Reflecting on Selma: 8 Iconic Women Activists, Past and Present

Reflecting on Selma: 8 Iconic Women Activists, Past and Present


(Image: Dr. Hawa Abdi Diblaawe Foundation)

Dr. Hawa Abdi Diblaawe

Dr. Hawa Abdi Diblaawe, born in Mogadishu, Somalia, came from poverty and had to raise her four sisters after her mother died. Her father was an educated man who worked hard in the city’s port to make sure that she could become a doctor.

Hawa studied medicine in Kiev and became Somalia’s first woman gynecologist. She later studied law and received her degree at the Somali National University in Mogadishu, and eventually became an Assistant Professor of Medicine.

Dr. Hawa opened a clinic on her family’s ancestral land in the Afgooye Corridor and using the land’s profits to service free health care to all of her countrymen. Dr. Hawa began housing and caring for her employees on the land when the civil war erupted in 1991. The residents’ families soon followed in search of safety and in 2012, Dr. Hawa’s land housed more than 90,000 refugees, mostly women and children. Dr. Hawa Abdi still fights for the women, children and elderly of the Hawa Abdi Village with her two daughters, Dr. Deqo and Dr. Amina. In 2012, the doctor was nominated for a Nobel Peace Price.


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