Somalia

Item 4: Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention

Written Statement by Society for Threatened Peoples

a non-governmental organization in special consultative status

Language: English only

Human Rights Council

Seventh session

2008-02-20

In January 2007 Ethiopian-backed government forces ousted the Islamist rulers from Mogadishu. Ethiopia's original plan, backed by the US had foreseen a two-month military operation. But the daily battles of Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces against Islamist anti-Government movements reportedly supported militarily and financially by Ethiopia´s arch-enemy Eritrea, have led to a sharp deterioration of the security and human rights situation. The UN recently called Somalia the most pressing humanitarian emergency in the world today. The vast majority of Somalis view the Ethiopian troops as an unacceptable occupying force. Anti government militias extended their activities in Middle and Lower Juba. The African Union (AU) force is too weak a peacekeeping force to replace the Ethiopian forces. Burundi has started deploying 800 peacekeeping troops to support the 1,600 Ugandan troops already stationed in Mogadishu. (The new government arrived in Mogadishu on 20 January.)

Obtaining reliable statistics regarding the death and wounded toll in Somalia is almost impossible. It is likely that many cases go unreported. According to the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation that obtains its figures from medical institutions 6,501 civilians were killed and 8,516 more were wounded in Mogadishu in 2007. In January 2008, 292 people have been killed and another 325 wounded. Residents are often caught in the fighting parties’ crossfire. Since January 2007 the Ethiopian forces face an intensifying insurgency. Assaults on Ethiopian and TFG forces were followed by a massive bombardment of residential areas in Mogadishu during March and April 2007 in which many civilians were killed. Ethiopian and TFG forces arbitrarily arrested civilians. The clashes in Mogadishu escalated again in November 2007.

The insurgents summarily executed and then mutilated the bodies of captured TFG. They use remotely detonated roadside devices, small arms and heavy weaponry. They repeatedly launched mortar attacks from urban neighbourhoods. The Ethiopian and government forces shell urban neighbourhoods with heavy weaponry such as "Katyusha” rockets without warning the population in advance. They mass-arrested and detained civilians who were then held in secret detention centers without charges for long periods. In June 2007 some detainees were released after an amnesty offered by the TFG, but supposedly hundreds of people still remain detained. Several times Ethiopian forces stole medical equipment from hospitals.

Meanwhile, the anti-Government forces have expanded their insurgent activities to the Middle and Lower Juba regions. The military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, al-Shabaab is reported to be training new recruits and planning attacks. Clan militias which oppose the TFG rule in the port town Kismayo. Since October 2007 two groups that belong to the TFG have fought against each other in Merka, a town 100 kilometers south of Mogadishu. Both warring parties recruit child soldiers. Fewer than 1 in 10 Mogadishu children is able to attend school.

Since March 2007 more than 700,000 inhabitants of Mogadishu have been displaced by the fighting. Entire districts of the town are vacated. Along the corridor between Mogadishu and Afgoye nearly 200,000 people live in impromptu refugee camps and receive food rations by the World Food Program (WFP) and its partners. It is the largest concentration of displaced people worldwide. In Mogadishu the WFP provides 50,000 meals a day to the remaining inhabitants.

More than two million Somalis are in desperate need of humanitarian food aid over the next six months. A large number of people fled to Bay, Mudug and Hiiraan regions where the host communities already face an acute humanitarian crisis that is severed by the disruption of livestock and agricultural markets in Mogadishu. In the Shabelle regions more than 325,000 agriculturalists and agro-pastoralists suffer from food and livelihood crisis. 29,500 Somali refugees fled to Yemen in 2007. 1,400 died or went missing during the dangerous journey through the Gulf of Aden.

The number of attacks targeting humanitarian and human rights organizations has risen, e.g. the kidnappings of staff, invasion and looting of non-governmental facilities and warehouses. The founder of the NGO KISIMA, Isse Abdel Isse, was shot and killed at close range in Mogadishu on 14 March 2007 by unknown assassins. In October 2007 the aforementioned Elman Human Rights, Somalia´s oldest human rights group was ordered to close its office by the government for "security reasons”. After its head Sudan Ali Ahmed refused to shut down the office he was being hunted by government troops and had to hide after he received death threats. On 28 January 2008 a roadside bomb near the southern Somali town of Kismayo killed three humanitarian workers working for the international NGO "Doctors without borders” which in the aftermath withdrew 87 international staff from 14 projects around the country.

The transport and delivery of food is being impeded by illegal roadblocks, taxes and banditry. At the end of 2007 truck convoys were reduced because bribes at illegal roadblocks tripled and reached up to $ 500. In December 2007 a French naval frigate provided support to two ships that carried food deliveries and anchored off the coastal town of Marka.

In 2007 eight Somali journalists were killed in Somalia and four wounded. In most cases assassins hired by the insurgents were alleged to have killed the journalists. More than 50 journalists fled the country while others stopped working as journalists. Journalists were often detained for long periods without charge by government security forces. 53 journalists were arrested, either in southern Somalia, the semi-autonomous Puntland in the north and in the de facto independent state of Somaliland in the North-west. The Somali government exerted a strong pressure on the local press and repeatedly shut down many independent media outlets, e.g. the Shabelle Media Network or Horn Afrik. On 16 September 2007, after a grenade had been thrown at a patrol in the area, government forces fired at the building of Radio Shabelle, breaking all the windows at ground level where the radio studios were set. Then they besieged the building for hours before the staff was authorized to evacuate. 16 staff members were detained for a short period of time. The government closed Shabelle for two weeks until 2 October. It was closed again by TFG troops on 12 November 2007.

On 21 January 2008 Somalia’s new Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein pledged to put an end to the crackdown against journalists and promised that the government would make sure violations against the press were over.

Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the Human Rights Council to:

- urge for additional funding of relief operations by international aid agencies,

- appeal to all actors in the conflict to stop the indiscriminate attacks on civilians, journalists and human rights defenders

- urge the TFG to live up to its promise and ensure freedom of the press and to start a genuine dialogue with its political opponents in order to facilitate the creation of a government of national reconciliation,

- appeal to the international community to work towards a resolution of the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict that has exacerbated the Somali war.