Dr. Hawa Abdi & Her Daughters: Angels in Somalia

Dr. Amina Mohamed Abdi, Dr. Hawa Abdi and Dr. Deqa Mohamed Abdi

On a still, hot morning last May, hundreds of Islamist militants invaded the massive displaced-persons camp that Dr. Hawa Abdi runs near Mogadishu, Somalia. They surrounded the 63-year-old ob-gyn’s office, holding her hostage and taking control of the camp. “Women can’t do things like this,” they threatened. Dr. Abdi, who is equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo, was unfazed. Every day in Somalia brings new violence as bands of rebels rove ungoverned. Today Somalia remains what the U.N. calls one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. On that morning in May, Dr. Abdi challenged her captors: “What have you done for society?” The thugs stayed a week, leaving only after the U.N. and others advocated on her behalf. Dr. Abdi then, of course, got back to work. Her lifesaving efforts started in 1983, when she opened a one-room clinic on her family farm. As the government collapsed, refugees flocked to her, seeking food and care. Today she runs a camp housing approximately 90,000 people, mostly women and children because, as she says, “the men are dead, fighting, or have left Somalia to find work.” While Dr. Abdi has gotten some help, many charities refuse to enter Somalia. “It’s the most dangerous country,” says Kati Marton, a board member of Human Rights Watch. “Dr. Abdi is just about the only one doing anything.” Her greatest support: two of her daughters, Deqo, 35, and Amina, 30, also doctors, who often work with her. Despite the bleak conditions, Dr. Abdi sees a glimmer of hope. “Women can build stability,” she says. “We can make peace.” Source:Glamour Magazine

"We've celebrated the most famous women in the world, but the women readers tell us they're the most moved by, year after year, are the women they've never heard of before," says Glamour's editor-in-chief Cindi Leive speaking at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards event 2010 New York City

How to Help:
Glamour is working with the nonprofit Vital Voices to distribute funds to support Dr. Abdi’s crucial work. Donate here.

“Everyone in the Dr. Hawa Abdi hospital is a Somali—no clan affiliation is allowed here. If someone brings such affiliation, he or she will be expelled from here,” she recently told Hiiraan Online.

...Asked how she would explain her two daughters’ decision to become OB/GYN doctors, just like her, Dr. Dhiblawe said: “My daughters want to follow my roots, because they love their nation and their people. They are dedicated to help their people. Sometimes, when I told them to stay away from the medical profession, they declined, and decided to work for their people.”

...she distinctly remembers one fateful day after the 1991 civil war that brought down the military regime. Her hospital was overflowing with injured men from one of the sides who were engaged in the war. Militiamen from the other side marched on her hospital and demanded to get access to the injured men of the opposite group, so that they can kill them.

Engrossed with deep respect for humanity, Dr. Dhiblawe told the attacking militiamen to “kill me first, before you can kill my patients.” It was a defining moment in her career. That stubbornness saved her patients.

Dr. Dhiblawe’s mother died when she was 12. As the eldest of her siblings, she had to help with family chores, but that didn’t stop her from pursuing her medical studies dream. The daughter of an educated father, she became a doctor at a very young age.

“giving up and leaving the whole country,” something she’s fully capable of. But, she added: “Then, I think about who is going to take care of my patients. If I could get a Green Card for all of my patients and all the displaced people here, I would ship them to the United States.”


If you need to take part on Dr. Hawa Abdi's humanitarian work, please contact her at
E-mail: dwaqaf@yahoo.com
Source:Somalionline

Dr Hawa Abdi received her medical training in the Ukraine, the former Soviet Union nation, and returned to Somalia in 1983 to open her own clinic in the outskirts of Mogadishu.

MORE INFORMATION:

Dr Hawa Abdi Foundation http://drhawaabdifoundation.org/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63336303744
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/eveningnews/main7038748.shtml

Somaliland’s Health Care System Needs Special Attention!

