"Once in Galkayo, the second largest city in Puntland in north-eastern Somalia, the women joined the belt of settlements sheltering displaced families that has grown around this city due to a recurrent civil conflict over the past 17 years. But although Galkayo's relative stability attracts civilians, sexual violence remains part of daily life in many settlements where internally displaced people (IDPs) gather."
Survivors who have been seriously hurt are sent to Maryan's women's clinic. A nurse, she said that rape had been a Somali disease ever since the central government collapsed 17 years ago. "Women are raped almost daily on the isolated outskirts of the town. We systematically do a tetanus shot; since young Somali women are genitally mutilated and infibulated, rapists always use a knife to rip their vagina open."
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdes ... ca2ddd.htm
