UNPO speaks with Edna Adan Ismail — nurse, midwife, hospital founder, former minister, and former President of UNPO — about Somaliland’s struggle for international recognition, the ongoing fight for women’s rights and health, and what gives her hope for the future.
Edna was born in Hargeisa, and from a very young age, she faced challenges that would have stopped most people. She survived female genital mutilation at the age of eight, and instead of letting that pain define her, she turned it into a lifelong mission to protect other girls and women. Thanks to a British scholarship, she trained as a nurse and midwife in London, later working with the WHO and UNICEF across Africa and the Middle East. After the war destroyed Somaliland’s health system, she used her own UN pension and personal savings to build the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital from the ground up. Her hospital has now saved thousands of lives and trained new generations of health professionals. She went on to serve as Minister of Social Affairs, Minister of Family Welfare, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, becoming one of the most influential voices in Somaliland’s political and social landscape, and one of the few women to hold senior office in a country where female political representation remains critically low. In 2023, she was awarded the Templeton Prize, in recognition of her courageous work to change the cultural, religious, and medical norms surrounding women’s health in East Africa. She later also served as President of UNPO, advocating globally for unrepresented peoples.
Somaliland is a self-governing territory in the Horn of Africa with its own elected government, and constitution. A former British protectorate, it declared independence in June 1960 — before neighbouring Somalia — and voluntarily entered a union with it shortly after. That union collapsed in 1991, following a devastating civil war in which over 250,000 Somalilanders were killed. Somaliland declared the dissolution of the union that same year and has governed itself ever since. Despite holding multiple peaceful elections and building stable institutions largely without international support, it remains unrecognised by the international community — with the recent exception of Israel, the first UN member state to formally do so.
Edna: “After independence, the two countries united their administrations, like many countries have done so. We united with our neighbors from Italian Somalia, hoping that other Somali regions would join that union, and form the greater Somali nation.
Unfortunately, like some unions work, some do not. Our union with Somalia did not work. We united in 1960, in 1991, 30 years later, when the union failed, and there were no legal documents to legitimize the union, we withdrew from the union. At the time, Somalia fell into a lot of disarray because dictator Siad Barre was ousted, having caused a lot of harm to his own people in Somalia, and also caused genocide, mass killings, mass executions in my country, Somaliland. We separated in 1991, 18th May. Since that time, my country, Somaliland, has not been legally recognized, except for Israel, which has recognized our administration, and we who have an agreement that was reached late last year. I’s the only UN member state that recognised Somaliland.
Sadly, the world has forgotten that other nations have done exactly what we have done, uniting with another sovereign nation, and remained in that union, or withdrew from that union. And since Somaliland was denied recognition by the international community, we had no option other than to rely on our own resources. Whatever we could put together. Without international aid, without bilateral aid, without the IMF or the World Bank. We rebuilt Somaliland from the rubble to what it is today. We have a functional democracy, we have law and order, we have our own Constitution, we have a plebiscite, and the people have endorsed and approved the Constitution in 2001. We have had many, very peaceful general elections, we have had presidential elections. The winning president was welcomed by the departing president, who had lost the elections, to have a peaceful handover. This is very unique in many countries in the world, and I am proud that we in Somaliland have done that not only once or twice, but 6 or 7 times, with international observers present. Peacefully and in an orderly way.
Somaliland was also the very first country that has tried the biometric identification of the iris during elections. We had voting cards, but the identity was also verified by the iris biometric verification.
So, to give you that introduction to who we are, that’s why we sometimes wrongly get referred to as gaining our independence through Somalia, which is a totally false narrative. Because when we were independent, Somalia was still a colony. And our union was voluntary, it was not a conquest of one country over the other, and it was not a takeover. It was not an annexation, it was a people’s initiative, to try to administratively unite people who live in the same part of the world, who shared many things. Some of our cultures are similar, some of our languages have similarities. Although Somalia has 8 different languages, one of them is the one that we speak, which is the classical Somali. Somaliland is very peaceful, stable, we’ve never had pirates, we don’t have warlords, we don’t take people hostage, we’ve never burned anybody’s flags and trampled on them. We try to run our country legally, in a democratic way, and give every Somalilander the right to vote, the right to register for elections, and to be a candidate for elections.”
UNPO: You’ve been a voice for so many people — in Somaliland and beyond — and through your work as a minister and through your advocacy, as well as your personal life, you’ve fought to improve the maternal health of women and fought against female genital mutilation. How do social and health challenges intersect with Somaliland’s broader political struggle?
Edna: “Female genital mutilation is something we’ve been fighting for 50 years, since 1976. And at that time, we didn’t talk about FGM, it was considered indecent, vulgar, a topic that should not be addressed publicly. When in fact it is a health situation, it’s an injustice that is perpetrated against little girls. It’s an injustice and a mutilation that has effects on the reproductive capacity of that little girl years later when she becomes married. In time, there’s been ups and downs, there’s been many challenges. There was, of course, the 11 year civil war between Somaliland and Somalia, which disrupted everything and destroyed any progress we had made before 1982. But since we came back to Somaliland, we started picking up the pieces, including our campaign against female genital mutilation.