The Horn of Africa is one of the world’s regions where you don’t want to be hospitalized for any reason, and unfortunately, Somaliland ranks the worst of all. Although not in the health care profession, I have noticed how Somaliland’s health care system is disorganized, unregulated, and deteriorates day after day, when compared with other nations in the Horn of Africa, or for that matter, the rest of the world. In the ex-Somalia, the health care system was in fairly good condition within the capital of Mogadishu, but rest of the country suffered tremendously in all aspects of its infrastructure system including the health care system.

Mogadishu was overwhelmed with the construction of new hospitals from the 1960s to the last days of the old dictatorial regime. These new hospitals were outfitted with state of the art equipment, while Hargeisa, Buroa, and the rest of Somalia were overlooked by the dictatorship. Clearly, those who were part of that regime never looked back to their places of birth.

Paradoxically, Somaliland has some of the best doctors in the region. Most of them were trained either abroad or had extensive experience in Mogadishu hospitals. Many acquired plenty of experience during the civil war that devastated the country. However, today the health care infrastructure that would have allowed them to practice their profession is almost non-existent. The situation in Hargeisa is a good example. The Hargeisa General Hospital is the primary hospital for the city’s 650,000 residents and for those who come from the surrounding countryside seeking medical care. The British government built it when they were the colonial power and today remains substantially the same. There have been no improvements to it since that time, much less construction of new hospital facilities. The Edna Maternity Hospital stands out as a notable exception. We are all aware how this facility was made possible through the efforts and persistence of a single brave woman, Mrs. Edna Aden, who had far better vision than our so-called leaders. As Mrs. Ismail took the task of building maternity Hospital, we need a visionary who can establish a Children Hospital that is badly needed in the nation.

The health care system in Hargeisa is a reflection of the whole nation.

Today in Somaliland you can find almost any medical doctor or specialist in any field, but to access them, you must be in the capital and see that physician at their private clinic, or hope to see them during the few hours they volunteer in the General Hospital. As a result there are as many clinics as pharmacies in Hargeisa, since each doctor either owns or owns a share in that pharmacy. (While I’m not against doctors owning piece of the pie, there is a clear conflict of interest in this system. They should take high road and avoid using the medical needs of the infirm to reap outrageous profits for themselves.)

The health minister and health organizations that are there to assist the people of Somaliland should look deeply into the needs of the nation’s hospitals and clinics and implement a decent plan to adequately equip each hospital and clinic with the basic necessities. The most obvious needs are basic surgical equipment and accessories that are currently bought by relatives of the patients who are admitted to hospital, or are in clinics for outpatient care. Medical equipment readily available in the private sector is simply unavailable at many public hospital or clinics. It’s embarrassing to realize Hargeisa General Hospital doesn’t have oxygen bottles for those who are suffering oxygen deficiency in an emergency situation. As a visitor in Somaliland last August and a potential resident, I visited many hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies, and saw the absence of the basic things we take for granted in hospital beds overseas such as oxygen supplies, heart monitors and routine medicines. It’s heartbreaking to watch people suffering needlessly from minor injuries due to lack of medical equipment and medicine that are readily available in rest of the world or, for that matter, in some pharmacies in the country, at prices the average Somali Lander cannot afford.

While these problems are not easy to solve without international assistance, the Somali government, the local NGOs, and citizens of Somaliland need to place emphasis on improvements to the health care system, including the development of programs to promote the rehabilitation of existing hospitals and clinics. Last but not least, the health care system in Somaliland can only be improved if doctors act as doctors instead of as businessmen who are primarily interested in their profits, and if the legislature came up with statutes to regulate the importation of medicine and equipment into this country.

Eng: Abdirizak M. Farah, (Abdi wiiwaa)

Hercules, CA 94547

Photo from the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital Hargeisa

http://www.somalilandtimes.net/2003/76/7604.shtml

EARLY MARRIAGES IN AFRICA'S 21 CENTURY!!!

http://www.ntv.co.ke

It is back to school for several girls, but not the usual way. The girls have been rescued from forced marriages and now have to rebuild their lives. Some of them were married off as early as age 13. But as Rose Wangui reports, they are putting that past behind them, one book at a time.

