Somali Minister For Women Abducted

From Ms. Magazine:

Asha Osman Aqiil, Somalia's new minister for women and family affairs, was abducted by Islamist rebels late Wednesday night, the day after her appointment was announced. The abduction occurred while Aqiil was on her way to her first cabinet meeting. She was travelling in an area controlled by al Shabaab militants. Aqiil is the only woman in the new 18 member government.

Al Shabaab has a history of targeting government ministers. Last month, al Shabaab was accused of killing Interior Minister Abdi Shakur Sheikh Hassan in a suicide bomb attack. Sahra Maalin, a women's rights activist described Aqiil's abduction as a "collective punishment against Somali women and all those who believe in equality."

Since the overthrow of Dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has not had an effective central government. Additionally, earlier in the week, the UN declared that there is famine in two of Somalia's regions under rebel control. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, thousands have died in Somalia over the past months because of the severe drought and famine. The abduction of Asha Osman Aqiil has heightened famine aid groups' security fears as they plan to make food deliveries.

Scholarships for Somali Women

From CTV News:

An Alberta journalist who was held prisoner in Somalia is never going back there, but the scholarship program she has set up for girls in the poverty-stricken country could bring change.

Amanda Lindhout says 11 young Somali women have been selected to go to one of six different institutions in the country. She hopes she will be able to raise enough money to have 100 women studying in four years time.

Originally she and the Global Enrichment Foundation panel members had planned on picking 10 women as the first scholarship recipients, but she says there were too many good applicants.

Somalia - No Women : UN - No Aid

From Business Week:

The United Nations World Food Programme curbed food aid to a million people in southern Somalia after Islamist rebels said the aid agency couldn’t employ women and had to pay it for security.

The al-Shabaab militia controls much of the southern and central parts of the country and has been fighting Somalia’s Western-backed government for the past two years along with other groups, including Hisbul-ul-Islam.

“In November, the al-Shabaab group set unreasonable conditions, saying we couldn’t employ women and that the WFP should pay al-Shabaab $20,000 every six months for security,” Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the WFP, said in an interview from Nairobi, Kenya, today. “They also demanded that we do not deliver food to areas under their control and, as they control 95 percent of the area, this was unacceptable to us.”

Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central administration since 1991, when former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted. The continuing conflict has left much of the population dependent upon food aid.

Somalia: Women's Organisations Closed

From Reuters:

Somalia's hardline al Shabaab insurgents closed three grassroots women's organisations in the rebel-held town of Balad Hawa on Monday to stop women from going to work, a rebel leader said.

The group wants to impose its own version of Islamic law on areas it controls, and Washington says it is al Qaeda's proxy in the Horn of African nation.

"We have taken this step after we recognised that women need to stay in their homes and take care of their children ... Islam does not allow women to go to offices," Maalim Daaud Mohmed, the chairman of Balad Hawa, told Reuters by telephone.

The organisations closed by al Shabaab are the Halgan Businesswomen's Organisation, the Sed Huro Human Rights Organisation and Farhan Woman for Peace, he said.

The insurgents have banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing and watching soccer.

Courts have ordered executions, floggings and amputations in recent months, mostly in the southern Kismayu region and rebel-held districts of the capital.

The rebel leader said they would also close five non-governmental organisations in the region. He did not name them.

Fate of Somali Women

From AsiaOne News:

Hyenas, rape, kidnappings - there is no shortage of dangers for women in the grim refugee camps of northern Somalia.

But it is still better than the horrors they fled: civil war battles in Mogadishu, drought in neighbouring Ethiopia, inter-clan warfare and what they say was state-sponsored ethnic persecution and killings.

Many have "lost" their husbands. Some men abandoned their families, others tried to cross the Gulf of Aden into Yemen and have given no sign of life since. Some are still part of the family but are away eking out a living herding livestock.

The wastelands on the edge of Galkayo, a large swathe of low thorn scrub where millions of plastic bags flutter in the breeze, are home to several camps.

Without men the women are constantly at risk of attack. They have to pay for guards at night.

Somalia: Bras Get A Whipping

From Fox News:

Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al Shabaab is cracking down on residents who do not follow a strict form of Sharia Islamic law, now publicly whipping women who wear bras, the Times of India reported.

Residents tell the paper that gunmen have been gathering women in Mogadishu who are perceived to have firm busts. These women are then publicly whipped by masked men as punishment for what Islamist leaders call deception.

After the public whippings, the women are forced to remove their bras and shake their breasts, the Times reported.

“Al Shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts,” a resident, Halima, told the Times of India. Her daughters were whipped for wearing bras.

“They first banned the former veil and introduced a hard fabric which stands stiffly on women’s chests. They are now saying that breasts should be firm naturally, or just flat,” she said.

The insurgent group recently amputated a foot and a hand from two young men accused of robbery. Al Shabaab has also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.