The UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) [official website] and the UN Human Rights Office [official website] released a joint report [text, PDF] on Monday advising Somalia to take precautions to ensure that the human rights violations that occurred last year would not have a negative impact on their peace efforts or future elections.

According to UNSOM, these violations had a direct correlation to the 2016-2017 electoral period, which has been ranked the most corrupt [text, PDF] political event in the country’s history. The task force discovered 65 cases of abuses that include voter intimidation, bribery, arbitrary arrests of politicians and their supporters, and the murder of several clan elders and electoral delegates that were involved with the election.

The UN reported that:

Insecurity, weak justice institutions, and an insufficient human rights protection system contributed to the lack of accountability for human rights violations throughout Somalia. Human rights violations were committed by State security forces and intelligence agencies at federal and state levels, as well as by non- State actors, including Al-Shabaab. The vast majority of the electoral process-related human rights violations were not investigated, resulting in a continuing climate of impunity.

The UN recommended that the Somali government establish measures that will allow them to impartially investigate human rights violations in the future. They also suggested that human rights remain at the center of the country’s peace process.