BOYS RIGHT TO EDUCATION

In the County of West Pokot, the nomadic life somehow but inadvertently favours girls to be in school. Boy's education is sacrificed for the sake of livestock. But a new unofficial pattern has been introduced to save the schooling of the boy-child So as not to miss on Education, Lessons take place early in the mornings, ideally before the boys go out to graze the herds, and later in the evenings as they return home.

MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS VS MEN

Interesting blog of interest...

The Millennium Development....Guys?

By Jodi Jacobson, Editor-in-Chief, RH Reality Check

Consider these truths:

Men don't get pregnant.

Completely preventable complications of pregnancy, labor, unsafe abortion and AIDS-related illnesses remain the leading causes of death and disability among women in countries throughout the world due to lack of political will, lack of funding, and the politicization of sexual and reproductive health by fundamentalist religious and political actors.

Women now make up the majority of those infected with HIV worldwide and over two-thirds of those infected in sub-Saharan Africa.

Women and girls continue to face profound discrimination in access to education, employment, and political power in virtually every country (yes, including the United States). Women continue to experience high rates of sexual violence and coercion, high rates of child marriage, and low rates of access to basic reproductive and sexual health care, including safe abortion.

The health and well-being of newborns, infants, and children rests primarily on women. In communities riven by poverty, violence and discrimination, the death of a mother too often results in the neglect, deteriorating health, abuse, or death of her child(ren).

Consider also that virtually all of these issues remained invisible--or just plain unimportant--to the largely male power structures in every country for the past several decades, until the global women's movement gained traction in their fight to put them on the global agenda.

Given these realities, it would seem that appointments to a recently convened United Nations High-level Advocacy Group focused on pushing for progress on the Millennium Development Goals would take pains to put high-level women in charge--at least in equal numbers to their male counterparts--of advocating for maternal health, child health, and HIV and AIDS, as well as those "other things" like economic development, in which women, as all the development literature has repeated ad nauseum for 40 years, are essential actors.

Someone, somewhere, did not get the memo.

A "final" July 1 2010 list of prominent individuals circulated by the United Nations End Poverty 2015 Millennium Campaign comprising the "Global Advocacy Team" indicates that not one woman has been assigned to Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 (to reduce child mortality), MDG 5 (to improve maternal health), or MDG 6 (to combat HIV and AIDS and malaria).

This is, quite simply, astounding.

And yet, its not. Because in the pattern of all things having to do with women's health--whether we are talking about Utah or Nebraska, Uganda or the United Nations--there are other truths. Men continue to control the agenda and to decide how much or how little money and attention will be paid to ending the epidemic of pregnancy- and sexually-transmitted infection-related deaths and illnesses that robs millions of women of their lives and health every year worldwide. Men continue to decide what priorities will be on the table when they do "pay attention" to these issues, and when they won't, for reasons of their own political or financial agendas or their own ideological or political affiliations or all of the above, address honestly one of the leading and most preventable causes of pregnancy-related death and illness, that being unsafe abortion. Men continue to decide whether they will, for the sake of ideology cloaked as "common ground," push for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that leave women disproportionately vulnerable to HIV and AIDS, leave the issue of safe abortion out of research and international documents, confront other issues like stoning as "adulterers" women who've been raped, or "accept" that ending the war in Afghanistan likely means leaving women to the "mercy" of the Taliban. Men decide whether we can talk about women's health writ large, or even their sexual and reproductive health writ large, or only about the mommas and the babies.

So when I received from a colleague the PDF file containing the list, having been here and done this before, I knew to some extent I already knew the story. I also knew my obligations and therefore in an effort to find out more about this group yesterday, I called numerous colleagues in the advocacy and policy field as well as the UN Campaign office itself. I also emailed a contact in the office of the UN Secretary General. I did not hear back from any of the UN spokespersons as of this writing, but of those colleagues I reached they were, to a person, shocked at the composition of assignments on the list. Most had not yet heard that this group had been convened, and a couple suggested that the role might largely be for public relations, as the September 2010 UN Summit on Millenium Development Goals in New York approaches. In other words, every one of these colleagues had virtually the same reaction as I did on receiving this list: A combination of "How could this happen?" "Where are the women's advocacy leaders that have worked so hard on these issues the past 20 years?" and "Business as usual."

