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	Somalia violence out of control by UN News / ICRC & agencies International Committee of the Red Cross   July 2010   Heavy fighting in the northern areas of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has trapped many residents in their homes, with some unable to bury their dead, civil society sources said on 6 July.   The fighting has rendered the areas inaccessible to those who could provide help to the affected families.   "Thousands of residents of Abdul-Aziz, Bondhere, Yaaqshid and Karan districts have been stuck in their homes for nearly 10 days, some even longer; in some cases, they are not even able to bury their dead or leave the house to get essential items," said Ali Sheikh Yassin, an official of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organization (EHRO).   "The vast majority are women, children and the elderly. They have little choice except to wait and hope that the violence subsides."   Mogadishu has been a battleground between troops loyal to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), backed by the African Union peacekeepers, and two Islamist insurgent groups, one being Al-Shabab, which now controls much of south and central Somalia.   Yassin said there were homes where no one knows "whether the residents are alive or dead; there is simply no way of knowing because no one is able to go there. We simply don"t know."   Yassin called on the adversaries to cease fighting and spare the population. "If they won"t stop the fighting they should at least allow safe passage to those who can leave and those who want to leave."   According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, the fighting in and around Mogadishu has displaced 11,700 people since 14 June.   "We also got a high number of reports of killing and assaults on civilians in Mogadishu in the last few weeks," said Roberta Russo, a spokeswoman for UNHCR Somalia.   According to the agency"s partners on the ground, the coping mechanisms of the people remaining in Mogadishu seemed to be exhausted, with more and more women and children begging on the streets, she said.   "The population is frightened by the increased violence affecting everybody living in the city but they still keep hoping that one day the fighting will end," she said.   A civil society source, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that many of those trapped in the latest fighting "cannot afford to leave. They are either too poor, too weak or both," adding that they wanted to be close to "what they know. They are too afraid to leave their homes."   The fighting has gained intensity in the last week, "with a daily average of 300 artillery shells hitting the city", he said.   He said no help was getting to the residents in many parts of the city, "because no one can access them. We are Somalis and we cannot even access them. The fighting parties don"t seem to care about the plight of the population. If the situation does not improve Mogadishu faces a catastrophe."   A local journalist told IRIN: "You can hear the constant shelling even as we speak. It is relentless. I don"t know how much more the population can take."   July 2010 (ICRC News)   For the third consecutive day, shelling is taking place near Keysaney Hospital in northern Mogadishu.   Two more mortar shells have hit the hospital since yesterday, causing damage to the structure. On 29 June a first shell killed one patient and wounded another.   "We are shocked about the situation at Keysaney. Despite our repeated calls to all warring parties to respect international humanitarian law and spare medical facilities, nothing seems to have changed on the ground," said Pascal Mauchle, who heads the Somalia delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "The situation is becoming more and more dangerous for patients and medical staff by the day."   Once again, the ICRC and the Somali Red Crescent Society remind all parties to the conflict that launching attacks against medical facilities marked with the red crescent emblem is a violation of international humanitarian law.   The parties must spare medical staff and hospitals, clinics and similar medical facilities the effects of hostilities. Whether launching an attack or positioning military personnel and materiel, all those involved in the hostilities must take every feasible precaution to minimize the potential harm to civilians and to civilian objects such as hospitals.   May 2010   UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on the world to adopt a new approach to help bring peace to Somalia, telling an international conference on country that failing to act risks expanding the violence to its neighbours and beyond.   “One thing is certain. If we do not change our approach, there will be little chance for peace in Somalia,” he told the conference, citing the urgent needs to give humanitarian aid to 3.2 million people.   He warned that continuing conflict in Somalia – “one of the world"s most intractable crises where for 20 years conflict over power, resources and land has destroyed lives, created hundreds of thousands of orphans and devastated communities”.   The humanitarian crisis is dire with 3.2 million people, more than 40 per cent of the population in need of aid, 1.4 million of them internally displaced persons (IDPs).   Aid agencies working to alleviate Somalia"s humanitarian crisis have called on donors to fill the shortfall in funding to support their life-saving relief work.   "We understand there is donor fatigue but we request donors to remain engaged with Somalia," said Bruno Geddo, the head of the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) in the violent, lawless country.   Geddo told AlertNet currently contributions cover only 20 percent of the 2010 appeal by U.N. and other aid agencies to help Somalis affected by seemingly endless fighting between rebel groups and the Somali Transitional Federal Government.   The International Committee of the Red Cross said Somalia is the world"s most worrying humanitarian crisis both because of the scale of need and the limited scope for relief due to insecurity.   Escalating violence in southern and central Somalia has forced around 200,000 Somalis to leave their homes this year alone, according to UNHCR.   The agency and its partners are struggling to protect and assist some 550,000 Somalia refugees and 1.4 million internally displaced people in Somalia and its neighbouring countries.   Previous appeals have failed to raise the amounts required in aid. World Vision, which provides relief to half a million children in south-central Somalia said the emergency is likely to worsen without additional funding.   "Somalia is actually a forgotten crisis and with the reduced funding, we are grappling with a situation that could become catastrophic," said Carol Odingo, policy and advocacy manager for World Vision Somalia.
