Fartuun Adan

Fartuun Abdisalaan Adan is a Somali social activist, executive director of the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre in Mogadishu and co-founder of Sister Somalia, the country's first rape crisis and support programme for survivors of gender-based violence. ¹ Her honours include the International Women of Courage Award in 2013, the Aurora Prize in 2020 and, with her daughter Ilwad Elman, the Right Livelihood Award in 2022. ¹ No source used here names a religion or school for her, so her data record leaves her faith as unknown. ^{1 2}

She was born on 2 February 1969; the Right Livelihood Award's laureate page gives her birthplace as Mogadishu, Somalia. ^{1 2} She grew up in Somalia and married Elman Ali Ahmed, a local entrepreneur and peace activist widely known as the "Somali father of peace", who popularised the slogan "Drop the gun, pick up the pen" and created programmes helping war-affected youth, including former child soldiers and orphans, towards schooling and livelihoods; the couple had four daughters. ¹ In 1996, during the Somali Civil War, her husband was killed near the family's home in southern Mogadishu, and soon afterwards Adan left Somalia with her daughters. ¹

Adan emigrated to Canada in 1999, settling in Ottawa, and in interviews spoke of the work she and her husband had started in Mogadishu as unfinished. ¹ In 2007 she returned to Somalia to advocate for peace and human rights and to revive the organisation that became the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre. ¹ On 20 November 2019 her daughter Almaas Elman, who had returned to Somalia as an aid worker, was shot and killed near Mogadishu airport; Adan and her surviving daughters chose to continue their work in Somalia. ¹

Adan is executive director of the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre, established in honour of her late husband, while her daughter Ilwad works alongside her in a senior leadership role. ¹ The Right Livelihood Foundation describes the centre's community-based disarmament, rehabilitation and reintegration of former combatants, including child soldiers, combining counselling, basic education, vocational training and job placement, and its growth from a local Mogadishu centre into a network working across Somalia and advising partners in other African countries. ^{2 1} Through the centre she co-founded Sister Somalia, the country's first programme for victims of sexual violence, which grew into a network of safe houses and crisis centres offering medical care, psychosocial support, emergency shelter, legal accompaniment and livelihood training. ¹

In 2013 she received the International Women of Courage Award from the United States Department of State for her work as a champion of human rights and the elimination of sexual and gender-based violence in Somalia, and in 2014 an award from the government of Germany. ¹ In 2015 she and Ilwad Elman received Harvard Kennedy School's Gleitsman International Activist Award, and in 2020 the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative named them Aurora Prize Laureates. ¹ In 2022 the two received the Right Livelihood Award "for promoting peace, demilitarization and human rights in Somalia in the face of terrorism and gender-based violence". ^{1 2}

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