April 28, 2017 | Daily Monitoring Report
Children Face Increased Violence And Exploitation As Famine Looms In Drought-Stricken Somalia
28 April – Source : Save the Children – 503 Words
More than a million children in Somalia are at risk of increased violence, child labour and of being separated from their families due to the devastating drought ravaging the country, new research from Save the Children has revealed. The study of more than 600 people found the impact of the drought has gone far beyond life threatening shortages of essentials like food and water, and identified high levels of psychological distress faced by children who are exhibiting unusual symptoms like bouts of crying and screaming.
A staggering 100 percent of survey respondents, who are all drought affected, said they’d noticed changes in the behavior of children in their communities since the drought, with more than half saying children had become “more aggressive”. Violence against children was also said to be on the up by nearly two-thirds of children and 47 percent of adults. 30 percent of all respondents said that children were more at risk of sexual violence, like rape and molestation, since the drought began.
Children are more vulnerable because many have been separated from their parents, are being pressured into child labour to support their families and hundreds of thousands are at risk of dropping out of school. More than 80 percent of those surveyed said children were attending school less often since the start of the drought. “These findings are deeply distressing, revealing that beneath the visible crisis, children are also facing enormous psychological challenges as they battle hunger, uncertainty and overwhelming levels of stress,” Save the Children Somalia Country Director Hassan Saadi Noor said.
Key Headlines
- Children Face Increased Violence And Exploitation As Famine Looms In Drought-Stricken Somalia (Save the Children)
- Ministry of Interior Calls On Galmudug And ASWJ To Resolve Their Differences (Jowhar.com)
- Elder Assassinated In North Of Galkayo (Dhacdo.com)
- Government Forces Kill Driver Of Suspicious vehicle (Radio Mustaqbal)
- Somalia: $100 Cash Grants Will Help 55000 Families Overcome Drought (African Press Organisation)
- Slow Food In Somalia: An Expanding Network Of Gardens (Slow Foods)
- In Somalia New Law Could Finally Give Rape Survivors A Voice (News Deeply)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Ministry of Interior Calls On Galmudug And ASWJ To Resolve Their Differences
27 April – Source : Jowhar.com – 92 Words
The Ministry of Interior has released a statement calling on Galmudug and Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa to resolve their difference amicably. This statement follows after talks between the two parties ended without any agreement been reached by the two parties.The statement which was signed by the Minister for Interior, Abdi Farah Juxa urged by the parties to work on agreement that will see them end their dispute. However, the statement also asked the Galmudug administration to go ahead with their planned presidential election and that talks should resume after the elections.
Elder Assassinated In North Of Galkayo
28 April – Source : Dhacdo.com – 85 Words
A clan elder was last night killed in the north of Galkayo, the headquarters of Mudug region. The deceased elder, Mohamud Jamaa Dirshe was killed by men armed with pistols. The motive of his killing is not yet known. An eyewitness said the police arrive at the scene after the gunmen left the area. The killing of the elder has raised concerns among the residents of north of Galkayo. The security of the Puntland controlled part of the divided city of Galkayo has recently improved.
Government Forces Kill Driver Of Suspicious vehicle
28 April – Source : Radio Mustaqbal – 109 Word
Somali government forces have this morning killed the driver of a vehicle suspected to be carrying explosives in the district of Wadajir. The incident happened after the driver failed to adhere to an order by government forces asking him to stop. The driver of the vehicle died on the spot. The vehicle was heading to the AMISOM base of Halane before the driver was killed by government forces.The Wadajir district administration invited AMISOM troops to conduct a search on the vehicle and the body of the deceased. AMISOM troops arrived at the scene immediately after the incident. They cordoned off the road in which the incident took place.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia: $100 Cash Grants Will Help 55,000 Families Overcome Drought
28 April – Source : African Press Organisation – 216 Words
Drought-stricken families in rural Somalia have been given a lifeline via $100 cash grants to see them through lean times brought on by severe drought. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this week provided the grants to more than 55,000 homes around Baidoa to help families cope during a time of emergency needs. The most vulnerable households will receive up to three rounds of cash support through mobile phone money transfers. The debilitating drought in Somalia has left more than 6 million people at risk of malnutrition and has triggered massive displacements, mostly from rural to urban areas.“Drought conditions have decimated family’s livestock holdings and put people at risk of severe hunger.
This cash infusion will help families get through the lean times so they can get the nutrition needed to outlast the drought,” said Jordi Raich, the head of delegation for the ICRC in Somalia. In all, the ICRC, with the support of the Somali Red Cross Society (SRCS), will provide cash to up to 60,000 drought-afflicted families (360,000 persons), a $9 million infusion that is ICRC’s largest-ever cash assistance program in Somalia. This grants complement work by the Red Cross earlier this year to provide food for more than 160,000 people at risk because of the drought.
