Human Rights And Protection Concern In MARKA District After SNA Withdrawal

Human rights and Protection Concern in MARKO District after SNA withdrawal

Date: 15/10/2016

3 years of continuing armed conflicts have radically crashed the already uncertain living conditions of Marko town residents. In order to escape from these unkind fights, thousands of civilians have sought refuge in makeshift camps scattered across Mogadishu, Afgoy Corridor and BUUFOW Village which is within the Marko town but it is at the corner whereby ARMISOM has got Military base.

For the last three months after the withdrawal of the SNA from the Marko town, these armed conflicts have intensified with the fighting of two rival clans called BIIAMAAL and HABER-GIDIR which their situations are being purposely aggravated by infiltrations of AL- SHABAB elements.

These fights have ousted the town administration, police and other fundamental services for the civilians, consequently, now the town is under the division of three different parts’ control; {(AL-SHABAB is controlling the Main market, the police station and the town administration Buildings), (HABER-GIDIR clan is controlling the zone of the Main Marko Hospital), (BIIAMAAL clan is controlling BUUFOW Village whereby the ARMISOM has got Military base)}.

These three different armed factions have created to emerge several battlefields in the town whereby they kept fighting inside the town by forcing the civilians to flee and also each faction fixed their heavy weapons on the top of the tall civilian abandoned buildings in order to be able to watch up the other factions and keep shooting indiscriminately.

The most affected by these unsolved continues armed conflicts are women and children of all ages as they witness the conflict and are often forced to move from their homes in order to escape from the fights. During the movement to safety, women risk being sexually assaulted while others are killed in the melee.

These continue fights have also affected by shutting down completely most of the schools, health facilities in the town and as well impacted the humanitarian Aid workers.

Small businesses in the town have mostly closed down because of insecurity. The survival means of the remained families are limited as the price of food items has gone up and Children can longer play freely since they fear to be attacked.

The numbers of the unarmed civilians being killed in different purposely based meanings in these armed conflicts and the numbers of rape cases since the SNA withdrawal from the town are listed below:

Since April 2016 after the withdrawal of the SNA from the Marko town, Somali peace staff working in low-profile in the town got familiar with this information below and registered about the numbers displaced from the town in last six months;

Health facilities in the town have been seriously impacted by these ongoing armed conflicts as the Main Marko Regional Hospital is currently not functioning at all, because, it is now in the centre of the battlefield whereby anyone tries to pass in that area is either shot dead or injured,, even before the Marko Regional Hospital got shutdown, it was under siege by clan militias and members of the other clans were banned from accessing it. As we had report saying that,” handling the Regional Hospital was one of the main factors that contributing the armed conflicts in the town”.