Hawa Abdi

Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe (17 May 1947 – 5 August 2020), known as Mama Hawa, was a Somali human rights activist and physician, one of Somalia's first female obstetricians and gynaecologists, and the founder and chairperson of the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation. ^{1 2} From a one-room clinic founded in 1983 she built a hospital and relief compound that sheltered tens of thousands of displaced Somalis through the civil war. ¹

Abdi was born in Mogadishu and lived in south-central Somalia. ^{1 3} Her mother died when she was twelve, and she thereafter took on the family chores, including raising her four younger sisters; her father worked at the port of the capital. ¹ She attended local elementary, intermediate and secondary schools, and in 1964 received a scholarship from the Women's Committee of the Soviet Union to study medicine at a Kiev medical institute, graduating in 1971. ¹ In 1972 she began law studies at Somali National University in Mogadishu, practising medicine in the mornings while studying, and earned the law degree in 1979. ^{1 2}

When Abdi was twelve years old she entered a forced marriage with a significantly older police officer; the marriage ended several years later, before she left Somalia for her studies. ^{1 2} In 1973 she married Aden Mohammed, a fellow Somali she had met during her years in the USSR; they had three children, Deqo, Amina and Ahmed — Ahmed died in a 2005 car crash in Hargeisa — and both daughters became physicians. ¹

In 1983 Abdi opened the Rural Health Development Organization on family-owned land in the southern Lower Shebelle region; it began as a one-room clinic offering free obstetric services to around 24 rural women a day and later evolved into a 400-bed hospital. ¹ When civil war broke out in the early 1990s she stayed, at her grandmother's urging that she use her qualifications to help the vulnerable, and established a new clinic and school for the displaced and orphans. ¹ The organisation was renamed the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation in 2007 and expanded to include a relief camp which, during the 2011 drought, housed 90,000 people on the 1,300 acres around her hospital; the compound, which includes a hospital, school and nutrition centre, has served an estimated two million people since the early 1980s. ¹ The Foundation states that it is a non-political organisation not affiliated with any government, political movement, religion or clan, and that since 1991 it has served Somalis regardless of clan at no cost. ¹

At the height of the Islamist insurgency in southern Somalia, militants besieged the compound and attempted to force Abdi to shut it down; she stood her ground and they left within a week, following pressure from local residents, the UN and advocacy groups, as her article reports it. ¹ The militants stormed the area again in February 2012, and she temporarily suspended services until their departure. ¹ In her memoir, quoted in reporting of the 2010 siege, she wrote of her faith in generic terms: "My Islam sees women as valued members of society — as equals" — her own words as reported, recorded here as such. ¹

Glamour magazine named Abdi and her two daughters among its 2010 Women of the Year, and in 2012 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. ¹ She received the Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award in 2014 and honorary doctorates from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and Harvard University in 2017. ¹ Abdi died on 5 August 2020 at her home in Mogadishu, aged 73; no cause of death was specified. ^{1 3}

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