Slow Food In Somalia: An Expanding Network Of Gardens
28 April – Source : Slow Foods – 789 Words
Somalia is famous for all the wrong reasons: it’s been called the most failed state in the world, and over a million Somalis have left the country over three decades of civil war. And yet, despite these incredibly difficult conditions, the values of Slow Food are thriving, all thanks to the hard work of dedicated farmers, the national coordinator and the local coordinators. “The network of gardens is growing all the time”, Mohamed told us on a trip to the Slow Food headquarters in Bra, Italy. “When Slow Food in Somalia started in December 2011, there was just one convivium and 7 community gardens. Now there are 107 gardens and 11 convivia.”
The gardens have been up to now concentrated in just a single region of Somalia: Lower Shabelle. This also happens to be one of the regions of the country worst affected by the ongoing insurgency by different militia groups. Indeed, many of the Slow Food gardens are in territory currently under their control.
“It’s a very difficult situation,” Mohamed explains. “Difficult even to believe for someone who hasn’t seen it. Though the different militias are not against the gardens in themselves, we are not able to document their existence officially, as it is difficult to use cameras. Principally, No body is against the philosophy of Good, Clean and Fair, the idea of the garden cultivation is vital for every person, at the same time they are very suspicious of Western influence, especially because of drone strikes. There is paranoia that people might pass GPS coordinates outside the country to aid American drones in targeting.”
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“In a country where survivors themselves believe that “rape is normal,” women’s rights advocates say these statistics represent a fraction of the sexual assaults that actually occur in Somalia.“I think so few cases go to court, in part, because of poverty,” said Deqo Olad, a project coordinator at the Somali Women Development Center, the Mogadishu-based human rights advocacy group where Abdinoor works. “People don’t have time to deal with the case.”
In Somalia, New Law Could Finally Give Rape Survivors A Voice
27 April – Source : News Deeply – 902 Words
Knowing what she knows today, Zeynab Bile Abdinoor would have done things differently. She would have looked for more witnesses. She would have asked about the strange-tasting milk the girls said they were given. She would not have asked them point-blank, “Were you raped?” She would have let them do the talking. A Somali lawyer in her late 20s, Abdinoor recently took on a case that made her realize how little she knew about interviewing rape survivors – and which highlighted the severe limitations of Somalia’s sexual assault laws. Her clients were two girls, aged 12 and 14. They said they were snatched from a wedding in Mogadishu in November 2016 and held in the bush for two days and two nights, where they were raped by at least two young men.
The 14-year-old told Abdinoor that she knew one of the accused. When questioned by police, the boy said the sex had been consensual. When the girl heard this, she fainted, Abdinoor says. In Somalia, the prosecution needs to prove that penetration occurred in order to secure a conviction. Getting a medical certificate that attests to this can prove difficult. Until recently, there was only one doctor, at one hospital in the capital, who was legally empowered to give out such certificates. (Human Right Watch researcher Laetitia Bader, who spoke to the country’s attorney general, says courts now accept records from other hospitals.) This doctor issued the girls with a signed certificate that said intercourse had taken place, allowing the girls to take their accused rapists to court. But there would be no conviction.
During the trial, Abdinoor says the girls were questioned in separate rooms (in Somalia, details of sexual assault can’t be discussed in public courtrooms). By the end of the session, both had recanted their original statements, and the boys were let go. Abdinoor says it’s conceivable the 14-year-old had consensual sex with the boy whom she knew. But the 12-year-old had also been penetrated – what happened to her over those two days in November?. When applied in the state court, Somali law on sexual violence is based on an Italian colonial-era penal code, written in the 1930s. Conviction is dependent on the provision of medical and police certificates, and survivor testimony is not prioritized. Moreover, Human Rights Watch says there is no agreement over the legal age of consent in Somalia.
Statistics about rape in Somalia vary wildly, and the lack of infrastructure, combined with the rarity of reporting, means there is no way to get a firm grasp on its scope. The Somalia Protection Cluster, a consortium of NGOs working in the country, recorded 1,599 cases of gender-based violence between September 2016 and February 2017. In 2015, the attorney general’s office recorded 69 rape cases, 55 of which resulted in a conviction, according to Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), a firm specializing in human rights. Back in 2013, the U.N. recorded 800 cases of gender-based violence in the first six months of the year in Mogadishu alone.
TOP TWEETS
@UNFPA_SOMALIA : strengthening coordination of the protection & prevention programmes on Gender Based Violence #GBV as part of #avertSomaliafamine
@HassanIstiila: Galmudug MPs have said the presidential elections scheduled for 30th of April will go on as planned. MPs vowed not to agree to any extension
@radiogarowe : #EU strongly condemns recent executions in #Somalia & considers the death penalty as “cruel and inhumane punishment”https://eeas.
@Radiohiran: Slow Food in Somalia: An expanding network of gardenshttp://www.hiiraanweyn.
@christinerackwi: Save the children warns that 1mill children are exposed to violence and exploitation due to drought in #Somalia
IMAGE OF THE DAY
President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo delivers a keynote speech on the importance of agriculture & agribusiness in Antalya, Turkey during the ongoing Africa- Turkey Summit
Photo: @TheVillaSomalia