Director, Elman Peace and Human Rights Center, Mogadishu, Somalia, www.elmanpeace.org

For years, Fartun Abdisalaan Adan worked alongside her husband, supporting his human rights work in Mogadishu and surrounding areas. In 1996, five years into Somalia’s now 20-year-long civil war, he was murdered by warlords unhappy with his peace-making efforts. Fartun escaped to Canada to raise her three daughters. In 2007, when her girls were old enough to live on their own, she moved back to Mogadishu to continue her human rights work and run the organization her husband founded, the Elman Peace and Human Rights Center. To her surprise, one of her daughters, who has no memory of early life in Somalia, has joined her. Together the women, at great personal risk, provide education and job-skills training for boys as an alternative to war.

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