u.n. analyst underscores the importance of human rights

By Joyce Mulama (Inter Press service)

February 8, 2005: A United Nations analyst has warned that peace will remain elusive in Somalia if the country's new government fails to ensure respect for human rights.

"If the Transitional Federal Government does not make human rights a base for...its political structures, I do not think the project of reconciliation will succeed," Ghanim Alnajjar told journalists in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Monday, after returning from a two-week visit to Somalia.

This was Alnajjar's fourth trip to the country since his appointment by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2001. His mandate is to assess the human rights situation in Somalia and report his findings to the United Nations.

Alnajjar said he had held talks with Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi about setting up a commission to investigate past human rights abuses in the Horn of Africa country: "We spoke about the need to establish both a criminal court and a truth and reconciliation commission to bring war criminals to justice and to act as a deterrent to future perpetrators of human rights violations."

"The prime minister...asked for technical assistance. This will take place within a matter of months, by May or June," he added.

Somalia's government collapsed in 1991 when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled. In the years of lawlessness that followed, abuses such as rape and arbitrary killings became commonplace as faction leaders struggled to assert control over various parts of the country - their actions aided by the widespread circulation of small arms.

"Throughout the Somali conflict, factions have used rape as a weapon of war to punish and intimidate rival ethnic factions. The collapse of the government and the ensuing crisis has allowed armed combatants to rape women with impunity," said a 2003 report on Somalia produced by the Dutch chapter of global aid agency Oxfam.

However, a political analyst from Somalia, Ahmed Mohammed, has questioned whether a truth and reconciliation commission would be allowed to operate without interference.

"The independence of such a body is questionable. It is the warlords now in government whose militia used rape as a weapon of war. The same militia possess arms that have been used in arbitrary killings," he told IPS, adding "The whole idea of the government consenting to the formation of a human rights body is just to please the outside world."

Peace talks for Somalia began in Kenya in 2002 under the auspices of the Inter Governmental Authority on Development, a regional body. Last year, a parliament was established to govern Somalia for an interim period of five years. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected president of the country in Nairobi, in October 2004.

The new government claims it is aware of the pitfalls that a truth commission would face.

"It is a political vision of the president of Somalia to fully implement all possible policies in order to strengthen human rights in the country. It was also part of his election campaign pledge that human rights abuses would be checked," Yusuf Baribari, head of the presidential press service, told IPS.

"Furthermore, the issue of establishing human rights bodies has also been mentioned in the Transitional Federal Charter, and that is also one of the reasons why the government must address issues surrounding human rights," he added. The charter, which serves as Somalia's constitution, was adopted in January 2004.

To date, security concerns have prevented the interim government from leaving Nairobi to take office in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

A team from the new administration traveled to Mogadishu over the weekend to assess the possibilities for its relocation to Somalia. Officials are divided over whether international peacekeepers should be used to secure their return to the country.

The last peacekeeping initiative in Somalia, a U.N. mission credited with saving thousands of people from starvation in the early 1990s, ultimately floundered - this after it tried to parlay its success in distributing aid into an operation to rebuild the Somali state.

The expanded mandate given to U.N. troops pitted them against local faction leaders - most disastrously on Oct. 3, 1993, when 18 American troops and one Malaysian soldier were killed in hours of fighting in Mogadishu. Hundreds of Somali civilians and gunmen were also said to have lost their lives in this incident, which precipitated the withdrawal of peacekeepers from the country in 1995.

Another matter that requires urgent attention from government and the international community, said Alnajjar, is the plight of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia.

"These people are in desperate conditions, as I witnessed in Shabeele and Ajuuraan camps in Bossaso (in north-west Somalia), where an estimated 1,260 families reside," he noted. "There is no sanitation; the place is overcrowded, with no food. Most of these people are destitute."

U.N. estimates put the number of displaced persons in Somalia at about 370,000 - while a million Somalis are said to have fled their country.