From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Dec 07 2008 - 15:47:26 EST
For Full Repoert go to the link below:
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/08/12/shell-shocked?print II. Key
Recommendations To the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG)
- Immediately issue clear public orders to all TFG security forces to
cease attacks on and mistreatment of civilians and looting of civilian
property, and ensure that detainees have access to family members, legal
counsel, and adequate medical care while in detention.
- Ensure humanitarian assistance to all civilians in need, including by
facilitating the access of humanitarian agencies to all displaced persons in
and around Mogadishu.
- Investigate allegations of abuses by TFG forces and hold accountable
the members of the TFG forces, whatever their rank, who have been implicated
in abuses.
- Take all necessary steps to build a competent, independent, and
impartial judiciary that can provide trials that meet international fair
trial standards. Abolish the death penalty as an inherently cruel form of
punishment.
- Invite the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights (OHCHR) to increase the number of staff monitoring and reporting on
human rights abuses in Somalia and request technical support for the
judiciary and the establishment of an independent national human rights
commission.
To the groups comprising the insurgency
- Cease all attacks on civilians and civilian objects, including
government officials and employees not directly participating in the
hostilities. Cease all attacks that cause indiscriminate or
disproportionate harm to civilians or civilian objects, including attacks
in crowded civilian areas, such as busy roads, village or city streets,
markets, or other public gathering places.
- Avoid locating, to the extent feasible, insurgent forces within or near
densely populated areas, and where possible remove civilians from the
vicinity of such forces. Avoid using populated areas to launch attacks and
cease threatening civilians who protest the use of their neighborhoods as
launching sites. Never purposefully use civilians to shield insurgent
forces from attack.
- Publicly commit to abide by international humanitarian law, including
prohibitions against targeting civilians, using indiscriminate and
disproportionate attacks, and using civilians as "human shields."
To the government of Ethiopia
- Cease all attacks that deliberately target civilians and cease using
means and methods of combat that cannot discriminate between civilians and
military objectives. Civilian objects such as schools, hospitals, and homes
must not be attacked unless currently being used for military purposes.
- Cease all indiscriminate attacks and attacks in which the expected
civilian harm is excessive compared to the concrete and direct military gain
anticipated. In particular, cease the use of area bombardments of populated
areas of Mogadishu.
- Issue clear public orders to all forces that they must uphold
fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and provide clear
guidelines and training to all commanders and fighters to ensure compliance
with international humanitarian law.
- Investigate and discipline or prosecute as appropriate military
personnel, regardless of rank, who are responsible for serious violations of
international humanitarian law including those who may be held accountable
as a matter of command responsibility.
To the European Union and its member states, the European Commission, the
United Nations Security Council, the African Union, the Arab League , and
the government of the United States
- Publicly condemn the serious abuses of international human rights and
humanitarian law committed by all parties to the conflict in Mogadishu in
2007, and call on the Ethiopian government and the Transitional Federal
Government of Somalia to take all necessary steps, including public action,
to ensure that their forces cease abuses against civilians.
- Support measures to promote accountability and end impunity for serious
crimes in Somalia, including through the establishment of an independent
United Nations panel of experts to investigate and map serious crimes and
recommend further measures to improve accountability.
- Publicly promote and financially support civil society efforts to
provide humanitarian assistance, services such as education, monitoring of
the human rights situation, and efforts to promote national solidarity.
Promote and support TFG efforts to improve the functioning of the
judicial system and to establish a national human rights commission. Provide
voluntary contributions to support an expanded OHCHR field operation in
Somalia.
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