'Mama Hawa' helps rape victims in Somalia, wins UN award

Hawa Aden Mohamed, a former Somali refugee, returned from safety in Canada to her war-torn country to shelter and train Somalis who have fled war, famine, and violence.

|
Ismail Taxta/Reuters
A woman waits for food aid at a center in Ubeyd camp in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sept. 17. Hawa Aden Mohamed, once a refugee herself, has been honored by the UN for her work in Somalia helping thousands of women and girls, many of them rape victims.

Hawa Aden Mohamed won the United Nations refugee agency's Nansen Refugee Award Sept. 18 for her work in helping thousands of Somali women and girls, many of them rape victims, start new lives in their battered homeland.

Mohamed is a former Somali refugee who returned from safety in Canada to her war-torn country in 1995, launching an education program in Puntland to shelter and train Somalis who have fled war, famine, and violence, it said.

"When Hawa Aden Mohamed rescues a displaced girl, a life is turned around," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

RELATED: Somalia: A timeline of change in a troubled country

Known as "Mama Hawa," she founded the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development, which has assisted more than 215,000 displaced and victims of violence since 1999, it said.

"In a society like Somalia, it's very often that a woman or a girl is raped, and they are severely marginalized thereafter. So what she has done is given them is a home, a new start, hope for a new life, and their dignity back," UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing.

Young Somali boys also receive vocational training in carpentry and welding to keep them off the streets and avoid them falling prey to criminal or armed groups, the agency said.

Somalia's new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took office Sept 16, calling for an end to terrorism and piracy in a nation mired in conflict for more than two decades. More than 2 million people have been displaced.

Recent laureates include the late US Sen. Edward Kennedy, for sponsoring asylum legislation, and former British soldier Chris Clark, for removing mines in Lebanon, allowing displaced people to return home after Israel's 2006 invasion.

Ms. Mohamed, currently hospitalized in Kenya recovering from surgery, is expected to attend the awards ceremony in Geneva Oct. 1, Ms. Fleming said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Jason Neely)

• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Mama Hawa' helps rape victims in Somalia, wins UN award
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2012/0920/Mama-Hawa-helps-rape-victims-in-Somalia-wins-UN-award
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe