ONE OFF GRANTS – SOMALIA

NAME: Asha Hagi MP
PROJECT: Save Somali Women and Children
LOCATION: Nairobi/ Mogadishu
Led by Asha Hagi, SSWC secured a place for women in Somalia’s Parliament by arguing that ‘Women are the sixth clan.’ With the 15th Peace Agreement for Somalia now in place, Asha is using all her creativity and contacts to moblise support across Somalia for the peace agreement, to prevent yet another relapse into war.

Latest Update
From August 2008 Asha will be working with a broad range of civil society organisations, business people and religious leaders, convening meetings across Somalia to explain and promote the peace agreement, gather views on the priorities for the High Level Committees set up under the peace agreement and put together a more comprehensive plan for how Somalis can spread the word about the peace agreement. This will be presented to the UN for funding, picking up on the words of the UN Special Representative, Ahmedou Oud-Abdallah ‘Now is the time for Somalis to travel across the country promoting the peace agreement, not the Ethiopians and not the UN.’

How it started
Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC) is a Somali women non-governmental humanitarian organization at a national level founded in 1992 at Mogadishu – the capital city, by a group of Somali women intellectuals from cross-sections of the community

Key achievements

• Securing one sixth of seats for women in the Transitional Federal Parliament
• Working with others to reconcile the President and Prime Minister in 2006, who were at that time operating from different cities, also persuading businesses to supply food to young men manning roadblocks, resulting in the elimination of a number of road blocks in Mogadishu
• Appearing on BBC Newsnight, facilitated by Peace Direct, to bring attention to the dire humanitarian crisis in May 2007. Nearly 50,000 people have watched a downloaded version on YouTube, and funds were raised to provide humanitarian aid to 500 families.
• Forming part of a mission along with Mary Robinson, to investigate conditions for Darfurian refugees in Chad, and presenting findings to Heads of State in Europe and the US.

What's next
Completing the first phase of the work outlined above, which is being funded by DfID through Peace Direct, with the hope of a truly Somali led dissemination process to follow.

Total funding to date
£37,000 from the Network for Social Change, Margaret Hayman Charitable Trust and DfID.

Future funding needed
£10,000 core funding for SSWC to enable Asha to concentrate on the struggle for peace to hold. ‘I know I am risking my life and I am willing to do that, but I can’t do it and fundraise at the same time.’