Fadumo Ali Yusuf and her seven children have been spending their nights at the side of a busy main road in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, after they and thousands of other internally displaced people (IDPs) were violently evicted from IDP camps in an area of the city called KM13.
Radio Ergo’s local reporter spoke to Fadumo at the roadside, where she was cooking beans on an open fire for lunch for the children. She said they had been sleeping on bits of plastic and had no other bedding, since being evicted at the end of December.
“I spend the nights worried that the vehicles on the road [connecting Mogadishu to Afgooye] might run over or hurt my children, especially my four-year old last born. I am spending all my time watching over them,” Fadumo said.
Fadumo, who washes clothes to earn some cash, goes to a local mosque to get water to keep up her small job.
The destruction of thousands of homes and other building that populated the 23 camps in the KM13 settlements means the children have lost their school building and have nothing to do all day.
Security in the area is unpredictable, especially at night, and many of those sleeping rough fear even more for their safety than they did when they were settled in the far from comfortable IDP camps in KM13, in the southern Kahda district of the city.
There has been widespread rape and looting in Kahda that has largely gone unreported and mostly unchecked by the authorities. Over the past three months, at least 500 women suffered rape within camps, according to reports from Banadir hospital and the local Somali Women’s Development Centre.
“As we are spending our time out in the cold, I am so worried that my two daughters [aged 14 and 18] might be raped, “said Fadumo, whose family are drought victims from the farming district of Qoryoley in Lower Shabelle region.
At least 4,000 IDP families were evicted from their camps over two days at the end of December. The families say they were not given any prior notice from the authorities.
Government-owned bulldozers were deployed early in the morning on 29 December, while many people were still asleep or in their houses. They destroyed the shelters, toilets, health centre, schools, water storage facilities, and thousands of stalls and small businesses that the otherwise destitute families relied on for a living.
Some parents even lost their children in the unexpected and brutal exercise ordered by the government and implemented by police and security forces.
Abdi Eymow Ulusow, one of the elders in the camps, told Radio Ergo some families are still searching for their children after they panicked and ran for their lives. Although some were later found, up to 10 children are still missing, he said.
“The police were ruthless, they ran over our houses where children and women were still inside. Is that what we deserve? We are impoverished people,” Abdi said angrily.
Abdi, father of seven, is a famer displaced from conflict-ravaged Lower Shebelle region towards the middle of last year, at the height of the prolonged drought.
The Commissioner of Kahda district, Mohamed Ismail, claimed that the people were warned of the impending eviction but failed to respond. The commissioner said they were ordered told to move off the land at KM13 a month ago. Besides being given notice by the police, he said the authorities had sent cars with loudspeakers to spread the eviction notice throughout the camps.
Some of the people forcefully evicted had been living in these IDP camps for seven years. Since then the camps have been expanding rapidly with scores of families arriving every year from areas hit by the drought and conflict.
Kahda, on the fringe suburbs of the capital, was cheap to live in and originally the price of land was low. However, the expanding economy and population lured investors to buy up the land, which has been rising in price.
It is a common practice in Somalia to move IDP families to previously uninhabited areas, or areas of low density population, so that the land increases in value and can then fetch higher prices to landowners in the long-run.
Radio Ergo contacted Banadir administration’s Land Registry, the Interior ministry, and the National Commission for Refugees and IDPs seeking comment, but all three government bodies declined to speak to our reporter.
However, the spokesman of Banadir regional authority, Abdifatah Omar Halane, said they were planning to relocate these people elsewhere. He said they had already rented land not far away for them to settle. The displaced people will be able to stay on the newly allocated land for the next four years.
Hundreds of people have already been moved, he said, and the local administration is working with these people to provide shelters and other facilities.
However, there are no clear plans to find a long-term and sustainable housing solution for the huge numbers of displaced people living in Mogadishu.
