{"id":6303,"date":"2020-09-14T23:49:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T23:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/?p=6303"},"modified":"2020-10-08T09:22:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T09:22:18","slug":"phrasing-in-sexual-offenses-bill-sparks-controversy-in-somalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/2020\/09\/14\/phrasing-in-sexual-offenses-bill-sparks-controversy-in-somalia\/","title":{"rendered":"Phrasing in sexual offenses bill sparks controversy in Somalia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>MOGADISHU \u2014<\/strong> The Speaker of Federal Parliament Mohammed Mursal today chaired a session on the Sexual Offences Bill.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Sexual Offences Bill, submitted by the Federal Government of Somalia, caused controversy in July when the SRSG James Swan criticised the Parliamentary Speaker for \u201c<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/puntlandpost.net\/2020\/08\/09\/unsom-chief-under-fire-for-making-a-hasty-inference\/\">attempts to table a deeply-flawed<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>new bill that allows child marriage and contravenes relevant international conventions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mursal read out article four of Sexual Offences Bill. \u201cI was too shy to read articles in the Bill but today I have to share the draft with you,\u201d said Mursal. \u201cArticle 4 reads: \u201c Any person who intentionally inserts something in the female genitals or the anus either by using a part of the body or an object without consent commits a crime, \u201c Mursal said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Parliamentary Speaker found fault with the phrasing of the article. \u201cConsent is the only requirement\u201d to do what the law otherwise views as rape.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSomalia is a war-torn country where patriarchy still reigns. The drafters of the Bill should have let the parliamentarians debate the phrasing of what constitutes a sexual offence because the definition in the Sexual Offences Bill runs counter to the definition of rape in the Somali penal code\u201d Mas\u2019ud Yusuf, a legal analyst in Mogadishu, told Puntland Post.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Consent is the justification rapists will use because many rape cases are settled out of court before or after the case is submitted to a court for prosecution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe drafters included a caveat in the Bill: \u2018it should not be passed by the Parliament if the Bill contravenes Islam\u2019. When the Federal Government submitted the Bill to the Parliament, the Parliamentary Permanent Committee members met to study the Bill. They decided to refine it through wider consultation with the lawyers and Islamic jurisprudence experts\u201d said Mursal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Source: Puntland Post\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Origin: <a href=\"https:\/\/puntlandpost.net\/2020\/09\/14\/phrasing-in-sexual-offences-bill-sparks-controversy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener sponsored ugc noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">View original<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MOGADISHU \u2014 The Speaker of Federal Parliament Mohammed Mursal today chaired a session on the Sexual Offences Bill. The Sexual Offences Bill, submitted by the Federal Government of Somalia, caused controversy in July when the SRSG James Swan criticised the Parliamentary Speaker for \u201cattempts to table a deeply-flawed\u00a0new bill that allows child marriage and contravenes &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news","category-protection-cluster"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6303"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6569,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6303\/revisions\/6569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}