Let's be clear: Every one of the people on the list of UN MDG campaign "advocates" is a prominent person. The list includes Ted Turner, who provided the original funding a decade ago for the establishment of the UN Foundation, under the umbrella of which--in full disclosure--RH Reality Check now exists. The list includes, but is not limited to well-respected men such as Jeffrey Sachs (all MDGs) director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Bill Gates (MDGs 1, 4, 5, and 6), founder of Microsoft, and of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Julio Frenk, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (MDGs 4,5,6, and 8), Akin Adesina, Vice President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) (MDG 1, extreme poverty and hunger), Muhammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank (MDG 8 on poverty), Philippe Douste-Blazy (France) UN Special Advisor on innovative financing for development (MDGs 4, 5, 6 and 8), and Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda and a co-chair of the group.

The women include, among others, Stine Bosse (Denmark), CEO of TrygVesta Group, Chairman of Børnefonden (The Childrens’ Fund) (MDG 3 on gender equality and the empowerment of women); Wangari Maathai (Kenya) Nobel Peace Prize Winner, environmental and political activist (MDG 7 on environmental sustainability); Dho Young-Shim (Republic of Korea) Chairperson of the UN World Tourism Organization’s Sustainable Tourism for Eliminating Poverty (ST-EP) Foundation (MDG 2 on universal primary education); HHS Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser (Qatar) First Lady, Chairperson of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (MDG 2) and Graça Machel (South Africa / Mozambique), former First Lady, advocate for women’s and children’s rights (MDG 3, gender equality and the empowerment of women).

So why is it that Bob Geldof, the Irish singer and political advocate is being assigned to advocate for "all MDGs"--including those addressing maternal and child health and HIV and AIDS, when Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile who grappled directly with high rates of unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion in her own country, is assigned only to the MDG focused on gender equality and empowerment? (The MDG, by the way, which everyone agrees is the lowest priority in terms of funding and which also can't be separated from the others.) Geldof and his colleague Bono--no matter how well-intentioned--both are associated with the ONE campaign, which, while it advocates for ending poverty in Africa, has also advocated for abstinence-only-until marriage programs in PEPFAR, to deny HIV-positive women access to family planning services, and against efforts to address safe abortion as an integral aspect of women's health and rights.

Why is it that Sachs is covering all MDGs including all of those of greatest concern to women's health, but Graça Machel, Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser, Bachelet and Young-Shim are not? Machel and Maathai both actually live in and are from sub-Saharan Africa, the region in which pregnancy-related death and illness, complications of unsafe abortion, HIV infections and deaths among women from AIDS-related illnesses, violence and all the rest are perhaps more pervasive than anywhere else. To whom does this make sense?

Why is it that Bill Gates is covering all the MDGs of greatest concern to women, but real women leaders, including those who fought to put these issues on the global agenda and have studied, worked on, and staffed actual health facilities working to promote both prevention and treatment are not? It is true that the Gates foundation is providing $1.5 billion for maternal and child health programs over the next five years, a laudable contribution. It is however one that will almost certainly fail to make real headway on reducing the toll on women, families, communities, and economies of pregnancy-related illness and death in part because the Gates Foundation will not--whether out of political or religious or other concerns--address or apparently even speak about unsafe abortion, which in some countries accounts for a third or a half of all maternal deaths. Moreover, the representation of funders in this group creates an immediate conflict of interest, reducing the likelihood that any uncomfortable issues will be raised. The Gates Foundation funds Sachs' Earth Institute, for example. The ONE Campaign and the Gates Foundation partner on the "Living Proof" Campaign to highlight successful global health initiatives; yet as a colleague pointed out the original materials made no mention of the role of family planning as one of the single most successful health interventions from the seventies to the eighties. And a recent study of maternal mortality funded by the Gates Foundation and published by the Lancet made no mention--not one--of the toll on women of unsafe abortion. [The UN Foundation does not censor content of RH Reality Check in any way.]

