When the Thomson Reuters Foundation recently released the results of its poll on “The world’s five most dangerous countries for women [14]”, Somalia, one of IREX’s program countries [15], was ranked fifth. I asked WAWA [16] (the We Are Women Activists Network), one of our local partners on the Uniting Communities to Mitigate Conflict (UCMC) [17] project, for their initial reactions to the report.
The group agreed with Somalia’s overall ranking, noting specific cultural issues such as early marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence,and female genital mutilation as barriers to women’s full participation in society. They also cited traditional attitudes discouraging girls from pursuing education, with one member noting, “Fathers believe that if they invest in their daughters’ education, she will marry a man of another tribe and will not contribute to the family.”
Regarding health issues, WAWA members felt that Somalia could have been ranked even higher, describing the local health care system as “disastrous”, with the greatest problem being the lack of basic access. This sentiment was recently echoed by the Minister for Women and Family Affairs, Maryam Qasim, who stated [18], “When a woman becomes pregnant, her life is 50-50 because there is no antenatal care at all.”
It’s clear that much more work needs to be done toward gender equality in Somalia. But with groups like WAWA training and sharing resources among women’s organizations, progress is being made. As Zaynab Haji, program coordinator for WAWA, expressed to me, “WAWA remains committed to working towards empowered women able to participate in societal decision making and also fully aware of their rights and responsibilities.”