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#Somalia@Sexual Violence#Freedom of Expression and Abuses against Children by Human Rights Watch Annual Report
New York(ANN)- The Human Rights Watch’s annual report on human rights abuses in Somalia in 2020, according to Human Rights Watch’s 2021 annual report.
The report, part of a worldwide analysis, began in the Somalia section here:
“Somalia: Somalia’s federal government received international praise for its planned eco-nomic reforms, including its national development plan, but it made little progress with security and judicial reforms while conflict-related abuses, insecu-rity, and the humanitarian crisis took a heavy toll on civilians.
All parties to the conflict committed violations of international humanitarian law, some amounting to war crimes. The militant group Al-Shabab conducted indis-criminate and targeted attacks on civilians and forcibly recruited children.
Inter-clan and intra-security force violence killed, injured and displaced civilians, as did sporadic military operations against Al-Shabab by Somali government forces, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops, and other foreign forces. Severe weather, locust infestations, and Covid-19 worsened the humanitarian crisis, with over 620,000 new displacements due to flooding, adding to the country’s 2.6 million internally displaced.
Somali authorities restricted media freedoms and the federal and Somaliland parliaments considered problematic sexual offenses bills. The Somali govern-ment did not hand over Al-Shabab cases from military to civilian courts.
Authori-ties throughout the country carried out executions, many following military court proceedings that violated international fair trial standards.
The government did not establish a National Human Rights Commission, nor did it move forward with the planned review of the outdated criminal code, pending since the previous administration.
Relations between the federal government and member states deteriorated, leading to a stalemate over federal election modalities, and fighting on occasion caused civilian casualties, notably in the Gedo region. An agreement was reached in September on the electoral framework paving the way for another re-stricted electoral process in late 2020 and early 2021.
The full report is below
