A group of religious leaders in Somaliland is behind an attempt to replace a progressive sexual offences law passed in 2018 with a revised version that protects rapists rather than survivors and allows child marriage.
In August 2018, Somaliland president Muse Bihi Abdi signed Somaliland’s Rape and Sexual Offences Act into law. The first of its kind, the new law aimed to reduce rape and gender-based violence, which is said to have spiralled in recent years. Somaliland’s human rights organisations and the international community hailed it as a great feat for the president and his legacy – at the time he had been in office for less than a year.
But Bihi Abdi quickly reversed this legacy and, as a result, survivors of sexual violence are now in legal limbo.