The bottom line is this: We can not solve problems if we can not talk about real life. And we can't continue to fool ourselves that we are just "following the lead of what country governments want," when so much of what they want is determined by the funding available to them, and so many of them remain pathologically undemocratic, especially when it comes to the representation of women and their rights.

Why is it that there are only six women in a group of 19? Where are the amazing female physicians, researchers, advocates, youth organizers who work, write, speak, and organize on these issues every day, often with few or no resources? Of the many who are prominently known and have deep legitimacy in the women's movement, could more of those not have been included? What about someone representing the devastating disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes by race and ethnic status in the United States, the part of the "most powerful country" that most resembles a poverty-stricken nation?

What gives? Is someone concerned that a woman like say, Michelle Bachelet, will speak truth to power on issues of greatest concern to women that funders and politicians want otherwise to avoid?

It is clear to me that if women with legitimacy in the women's movement and as social justice and health advocates were leading this effort, many more salient issues would be on the table, including but not limited to safe abortion services and maternal mortality. But that would change the entire power dynamic.

I believe all these people have the best intentions. I also believe the time has long passed when the UN, the U.S., and any and all other political bodies can continue to talk about the importance of women, and keep putting men in charge. It is long past time to confront the "advocacy" groups that continue to put more stock in the concerns of fundamentalist religious groups and far-right politicians than in the lives of real women. Does anyone see the gross irony in talking about "the empowerment of women" when we can't even get equitable distribution on a UN "high-level" advocacy group?

Does anyone else see the even greater irony, as Stephen Lewis, founder of AIDS-Free World and formerly the first UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, underscored to me "that the better than two-to-one ratio of men to women advocates comes within one week of [the U.N.'s announcement] creating UN Women (the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), the new international agency for women, while boasting about gender equality"?

Thomas Paine is said to have originated one of my favorite quotes often used by colleagues in the global AIDS movement: "Lead, follow or 'get out the way.'" In other words, if you are not interested in the real problems and the real issues, let others lead.

It's time for women to take the reins on these issues and lead, without apology. It is time for us to confront more directly the power structures that result in the discussion time and again of the same issues with relatively little progress made. And it is time to hold the leadership of the UN and others accountable for putting their own rhetoric into practice.

Source:http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/07/07/millennium-developmentguys

SOMALI WOMEN: THE BETTER HALF OF THE SOCIETY

Somali women are the basis on which Somali society continues to thrive and exist. They take care of the household chores, they work, they raise children, they keep the family together, and they regularly send money to the extended families back home in Somalia. Despite Somali women being extremely busy, they are emerging as the educated majority within the Somalis. Strangely, they are not visible in the Somali political theater. Since they are undoubtedly the educated majority, they should be empowered to take the lead, as Somalia needs their intellectual assets. Unless they realize how crucial they are in this time of Somali political catastrophe, they will continue to remain the dormant majority.

Somalia, as a nation, was not destroyed by clan infighting; it was destroyed by the decisions of corrupted male leaders supported and empowered by Somali women. In 1990, there were two big institutions led by men, the Somali government led by former President Siad Barre and United Somali Congress (USC) by General Mohamed Aidid.

In retrospect, Somali women were active participants in the conflict as they were the cheerleaders of the institutions which led Somalia down the wrong path. Somali women were carrying the waters, singing and chanting words of empowerment behind the fighting men. They were collecting money and buying weapons in support of the warring men in the battle-fields. Small numbers of Somali women were carrying the weapons. However, the majority of them were encouraging and empowering the men to fight the aimless civil unrest. Consequently, these women suffered the most in the conflict.

Since they were demonstrably part of the conflict, they are part of the solution as well. Educated and enlightened Somali women must organize and focus with intensity to take the lead in turning Somalia away from the current destructive path, to a constructive trajectory.

As the leader of Somalia for over twenty years, Barre’s administration could have prepared and trained young leaders and left them behind for the country as a legacy of his administration. Unfortunately, this did not happen and individuals with no strategic foresight brought the nation to its ruin.

