Wednesday November 30, 2022
Mogadishu (HOL) - The Speaker of Somalia's Lower House of Parliament, Sheikh Adan Madobe, said that he would not approve any law against the Islamic religion, days after his deputy Sadiya Yasin Samatar vowed to support a revised law on sexual abuse.
The Parliamentary Speaker, who was presiding over a joint meeting of the two houses of the parliament, made it clear that there is no gender-related legislation before the parliament. He told the parliamentary committee that he did not implement any law against religion.
Adan Madobe said that opposition figures are spreading "fake news" but that it was not worthy of a response.
Madobe's remarks came only days after the first deputy speaker of parliament, Sadiya Yasin Samatar, stated that parliament would soon enact a bill against sexual assault.
Somalia's parliament drew international condemnation in 2020 when it replaced the Sexual Offences Bill (SOB), which had been pending in the Lower House of parliament for over two years, with the Sexual Intercourse Bill. Critics of the latter said that it does not go far enough to protect the rights of women and girls. The UN urged Somali lawmakers to reject the bill.
High-ranking lawmakers in the previous parliament argued that the SOB bill went against Islamic shariah and that the ambiguity in the law's language normalized same-sex relations.