Female genital mutilation in Somaliland today is a topic that we discuss openly in universities, in debates, in the radio, on television. We have many good women’s organizations, organizations that have both men and women campaigning. Only last night we were in a conference with the Minister of Social Affairs, the Minister of Labor, Finance, the Vice Minister of Health, who is a woman, and an umbrella organization for women’s organizations. And we openly broadcasted, recorded a live discussion among ourselves about what we should do and we could do.
Today, another thing we can be proud of is that Somaliland is the only country that has a religious Islamic fatwa that condemns type 3 FGM. And you’ll ask, well what about type 1 and type 2? In war, you fight the battles that you know you can win. And if we do away the most damaging, the most mutilating, the one that endangers the life of the little girl through haemorrhages, infections, or through her unborn child when she’s bearing children because of the damage to the outlet of the birth canal, then it is something that we all fight together openly. And people do understand.
Type 1 FGM is still there, because we deliver women, I see women on the table delivery. And the good thing is that the women who are giving birth today, the 20, 24, 25, 30, 35 year old women, are the generation of women who have had the benefit of not being mutilated, through the campaigns that we have been leading. So, yes, FGM type 1 and 2 are very much there, you could say 90, 85% of the women have had it. But much fewer have had the most severe type 3. So, we haven’t won that war yet, but we’ve won very good battles. And it’s for the next generation to continue, to keep it up, to keep it up, keep learning from others, keep learning from other Muslim nations. We wish to learn from the other Muslim nations where women are not mutilated, and whose religion we share. Women in many North African, Muslim nations are not mutilated. Women in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, there’s millions of Muslim women, who are not mutilated. So, FGM remains in the equatorial belt of the African continent. So it remains as something that really needs to be fought by all of us together with the support of all Muslim nations, and in particular, from the nations in my continent, Africa. So, FGM is there, we are fighting it, and we should keep on fighting it. We’ve won some battles, we have not won that war yet. Little girls are still being mutilated.And even if one is mutilated, it’s one too many.
I remember my days with the World Health Organization, many years ago, when I was the focal person for FGM, in Geneva. We could not talk about FGM openly. But today we can say it, and we call FGM FGM. And we try to get support from the fathers of those little girls who are being punished. The imams, the religious leaders, who are also parents of these little girls, who are being mutilated. So it should be all of us; Muslims and others, men and women, who believe in justice, who believe in the integrity of the human body, who believe in the protection of our children. We should all be able to do that. And we’re grateful for those who do work with us. Because many do. I’m grateful that the UN also has resolutions with the WHO. The UN has resolutions that we did not have 50 years ago. So, we have come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. We’re not putting down the arms yet. FGM is a so-called traditional practice that has no place in this day and age.”
Edna touches on women’s representation throughout the conversation — it is, for her, inseparable from the broader story of what Somaliland is and what it is becoming. In 2002, she became the first and only female cabinet member in the government of Somaliland, serving as the Minister of Social Affairs, and has watched the numbers change slowly in the two decades since.
Edna: “In many countries of the world, or in every country of the world, I don’t know of any or maybe very few, where women have been given equal rights, as men. Some are better at it than others, but my country is a country that, sadly, since the separation from Somalia, we have had one woman elected in 2002, 2003. In subsequent elections there have been women candidates, but they did not get the number of votes to earn them a seat in parliament. And today, we only have one woman in the parliament who got that seat, when her predecessor passed away, and she was the next candidate in line. We don’t have any women in the Senate. We had one woman many years ago, who had inherited it from her father, but then she found the situation very difficult for her at that time, she resigned, and now we have nobody in the Senate. And we have one woman in the Parliament. We have 2 women who are ministers, and one vice minister in the entire cabinet of Somaliland. So, although it is better than when I was a Minister, I was the only female Minister, and the first cabinet minister of Somaliland in August 2002. And then the following year, I was appointed Foreign Minister of Somaliland, and another lady was appointed to take over the Ministry of Family Welfare and Social Development. So it was first one woman, and then we became two, and now we are three. But there’s about 30 or 40 cabinet ministers. A fair share would have been close to having at least 10 or 15 women in the cabinet.
I will also like to add that I’m very, very proud, that maybe 20, 30 years ago, after the war, after our separation from Somalia, after a quarter of a million of our people had been killed in that civil war, and after over a million Somalilanders had fled the country to seek refuge anywhere in the world where they could, there were very few women who had the knowledge, the education, and the desire to stand for elections. And today, we have a good number of well educated women, very capable women, as educated, and if not better, as many who have been elected into the parliament. There is no reason why women candidates should not be elected into the Parliament of Somaliland.