Somalia had a centralized governmental system where power was concentrated in the capital of Mogadishu. Therefore, the general feeling was that whoever controlled the capital controlled the nation. Upon Barre’s departure from the Somali political scene, ill-prepared individuals from various institutions such as the USC, headed by the late General Mohamed Aidid, took over the control of the capital and made fatal decisions. The decisions of USC as an institution were remarkably important, more than those of other institutions that existed at that time. Somalis are still living with its ill-conceived decisions. Somali women and children are generally the ones that suffered the most, like my own single mother who struggled with six of us in the war-zone.

It is extraordinarily important that Somali women get involved in the Somali political scene and it’s they, the Somali women, who must break the cycle of violence. Despite the media spin-doctors claiming that Somali clans are obstacles to sustainable peace, clan differences are important and they will continue to exist. They are nothing more than constituencies with shared interests. They can be used to build a nation or to destroy a nation, as in the case of Somalia.

In same way that clans were used by corrupted leaders of yesterday to destroy Somalia, they can be used to build Somalia as strong democratic nation. Somali women continue to insist that Somali men prevent them from being active participants of the Somali political sphere. This is, largely, unsubstantiated. Somali women have important decisions to make, they can continue to be whiners in despair, or they can organize themselves around strong institution and take the lead. In this dark chapter in Somali history, Somalia desperately needs the intellectual assets of all the segments of its society, especially the Somali women who are becoming the absolute better half of the society.

The visibility of the Somali women in the Somali political sphere is remarkably important, and the time has come for them to get involved in helping their men toward exercising the right judgment for the sake of nation-building.

Since Somali women are the bedrock of the family, the nation, and the head of many households, they have an enormous say on whether the men in their homes decides to build or to destroy. As a reminder, there is nothing left in Somalia to be destroyed. Therefore, it is time to start thinking about ways of putting the fractured Somalia back together. If these women channel this political capital in the right way, the results could be a democratic Somalia with peace and prosperity. It is time, however, that they get involved in the Somali political theater and correct the self-destroying men of their nation.

There is an African proverb that says "When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers."

When warring men in Somalia engage in the battle-field, it is the mothers and the children who suffer the most. Therefore, Somali women have the greatest interest in directing their men toward nonviolence, and in the language of peace-making.

**M. J. Farah, M.Ed. is a financial aid counselor, lecturer at BHCC. He can be reached by email at: sahan93@gmail.com .

Source:http://www.garoweonline.com

The Lost Girls of South Africa

UK Channel 4 Dispatches documentary The Lost Girls of South Africa: a deeply moving portrayal of the impact of child abuse in South Africa

• A child is raped in South Africa every three minutes, but almost nine out of 10 cases of child rape are never reported
• Rape is the least likely violent crime to be reported, and victims cite fear of reprisal as the commonest reason for not telling anyone
• A girl born in South Africa has around a one in three chance of completing secondary school, but she has a one in two chance of being raped
• Around one third of rape victims are raped by a close relation
• South Africa is the rape capital in the world, with a woman eight times more likely to be raped than in the UK. It is also one of the world's most violent societies, with a murder rate 35 times higher than the UK
• The South African Department of Justice estimate that one in four women suffer domestic violence
• Around 200,000 children a year are raped in South Africa
• Of the cases of sexual abuse Port Elizabeth Childline dealt with in 2009, over 80% involved children under 14
• Less than 1% of rapes end in a successful prosecution
• A Medical Research Council survey in 2009 found that in South Africa one in four men say they have raped at least once, with half of those admitting to multiple attacks
• Around 40% of rape victims in South Africa are children
• A survey of over a quarter of a million schoolchildren found that 62% of South African schoolboys believe forcing sex on someone is not an act of violence, and one third of male learners believe girls enjoy rape.

FOR MORE

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/south-africa-rape-facts

WHY CIRCUMCISE ME?

Maxaa la ii Guday from Bartamaha on Vimeo.

For more
http://vimeo.com/4638776
http://www.bartamaha.com/?p=908