The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

As in other conflict zones, women in war-torn Somalia have been subjected
to rape. Raped women were simply seen as representatives of
their clans, families and particular communities. Often, sexually violated
women lacked male protection. Most of the clan-based armed militias
used rape as a tool against the women and young girls of “enemy”
clans. Interviews with refugee and internally displaced women who suffered
and escaped from such sexual violence informed me that rape in
war-torn Somalia, particularly in the early 1990s, was carried out deliberately
to destroy and humiliate women belonging to the opposing clans
and that there were some rape incidents where male relatives were forced
to watch when such violations were carried out. Rape against Somali
women in war-torn Somalia adds to examples of mass rapes that
occurred in other conflict zones such as former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and
Congo (DRC), and thus demonstrates the nature of gender-based violence
that takes place in a militarized time and zone. Female scholars
who studied gender-based violence carried out in conflict zones noted
how rape is often used as a weapon of war to destroy the dignity and
integrity of women belonging to specific ethnicity (Brownmiller 1994,
Seifert 1994, Olujic 1998, Ticker 2001, Zeigler and Gunderson 2006). In
times of militarized violence, women’s bodies become a type of battleground
that is subjected to violation. In fact, the reproductive ability of
women belonging to the “enemy clan” becomes an issue and is often
perceived as a threat to other clans involved in the conflict. Pillay argues
that rape is waged against women due to their lower status in their own
society (Pillay 2002). In war-torn Somalia, women are the most disadvantaged
and vulnerable of the social groups.
Warlords and their armed militias have used rape as a tool to displace
minority clans from one their locations, expand territorial control, and
seize the property belonging to raped women, their families and their
clans. These minority groups subjected to sexual violence and forced
displacement include the Rer Hamar and Barawe. It is worth noting that
in Somali culture, women had a kind of protection from sexual violence
during clan conflicts. This is not to say that there were no rapes in the
pre-conflict period in Somalia. But the political disintegration and clanwarfare
caused the imperitive to spare women and young girls from vio-
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