Born: 17 May 1947, Somalia
Died: 5 August 2020
Country most active: Somalia
Also known as: Xaawo Cabdi, حواء عبدي
Dr. Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe was a Somali human rights activist and Somalia’s first female obstetrician and gynecologist. She was the founder and chairperson of the non-profit Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation (DHAF), which provides healthcare, education, shelter and access to sanitation to displaced families.
After her mother died when she was 12 years old, Abdi raised her four sisters as the eldest child. She was forced into a marriage with a much older man when she was 12, the marriage ending several years later. She attended local elementary, intermediate and secondary academies. In 1964, she received a scholarship from the Women’s Committee of the Soviet Union and studied medicine in Kiev, graduating in 1971. The next year, she began law studies at Mogadishu’s newly opened Somali National University, where she would alter become an Assistant Professor of Medicine. She practiced medicine during the morning and work toward her law degree in her spare time, eventually earning it in 1979.
In 1973, she married Aden Mohammed, a fellow Somali she had met when both were studying in the USSR. They had three children and later separated.
In 1983, Abdi opened the Rural Health Development Organization (RHDO) on family lands, which started as a one-room clinic offering free obstetrician services to around 24 women per day, and later evolved into a 400-bed hospital.
When the civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991, Abdi stayed behind because her grandmother had urged her to use her skills to help the vulnerable. She later established a new clinic and school for the displaced and orphans. The RHDO was renamed the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation (DHAF) in 2007 and eventually expanded to include a relief camp, which housed 90,000 people on the 1,300 acres surrounding Abdi’s hospital during the 2011 drought.
Two years earlier at the height of the Islamist insurgency in southern Somalia, militants had laid siege to the compound and tried to force Abdi to shut it down. She stood her ground and the rebels left within a week, due to pressure from local residents, the United Nations and advocacy groups. The militants returned in February 2012, leading Abdi to temporarily suspend services until their eventual departure.
DHAF grew to a multinational staff of more than 100 workers, supported by a 150-member team of volunteers, fishermen and farmers. DHAF is also a financially independent organization, and government funding is prohibited. All funding comes through donations from the people around the world and other charitable endowments. Services are provided to the Somali people at no cost. Since it began as the RHDO, the organisation has served more than 2 million people.
Dr. Abdi earned many distinctions and awards, including the John Jay Justice Award, Vital Voices’ Women of the Year Award and a nomination for the Noble Peace Prize in 2012. U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called her “a perfect example of the kind of woman who inspires me”. Her memoir, Keeping Hope Alive: One Woman—90,000 Lives Changed, was published in 2013.
Her two daughters, OB-GYNs Dr. Deqo Mohamed and Dr. Amina Dhiblawe, are continuing her legacy with DHAF.