Dadaab, Kenya March 9 — It’s Friday evening and as the sun sets, a group of women refugees converge at Dagahley settlement block inside Dadaab Refugee Camp.
They are converging for their regular group radio listening sessions where they exchange information on women’s rights and advocacy skills.
Emerging from different directions inside the refugee camp, some of the women are carrying sitting mats, others portable radios to be used during the special radio session, while others are sharing excitedly experiences they went through loudly as they take their positions at the venue of their meeting.
Suddenly, the women group leader brings the session to order and introduces the evening radio topic to her colleagues numbering 45 before the session starts.
Each evening a new set of women participants attend the sessions who include victims of rape, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, early child marriage or female genital mutilation. They operate under the Somali Women Refugee Radio Listening Project.
Most of the women participants have in one way or the other suffered different human rights violations in the camp. Their cases were handled through a traditional justice system established by elders at the refugee camp who hear the cases before determining them and imposing unjust fines thus denying the victims justice and shielding the perpetrators from facing the law.
Dagahaley camp is one of the four settlements located inside Dadaab Refugee Camp billed as the world’s largest refugee camp that hosts an estimated 640,000 refugees from conflict-hit countries of Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Uganda and Ethiopia with majority fleeing from war-torn neighboring Somalia.
Before the radio listening session starts, women refugee rights activists share their advocacy campaigns and the challenges they face within their respective refugee settlement blocks and then introduce any women and girl’s victims of rape, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, early child marriage or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), to the group.
On this particular Friday radio listening session, a refugee women activist Mrs. Asha Ahmed, introduce a girl who was raped by a group of youths in one of the settlement blocks at the refugee camp.
Mrs. Ahmed reveals that the rape victim’s parents decided not to bring the issue to the attention of law enforcement officers at the camp and instead accepted two goats from parents of the alleged rapist as fine or compensation for the offense committed by their son who was accompanied by others in the barbaric act.
The case was picked up by women refugee rights defenders operating under the Somali Women Refugee Radio Listening Project who convinced the victim’s parents to seek justice and honor for their daughter.
The parent agreed and the case was reported to the Dadaab Refugee Camp police unit and the suspect was apprehended and charged before a mobile court that offers judicial services in the refugee tower.
“First it was hard to convince the victim’s parents to return the two goats and report the matter to the nearest police station, but they eventually agreed after we enlightened and assured them,” Mrs. Ahmed a women refugee rights defender at the camp says.
The women refugee radio listeners heard from the refugee rights defenders that more women refugees need to be reached and given education and other support for them to shun the traditional Somali justice system and report human rights violations to the police promptly.
Mrs. Ahmed told the radio sessions listeners that concealing rape, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence, early child marriage or female genital mutilation was unacceptable and such cases should not be handled through the traditional Somali justice system but within the purview of the Kenyan law.
“Many women and girls whose rights have been violated in the refugee camp have failed to get justice due to unjust judgments made by traditional Somali justice system,” she noted.
Every new women radio listening group members at the refugee camp establish their own women radio group which is coordinated and supported by Somali Women Radio Listening Group Project.
The rape victim whose case had been taken over by the Somali Women Radio Listening Group Project went through a comprehensive training to equip her with skills to be able to agitate for the rights of other girls in her refugee settlement block.
“We believe through this initiative we are going to reach out to more women and girls who are victims of sexual violence, those subjected to early marriages and are threatened with Female Genital Mutilation (FGM),’’ Mrs. Ahmed observed.
So far the Somali Women Radio Listening Group Project has reached out to 45,000 women refugees and 3,400 women and girls victims of sexual violence and 4,500 victims of outdated cultural practices within Dadaab refuge tower.
The Somali Women Radio Listening Group Project leader, Mrs. Muslima Hassan, took new women refugee members through an orientation exercise on the kind of advocacy expected from them in their respective refugee settlement blocks.
After the induction, the radio listening sessions start with a pre-recorded radio program on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) aired through a portable radio using a removable device containing the program which was recorded in a local radio station within Dadaab Refugee Camp.
The pre-recorded program is a 20-minutes radio feature story giving in-depth coverage of the practice within the camp and containing voices and advice from health, religious and community leaders, parents and women victims of FGM.
Ten minutes into the radio listening session several women refugees engage each other in low tones with others grimacing from the facts and information they received on the danger of FGM on young girls and women who have already undergone it.
Medical experts detailed the health dangers associated with the practice while religious leaders emphasized that the practice was not sanctioned and supported by Islamic faith thus parents should not conform to it blindly as it was un-Islamic.
Strongest voices and confessions came from girls and women victims of the practice who narrated how they now live with lifetime scars, with one FGM victim claiming she is experiencing difficulties in giving birth due to pain and injuries to her genitalia.
One parent revealed during the sessions that she lost her daughter to FGM following excessive bleeding after the exercise was performed on her by inexperienced traditional circumcisers.
During the radio sessions, a middle-aged woman claimed that she was divorced by her husband due to persistent pain she developed after undergoing FGM. She revealed that she started experiencing pain while having sex with her husband a development that made her hate sex resulting in her being divorced.
She added that she had been forced to turn down several men who approached her for marriage after her divorce due to fear of pain during sex as she has visited several hospitals for assistance without success.
Her radio testimony ended with a call for communities and parents to shun Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) saying she is suffering due to permanent injuries from it.
During the heated discussions, it emerged that many women did not know that FGM was not supported by Islam and was meant to stop girls from engaging in promiscuity.
The majority of participants were not aware of the health complications caused by FGM and the health and psychological impact on girls and women.
To most of them, FGM is an outdated cultural practice that should be shunned by all women and the Somali Women Radio Listening Group Project is a panacea that had brought change in their lives.