Week ago, United States Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry made an un­prece­dented move for some­one serv­ing in his po­si­tion – he spent three hours in Mo­gadishu, So­ma­lia. Un­for­tu­nately, de­spite good­will and an im­por­tant meet­ing with some civil so­ci­ety lead­ers, he missed a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­nity to pub­licly press the gov­ern­ment for the kinds of re­forms most likely to im­prove the ba­sic rights of all So­ma­lis.

In Jan­u­ary 2013, just af­ter the new gov­ern­ment of Has­san Sheikh Mo­hamud took of­fice, the US rec­og­nized a sit­ting gov­ern­ment in So­ma­lia af­ter two decades with­out for­mal ties. Ker­ry’s unan­nounced visit, cou­pled with plans to up­grade the US diplo­matic pres­ence, marks a step for­ward in the nor­mal­iza­tion of diplo­matic re­la­tions.

But Kerry left out three im­por­tant is­sues, at least in pub­lic com­ments dur­ing his visit:

First, he could have called on the gov­ern­ment to do more to pre­vent and re­spond to abuses against some of the coun­try’s most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­larly hun­dreds of thou­sands of in­ter­nally dis­placed peo­ple, in­clud­ing women and girls. He should also have pressed for ac­tion against wide­spread and per­va­sive sex­ual and gen­der based vi­o­lencein­clud­ing sex­ual ex­ploita­tion by men in uni­form.

Sec­ond, he missed an op­por­tu­nity to re­mind the gov­ern­ment that any sem­blance of free and fair elec­tions are only pos­si­ble if the me­dia is free to re­port on con­tro­ver­sial is­sues and air di­ver­gent views with­out fear of vi­o­lence or in­tim­i­da­tion. That in­cludes from the cen­tral and re­gional au­thor­i­ties. So­ma­lia re­mains among the most dan­ger­ous placesin the world to be a jour­nal­ist and this is un­likely to change un­til gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials lead ef­forts to bet­ter pro­tect the me­dia and free speech.

Lastly, Kerry could have un­der­lined the im­por­tance of im­prov­ing ac­count­abil­ity and re­spect for the rule of law. So­ma­lia may have a hard time im­prov­ing se­cu­rity for all if the US fo­cuses its sup­port on the mil­i­tary. Ul­ti­mately, sta­bil­ity will de­pend on end­ing the long and abu­sive reign of armed groups. Jus­tice sec­tor re­form is des­per­ately needed, but train­ing, such as for those in the civil­ian and mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tems, can only be ef­fec­tive if the gov­ern­ment demon­strates a gen­uine com­mit­ment to make much needed re­forms in law and prac­tice.

Ker­ry’s fail­ure to em­pha­size the im­por­tance of rule of law and ac­count­abil­ity was par­tic­u­larly stark be­cause he specif­i­callyhigh­lighted them in Kenya and dur­ing re­marks re­gard­ing South Su­dan on the same day. Mak­ing sure the State De­part­ment is con­sis­tently aligned with these rhetor­i­cal com­mit­ments is a hugely im­por­tant next step, es­pe­cially be­cause there is al­ready a his­tory of weak fol­low-through. So­ma­lis should have the same ex­pec­ta­tions of their gov­ern­ment. The US gov­ern­ment can play an im­por­tant role in mak­ing that hap­pen.

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