UN-funded African troops raped vulnerable Somalis – HRW

Internationally-funded African Union troops in war-
torn and impoverished Somalia have raped women
and girls as young as 12 and traded food aid for
sex, Human Rights Watch said in a damning report
Monday.
“Some of the women who were raped said that the
soldiers gave them food or money afterwards in an
apparent attempt to frame the assault as
transactional sex,” the HRW report said.
There was no immediate reaction from the AU force
AMISOM, whose 22,000 soldiers drawn from six
nations have been fighting alongside government
troops against the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab
insurgents since 2007.
The vulnerable women largely came from camps in
the capital Mogadishu, having fled rural Somalia
during a devastating famine in 2011.
AMISOM donors include the United Nations,
European Union, Britain and the United States.
The AU soldiers, “relying on Somali intermediaries,
have used a range of tactics, including humanitarian
aid, to coerce vulnerable women and girls into
sexual activity,” the report read, based on
testimonies of 21 women and girls.
“They have also raped or otherwise sexually
assaulted women who were seeking medical
assistance or water at AMISOM bases.”
The youngest interviewed was aged just 12, who
said she was raped by a Ugandan soldier.
Several of the women described how they had gone
to the AU camp seeking medicine for their sick
babies.
“The findings raise serious concerns about abuses
by AMISOM soldiers against Somali women and
girls that suggest a much larger problem,” HRW
added.
- ‘Desperate for food and medicine’ -
Only in two cases had the women who spoke to
HRW filed police complaints, because they “feared
stigma, reprisals from family, police, and the
Islamist insurgent group Al-Shebab.”
The cases investigated by HRW involved troops
from Burundi and Uganda.
AMISOM troops last month launched a major
offensive aimed at seizing key ports and cutting off
an important source of revenue for the Islamist
rebels.
HRW said the force needed to end the abuses
carried by its troops.
“The AU military and political leadership needs to do
more to prevent, identify, and punish sexual abuse
by their troops,” said HRW Africa head Daniel
Bekele.
“As another food crisis looms in Mogadishu’s
displacement camps, women and girls are once
again desperate for food and medicine. They should
not have to sell their bodies for their families to
survive.”
Conditions in Somalia remain dire, with the United
Nations and aid workers warning that large areas
are struggling with extreme hunger and drought,
three years after famine killed more than a quarter
of a million people.
The UN last week said over a million people were
classified in either “crisis” or “emergency”
situations, just one step short of famine on its
hunger scale.
The mother of one girl who was raped told HRW she
was deeply traumatised by the attack.
“People laugh at her whenever she comes out.
They say, ‘An infidel raped her’,” the mother said.
“How can you feel if your daughter asks you…
‘Mother, I better die to hide my shameful face from
the people’?” she added.
Women reported contracted sexually transmitted
infections, mainly gonorrhoea, after the assaults.
“Several women said that the soldiers refused to
wear condoms and that they had caught sexually
transmitted infections as a result,” HRW added.
“Several also described being slapped and beaten
by the soldiers with whom they had sex.”