorium on the death penalty, concrete efforts to protect the displaced, and the ratification of key international treaties. More nice words are not enough.
Ensuring that assistance does not create or exacerbate conflicts is crucial, and projects should be assessed from the onset to proactively mitigate those risks. The compact should state that human rights impact assessments will be part of the monitoring framework.
Somalia presents donors with new opportunities and enormous risks. But ignoring the risks in a rush to pledge support could ultimately harm Somali civilians, who have suffered for far too long.
