Thank you. Let me also say thank you very much to the honourable members of this committee for inviting me to speak about this today. I am glad that Laetitia went first, because there is much more detail and specificity to her talk.
I am going to take you through a bit to emphasize the context. I am sure that the complexity of what Somalia is today and where we are is no secret, but I think it is really important to underscore some of the complexities. I am interested in and have been doing social justice research, particularly looking at what could be a viable transitional justice mechanism for Somalia. We have, with other researchers, published in that area, to try to see how Somalis and Somalia can heal from what went down. As you all know, Somalia has been declared a failed state for more than two decades. Now that it has a government, it's still a very fragile government.
Since the 1990s, the failed state has resulted in human rights abuses and conflict. The country is really fragmented politically and socially, war has been waged along clan lines, entire communities have been implicated—not that necessarily they all participated, but a few armed militia teens used and mobilized people along clan lines. There is thus large communal violence and people whose grievances have not really been dealt with.
There are numerous studies that talk about and highlight the need for transitional justice and ways to address these pervasive, systemic human rights violations that have been taking place in Somalia. Human Rights Watch is one of them; Amnesty has written about it. All kinds of research is out there.
It should be noted that human rights violations in Somalia predate the civil war. The country was under a military dictatorship for 21 years, between 1969 and 1990.
When you think about this complexity, which is why I want to underline it, consider a historian, Charles Geshekter who wrote early in the nineties, in 1993, that:
The disintegration of Somalia raises major policy questions about the culture of power in the modern state, the definition of good governance, principles of national sovereignty, and the concept of “humanitarian intervention”.
The complexity around that context brings not only human rights but the humanitarian stuff that has followed.
The Somali state processes and the lack of justice institutions and accountability, as the previous speaker highlighted, and the impunity of people who were misusing the power that they have, and the display of absolutely disregarding respect for human life and people's property raise all kinds of challenges. Those challenges are compounded by the limitations and the total collapse of all state institutions.
Concerning human rights abuses, the complexity of Somalia is that the human rights abuses that started with the military regime, then went to the militia and then to the clan warlords, have been now.... We have witnessed foreigners, in the sense that they are non-Somali actors, committing human rights abuses in Somalia, whether it's through front-line states coming into the border and doing whatever they want at the border, whether it's from the African Union mission soldiers who, just like any peacekeeping groups, are also committing human rights abuses and causing civilian casualties, or whether it is through coercing children.
When you think about the last 27 years, there was no sector other than the so-called security or armed teams hiring kids, coercing them to become somebody's security guard, soldier, or foot soldier, for that matter. We have an entire two if not three generations of children who have grown up, been recruited, and become killing machines for people.
I remember that I went to Somalia for about eight months in 2016 to lead a team of researchers to support the UNSOM and the AMISOM mission in Mogadishu.
When al Shabaab attacked Puntland, a large number of kids were captured as al Shabaab soldiers. They just surrendered because they were so scared. They were put in boats from south central and taken to Puntland, and I know that UNICEF and everybody was trying to talk to the Puntland government to not persecute these kids and not put them through military court processes, but then again, there are no really viable institutions. In the case of human rights abuses when it comes to child soldiers or recruiting kids, in the context of abject poverty and lawlessness, that becomes the only avenue. Kids get hired because they are free to be coerced.
Challenges have been brought on by the civil war and the large communal scales. When you talk to Somalis about this, there are layers. Some are stuck on saying, “You know what? My property in the capital city is still under the people who took it.” There is no acknowledgement. These are like open wounds. When you talk to Somalis, you find they have not moved on and have not resolved these things and dealt with them. The gaping hole that we see is that there hasn't been any attempt to properly reconcile people and communities.
Laetitia talked about examples in Lower Shabelle, in Marka. What we have seen is that warlords who have been pillaging these communities are now called “national security personnel”. Because of the clan dynamics, they are now wearing national military uniforms, but when you talk to the local communities, they'll tell you that they know so-and-so, that he was here in the late 1990s and the 2000s as a warlord, and now he is supposedly government. There are very complex layered issues that need to be sorted out, and as much as the African Union Mission and the UN and everybody is trying through the international community to build these institutions, there needs to be a space for these socio-political conflict processes to come up with an organic way for these communities to come together and acknowledge.
Those challenges are there in the case of any civil war. The casualties of the Somali civil war are complex, but they are particularly complex in the context of Somalia because the political reconciliations are not deep enough: you need reconciliation at the very low-level communal neighbourhood levels, and you need it at the regional level and at the national level.
When I look at the international community, and particularly places like Canada, I think that is what is lacking. There is military presence all around. There is the African Union Mission. There are the drones. Everybody is trying to contain these terror groups inside Somalia, but the socio-political processes seem to be left out. That is where I see that these things can be really reined in and these governance institutions can be then deepened. Right now they are somewhat superficial impositions.
You have clans still taking revenge on each other. You have people who are continuously internally displaced, and the internally displaced communities are the most vulnerable after the children, because they are pushed out of the places where they were farming or had livestock and are brought into some urban centre and then are in gated internally displaced camps where they don't have freedom to go anywhere. For aid organizations to even reach those people, they have to deal with what they're calling “gatekeepers”. There are people who are actually benefiting from keeping these people internally displaced.
These internally displaced communities are disproportionately women and children, and they are vulnerable to sexual violence by everybody. The Somali community is divided along clan lines; in every society, there are minorities and so-called major clans, and those people who are displaced might be from a minority clan or might be displaced in a town they are not from. They have fled there from another part of the country, and they are really the most vulnerable groups.
Rape is rampant, not only by Somali soldiers but by everybody. We need to address that as well, because there is sexual violence happening. I know that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and everybody wrote about it, but civilians, internally displaced children and internally displaced civilians, endure the most abuses as well. The warring parties create these humanitarian conditions that continue to really devastate people.
The government, as fragile as it is, tries to commit to something, but sometimes you will hear that their own security forces who are not being paid regularly are pillaging people. I remember, from talking to some of the AMISOM troops who are carrying out some missions and want to work with the Somali National Army, they would leave the Somali National Army in a village they had just liberated, but then those very people will create roadblocks and start extorting people. The communities will sometimes say, “You know what? When the al Shabaab team was here, we were only paying one person. Now we have multiple roadblocks and multiple people wanting us to pay.” That is another thing, the lack of capacity of the government to actually hold on to these territories and then provide security to the people.
With regard to targeted killing, there is absolutely a style of targeted killing of people who might be from the diaspora, who might be political leaders, who might be active human rights defenders. They are targeted on a daily basis and they are killed. The extremist groups target them. The warlords target them, and the militias and whoever is benefiting. When you think about almost 30 years of lawlessness, it's not going to be a vacuum. There is a war economy and there are those who benefit and profiteer from that war economy, and they settle scores and commit human rights abuses.
The other group that really has borne the brunt of it are journalists and the media. The media is continuously targeted and killed. I don't have the statistics with me today, but every single year there are large numbers of journalists killed and media houses attacked.