I think there should be some concessions for them because an important issue that gets candidates elected is that men usually have a far stronger financial capacity than the women have. So their money wins them seats. But I would like a woman to earn seats through their competence, their ability, and the contribution that they would make to the running of this country, and for the development of our nation, the Republic of Somaliland. It would be good for men, it would be good for women, it would be good for children, it would be good for the young and the old. And women are usually peaceful, the advocates for peace, the advocates for tolerance. We’re very patient, very tenacious. And we love our country very much. So I hope that one day the people of Somaliland will have women in the parliament, women in the senate, women in decision making positions, just as much as our brothers, our sons, our husbands, our fathers, the men have had this chance forever.”
UNPO: Do you have any thoughts on what it means for people within Somaliland to be an unrepresented nation?
Edna: “I think the world has done Somaliland a very raw deal, and a very unfair deal. After independence, and this hasty union with Somalia, Somalia, through its efforts to destabilize Somaliland, to discredit Somaliland out of enmity, not only bombed the people of Somaliland, the cities of Somaliland, and killed the people of Somaliland, but it also threatened to kill people through misinformation. Churchill once said, by the time the truth has finished lacing its boots, the lies have gone over the mountain. The misinformation that Somalia has been telling the world, that Somaliland is a part of Somalia, which is totally false, and anybody who reads history would know that this is false, that false narrative has gone over the hill and gone over the mountain, and into the United Nations, and into the world capitals, governments, who just believe the nonsense that Somalia has been telling them. And by just reading the facts, looking up the proclamation of independence signed by the late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, instead of believing that, the world chooses to believe what a warlord in Somalia tells them.
The world has denied Somaliland its rightful place among the free nations of the world. Somalia is now sitting in the UN, in a seat that, if it is sitting there, it should be sitting with both Somalia and Somaliland together. It did not earn that seat alone. It was Somaliland that earned that seat before Somalia was independent. And then, like the nomad and the camel, the camel got into the tent and kicked out the nomad. And that’s exactly what Somalia did. It sat on our seat, squatted on our seat, and kicked Somaliland out, and the world should say enough is enough. They should just differentiate between the truth and the lies that Somalia has been telling them.
It has affected us, prevented us from developing to our full capacity. It stops us from dealing with the rest of the world as a free and independent nation. It has prevented us from developing our education for both men and women, developing our health services, and developing an income-generating ability for our youth. Unemployment is so rampant, because Somaliland is locked out into this little space that Somalia has defined for us, which is actually wrong. And our economy is better than the economy of Somalia, our economy has always been stable for 34 years, and Somalia has never known that.
And when the world tells us Somalilanders that we should get our independence from Somalia, I think that is a discredit to democracy. How can the most failed state in the world, Somalia, support democracy? So I would invite the world to look up history, read history, and there they will find that Somaliland is not part of Somalia. When Somalia tells the world that recognizing Somaliland is a trespass on the territorial integrity of Somalia, which is absolutely false. The world can prove that. Just look up the independence of Somaliland, the territory of Somaliland, which is defined according to Anglo French, Anglo Italian, and Anglo Ethiopian treaties. It was made in 1884, when the colonies of Africa were being partitioned by different colonising empires. We did not lose our identity, the world failed to recognize it, and took away our identity. Because at one time, we tried to unite with a neighboring country, just like many other countries had done. Losing your right to your rightful name, being deprived of your identity, denying your right to deal with the rest of the world as an equal partner is a great injustice. And I hope that the world will correct that.”
UNPO: What gives you hope for Somaliland’s future? And is there a message you have for those listening?
Edna: “Yes, I think Somalilanders have every right to be proud of who they are, they have the right to be part of their country’s nationality. I really congratulate Somalilanders for having developed Somaliland to the level that they have. I would like our people to continue to move forward, to believe in ourselves, to remain as determined as we have always been, to be a peaceful nation, a law abiding nation, to believe in law and order, to believe in good governance, believe in rebuilding, bettering ourselves, and just continue doing what we are doing and never look back. The achievements of the present, we owe it to nobody but to ourselves, to be proud of that.
And I hope, and I wish, as a former President of UNPO, I wish all the nations and all the peoples, wherever they may be, who are oppressed, or who are denied the rights for identity, will one day gain their aspiration of self-determination, of their rightful identity, their rightful name, to speak the mother language they wish to speak, and will not be discriminated against. I hope peace returns to the world, in all corners of the world. Peace, stability, and development is what would make the world grow. So, I hope and pray for moving forward, I pray for peace, I pray for law and order, I pray for democracy. And for UNPO for continuing the fight, and its campaign for freedom and justice, and the respect of international human rights, our right to our rightful identity and rightful name. No more, no less.”
*This article is based on an interview conducted between Edna Adan Ismail and UNPO, originally recorded as part of the UNPO Hidden Geopolitics podcast series and UNPO Academy interview series.