An international human rights advocacy group says United Nations-backed African Union troops in war-torn and impoverished Somalia have raped women and girls as young as 12 and traded food-aid for sex.
The AU force, known as AMISOM, is made up of 22,000 soldiers drawn from six countries, and has been fighting alongside government troops against al-Shabaab insurgents since 2007.
In a new report, Human Rights Watch says some of the women who were raped said that the soldiers gave them food or money afterwards in an apparent attempt to frame the assault as transactional sex.
Spokeswoman Laetitia Bader says at the centre of allegations are troops from Uganda and Burundi.
However, she's told Santilla Chingaipe says the report is inconclusive about how widespread the behaviour is.
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