Somalia

Internally displaced people in Somalia are suffering sexual violence and other forms of abuse, reports the Human Rights Watch (HRW) campaign group.

The abuse takes place at the hands of armed groups, including government forces, it says.

In the report, women who fled famine and conflict describe being gang-raped in camps in the capital, Mogadishu.

MOGADISHU, Somalia (Reuters) — A Somali court on Sunday freed a journalist who was jailed in January for interviewing a woman who said she was gang-raped by five government soldiers, a case that sparked international condemnation over Somalia's treatment of victims of sexual violence and its commitment to press freedom.

Mogadishu court sentences journalist and alleged rape victim to one year each in jail, angering press freedom groups.

A Mogadishu court has sentenced an alleged rape victim and a Somali journalist who interviewed her to one year in prison each, court officials say, in a decision that has enraged press freedom groups.

Somalia has charged a woman who said she was raped by government troops, accusing her of making a false accusation and insulting a government body, according to Human Rights Watch.

With Somalia's UN-backed government consolidating its hold over the capital, Mogadishu, and other areas from al-Qaeda-linked militants, many women are returning to help rebuild the country, reports the BBC's Kate Forbes.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Air Africa flight to Mogadishu," the Kenyan stewardess booms over the plane tannoy.

A Somali freelance journalist has been detained without charge since 10 January after interviewing a woman who says she was raped by state security forces. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that Abdiaziz Abdinur was summoned by the Central Investigations Department (CID) last Thursday, in connection with the interview he conducted with the woman.

The appointment of Fawzia Yusuf Haji Adam as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Somalia was a bold step by the fledgling government.

Six of the women who planned to study at (EMU) in the summer of 2012 in the brand-new Women's Peacebuilding Leadership Program were unable to enter the United States. So program director Janice Jenner and professors Jayne Docherty and Gloria Rhodes took the program to Somaliland to reach the excluded women in the fall of 2012.

In the conflict ridden Somali capital Mogadishu, Somali women have been given a rare opportunity to join the Somali Police Force, a step not familiar in the past two decades.

The General Kahiye Police Academy is where the newly recruited female cadets were undergoing intensive training at the hands of their mentors. The female officers have been deployed at each and every police station and operate alongside their male counterparts.

Fawzia Yusuf Haji Adam is to be Somalia's first female foreign minister in a cabinet formed by new Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon.

"After long discussions and consultations, I have named my cabinet which consists of only 10 members. Among them is a female foreign affairs minister for the first time in Somali history," the prime minister said, according to Agence France-Presse.