Rights Group: African Union soldiers raped, exploited Somali women and girls.The rights group said it interviewed 21 women and girls who recounted being raped or sexually exploited by Ugandan or Burundian troops serving with the African Union Mission in Somali since 2013. Among the cases described in the report is a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a Burundian soldier after she went to a military base to try to get medicine for her sick mother. The African Union said it was a concerned report and w
ould be thoroughly investigated. The rights group said it didn't "assess the scale or prevalence of the abuse" because of the sensitivity of the subject and the "profound reluctance" of victims and witnesses to speak out. It called on the countries who contribute troops, the AU and donors to the mission to "urgently address these abuses and strengthen procedures inside Somalia to seek justice."
How do you think the soldiers should be punished? How could we prevent the soldiers from misusing their power to hurt these girls and women?
Africa is one of the most underdeveloped places in the world, and desperation leads to these kinds of stories. When you give a desperate uneducated person a gun, regardless of what side he is on, if you don't keep him on a tight enough leash, he is going to do bad things because he simply can. These African Union soldiers grew up in poor African villages, where rape and murder are not infrequent. The problem is not in the soldier but rather in the desperation in Africa as a whole. If you want to end rape culture, it takes education and development of the entire continent, get these boys into schools not into wars.
In order to address the issues of rape and misuse of power by soldiers, I think we need to take a look at the culture from which these servicemen are coming from. These soldiers have grown up in one of the poorest environments for womens rights. Women are not equal to men in this part of the world. Their society has not yet modernized and started amending their beliefs. If you are brought up believing you are a superior male, which in my opinion is wrong, how else do you think you are going to react to the treatment of women? Just because you become a soldier does not make a you a fair, level headed human being. With that being said, I don't think it is their fault for being raised the way they were. Change has not made it that far in Africa, but it should. It is wrong to view women as inferior to men.
As for the punishment of these men, there comes a point in abusing someone and mistreating them that you have to realize your hurting that person. It is part of being human. You don't think raping someone must feel good to them. There should be punishment for these men, but we must take into consideration that their beliefs and the way they were brought up had a big influence over their actions. Prison sentences and community service would be something I would expect. I am not aware of what kinds of punishments are used in Africa, therefore I can not make complete conclusions on how they should be punished.
I think these soldiers should serve jail time for raping women and girls. What they did is completely unacceptable, especially for someone who is supposed to defend others. I agree with Banddude that their comes a certain point when you know you are inflicting pain or discomfort on someone, and therefore should stop because it is the human thing to do. However, I also recognize Sami's point that these men grew up in a society where men are considered superior to women, therefore allowing them to justify what they did in their minds. I would like to think that education would fix this problem, but I believe it will take a long time before this superiority complex goes away. It take a long time for change to happen, especially when one group is losing power over the other (which is something we still see even in the United States). But hopefully, be educating men and women in this part of Africa (or everywhere in the world really), it will be realized that women are just as mentally capable as men and should be treated as such.
Last week I read and replied to a post on how classes focused on the importance of sexual consent could become manditory. Looking at a story like this forces me to see the diffrence in how people in the united states are raised compaired to places like Africa. I think it is scary that a human being in their right mind could bring themselves to hurt another human being and not feel remorse in some way
(being that as how i was brought up). I believe that you should be taught at a younge age to respect others even if you live in Africa. Since I am also unaware as to how punisent in Africa is brought about, I believe these men should be educated along with their punishment. When a small child does something they aren't supposed to, the appropriate way to teach them not to misbehave in the same manner would be to punish them(time out) and explain what they did wrong. I believe this strategy could work with people other than children, because if you dont know what you did was wrong, or don't see how it was wrong, you aren't going to change.