	From War to Peace by Open Democracy / Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust   In a series of articles for debate, Diana Francis argues that to build peace it is necessary to dismantle the entire institution of war, and to replace the culture of domination with one of cooperation and kindness. Read the series and the articles written in response via the link below at openDemocracy, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust peace programme.   Oct 2010   Rape in war: the time for never again is now, by Theresa de Langis.   On October 17th thousands of Congolese women, led by Olive Lembe Kabila marched to end impunity for sexual violence against women.   Rape survivors joined the march, many of them from their hospital beds, defying a culture that shames victims rather than perpetrators.   Will the UN Security Council remember the women of the DRC when it meets to commemorate the anniversary of Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security this week?   A few weeks ago Congolese militia commander, Sadoke Kokunda Mayele, was arrested and charged with leading a four-day rampage that left in its wake an estimated 500 victims of gang rape in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The arrest of Mayele is good news, but not cause for celebration.   Arrests mean only so much in a context where sexual violence is committed with widespread impunity, where state penalties are weak and enforcement even weaker, and where the international community, including the UN, has by its own admission been ineffective in its response. For the women of eastern Congo, and women in conflict areas worldwide, what matters now is what happens next.   Rape as a weapon of war has become commonplace, and a well-known characteristic of the conflict in the DRC. The UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallström, declared the DRC as the “rape capital of the world” in April.   In the eastern Congo alone, the UN estimates, more than 15,000 women were raped last year as part of the conflict. A report released in early October by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) presents a catalogue of atrocities committed by all parties to the fighting, and it describes a world where sexual violence is a “daily reality from which Congolese women have no respite.”   Widespread rape has been used throughout the conflict to mark victories and defeats, with retreating armies committing rapes during withdrawal, and conquering soldiers committing rapes as commanding officers “offer” rape as a reward to troops. Victims range in age from infants to grandmothers.   The incident in eastern Congo this summer is shocking for its calculated brutality, but it can certainly not be called a surprise. The OHCHR report catalogues an escalation in the open commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity that has gone unchecked by the DRC government and the international community despite the constant warnings from national and transnational civil society groups.   At least one organisation, AIDS-Free World, has argued the UN is not simply negligent in its delayed response to the event, but complicit in the crimes for the knowledge it had at its disposal and, ignoring this, the abeyance in which it held the specific security concerns of Congolese women in setting its military policies and strategy.   The UN has created instruments to empower states in these very instances: Security Council Resolutions 1325 (2000), 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009) and 1889 (2009) each call in their own way for more concerted efforts to protect women in conflict situations and promote women’s agency in establishing peace and security. SCR 1820 specifically names rape as a weapon of war and sexual violence in conflict as a security issue.   As for the Government of DRC, some of its own security forces are allegedly complicit in committing atrocities they are implicated in this summer’s mass sexual violence. Despite a gruesome inventory of serious violations by state and non-state actors, the level of impunity thus far is striking”.   Very few cases of sexual violence ever reach the justice system, few of those that do result in decisions, and even fewer in convictions. In the rare cases of convictions, the defendants almost invariably escape from prison. A mere 12 trials have been held in response to the crimes committed between 1993-2003.   Since the rapes this summer, calls for an end to impunity for sexual violence is increasing in volume. In an emergency meeting of the Security Council on the rapes in eastern Congo on August 26, the Council demanded that action be taken to ensure such an event never happens again and called on Kinshasa "to swiftly investigate these attacks and ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice". A few weeks later, Wallstrom reported to the Security Council that “so far ‘zero tolerance’ has been underpinned by ‘zero consequences’”. .” Visit the related web page
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