Defender of the month: Mohamed Farah

Mohamed Farah, 34, is a Somali human rights defender (HRD). He is the founder and chairperson of the Somali Disability Empowerment Network (SODEN).

In addition to his work with the Somali Coalition of Human Rights Defenders as a steering committee member and Disabled Peoples’ International, Farah advocates for people with disabilities who face serious discrimination.

“Persons with disabilities in Somalia, as in many other countries in the sub-region, face numerous challenges that result in their exclusion from mainstream of society, making it difficult for them to access their fundamental social, political, and economic rights,” he says. “Many make their way through life impoverished, abandoned, uneducated, malnourished, discriminated against, neglected, and vulnerable.”

At the age of three, Farah contracted polio, which left him permanently disabled. Somalia’s disabled population is estimated at 15 percent, due in large part to disease, malnourishment, and the effects of decades of civil war and conflict. In 2011 Farah founded SODEN with the aim of promoting and uplifting the rights of disabled people in Somalia. Since then, he has met with both the Somali Speaker of Parliament and the former President to discuss national disability legal frameworks and the protection of those with special needs in the country. A 2015 campaign he initiated called ‘Open the Door’ aimed at making all public buildings in the country wheelchair accessible.

“In most of Somalia and the sub-region, disabled people face huge discrimination against their fundamental rights,” Farah say. “The government must ensure the rights of marginalized people, including persons with disabilities, in order to break all barriers against them and allow them to become a part of the society.”

Farah says the issues plaguing the disabled are most pronounced when it comes to economic, physical, educational, and psychological challenges, which can result in a vicious cycle of poverty and lack of access to the overall benefits of development. He says that in addition to the social and cultural stigma surrounding disability in Somalia, he has also faced threats of violence from non-state actors like Al-Shabaab – in 2017, the group was responsible for the death of Ali Osman, a disabled elder and community leader.
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“In Africa, disability is sometimes viewed as a spiritual curse, despite medial explanations,” Farah says. “Disabled persons suffer from psychological challenges due to the way society views them. Disabled people are even stigmatised when it comes to marriage. Superstitious beliefs frown at marriages between an able-bodied and a disabled person. It is regarded as a bad omen by the family.”

In June 2018, with support from DefendDefenders and ProtectDefenders.eu, Farah graduated from Kampala International University with a Master of Arts in Human Rights and Development, as well as a newfound commitment to continue the struggle for equal rights in both Somalia and beyond.

“My new studies will give me courage and spirit,” he says. “I will redouble my advocacy efforts and continue fighting against human rights violators. I will promote the rights of neglected people including people with disabilities.”

Follow Mohammed on Twitter.

See more HRDs of the Month

Human Rights Defender of the month: Aida Musa

In August 2011, Aida crossed into Uganda, pregnant, and barely able to communicate in another language other than Arabic. The transition was a difficult one, she says: “It was my first-time outside Sudan, and yet I did not know any other language. The first months were very difficult.”
In 2012, still struggling to find her footing in Kampala, Aida was introduced to DefendDefenders, where she was introduced to the organisation’s resource center, and assured, it (the center) would be at her disposal whenever she needed to use it.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Pamela Angwench Judith

For most of her life, Pamela Angwech’s existence has always been a defiant and simultaneous act of survival and resistance. In 1976 when she was born, the anti-Amin movement was gathering pace, and her family was one of the earliest victims of the then dictatorship’s reprisals in Northern Uganda. Her father, a passionate educationist in Kitgum district was one of the most vocal critics of the dictatorship’s human rights excesses, which made him an obvious target of the state’s marauding vigilantes.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Joseph Oleshangay

As a human rights lawyer and advocate with the High Court of the United Republic of Tanzania, Joseph Moses Oleshangay spends most of his time crossing from one court to another, litigating human rights cases, some with life-altering implications for ordinary people. It is a monumental responsibility, one he never envisaged growing up.

As a young boy born into a Maasai household in northern Tanzania, his entire childhood revolved around cattle: “Our entire livelihood revolved around cattle. As a child, the main preoccupation was to tend to cows, and my formative years were spent grazing cattle around Endulen. It a simple lifestyle,” he says.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Julia Onyoti

The situation of South Sudan’s women and girls remains one of those enduring blights on the country’s conscience. The country retains the unenviable reputation of having the world’s highest maternal mortality rate, and at 51.5%, one of the highest cases of child marriages. It is even worse with gender-based violence(GBV): A 2019 study by UNICEF found that one in every two South Sudan women have experienced intimate partner violence, while a recent UN study, alarmed at the widespread nature of conflict-related sexual violence in the country, in which women are tread as “spoils of war” described it as “a hellish existence for women and girls.

Human Rights Defender of the month:SHIMA BHARE

Shima Bhare Abdalla has never known the luxury and comfort of a stable and safe existence inside her country’s borders. When she was 11, her village was attacked and razed to the ground, sending her family and entire neighborhood scattering into an internally displaced People’s Camp, at the start of the Darfur civil war.

That was in 2002. Shima and her family relocated into Kalma refugee camp in Southern Darfur, where, alongside over 100,000 other displaced persons, they had to forge out a living, under the watch and benevolence of the United Nations – African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur, known as UNAMID. It is here that Shima’s human rights consciousness came to life. She enthusiastically embraced whatever little education she could access under the auspices of the humanitarian agencies operating in the camp, to be able to tell the story of her people’s plight.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Martial Pa’nucci

Martial Pa’nucci is a child of what is fondly known as Africa’s second liberation. In 1990 when he was born, the Republic of Congo, like many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, was undergoing a transition from one-party rule to multi-party democracy, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yet developments in ordinary people’s lives were not as optimistic. Pa’nucci was born in one of Brazzaville’s ghettos to a polygamous family of two mothers and 19 siblings, where survival was a daily exercise in courage. When he was two, his father died, followed in quick succession by many of his siblings. Pa’nucci did not start school until he was nine, and he had to do odd jobs – from barbering to plumbing to earn his stay there, lest he dropped out like many of his peers.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Veronica Almedom

Veronica Almedom is a poster child of successful immigration. A duo Eritrean and Swiss citizen, she was born in Italy, and grew up in Switzerland where she permanently resides. Her parents are some of the earliest victims of Eritrea’s cycles of violence. When Eritrea’s war of independence peaked in the early 1980s, they escaped the country as unaccompanied minors, wandering through Sudan, Saudi Arabia, before making the hazard journey across the Mediterranean into Europe. There, they crossed first to Italy, and finally, to Switzerland, where they settled first as refugees, and later, as permanent residents.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Omar Faruk Osman

Omar Faruk’s career, and the passion that drove it, were the product of his circumstances. He was born in 1976, in the first of strong man Mohamed Siad Barre’s two-decade rule over Somalia, which was characterized by gross rights abuses and barely existent civic space. He came of age in the 90s when those abuses and rights violations were peaking, as his country was engulfed by a ruinous civil war following the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship.

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