Hawa Abdi

Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe (Somali: Xaawo Cabdi, Arabic: حواء عبدي‎, born May 17, 1947) is a Somali human rights activist and physician. She is the founder and chairperson of the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation (DHAF), a non-profit organization.

Early years

Abdi was born in Mogadishu, situated in south-central Somalia. Her mother died when she was 12 years old. Abdi thereafter took on family chores as the eldest child in the family. Her father was an educated professional.

For her early schooling, Abdi attended local elementary, intermediate and secondary academies.

In 1964, she received a scholarship from the Women's Committee of the Soviet Union. Abdi subsequently studied medicine at a Kiev institution, graduating in 1971. The following year, she began law studies at Mogadishu's Somali National University.

In 1973, Abdi got married and gave birth to her first child two years later. She would practice medicine during the morning and work toward her law degree in her spare time, eventually earning it in 1979.

Abdi

Abdilahi is a male name. It is a given name with many origins in many countries. Among others, one version has Arabic as origin, while another is of Biblical origin.

Arabic origin Abdi

While Arabic speakers commonly use Abdu (عبده‎ / عبدو ʿabdu) rather than Abdi, both are nicknames for Abdul. It originates from the Arabic word عبد ال ʿabd al- / ʿabd el- / ʿabd ul-. The name translates as "servant" or "slave" in reference to religious submission to Allah (God). As such, it is often used by Muslims around the world in conjunction with one of the names of God in Islam, but also sometimes on its own.

Biblical Abdi

Abdi is also the name of three men in the Hebrew Bible

Fikret Abdić

Fikret Abdić (born 29 September 1939) is a Bosnian politician and businessman who first rose to prominence in the 1980s for his role in turning the Velika Kladuša-based agriculture company Agrokomerc into one of the biggest conglomerates in SFR Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s, during the Bosnian War, Abdić declared his opposition to the official Bosnian government, and established the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, a small and short-lived province in the northwestern corner of Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of the town of Velika Kladuša and nearby villages.

The mini-state existed between 1993 and 1995 and was allied with the Army of Republika Srpska. In 2002 he was convicted on charges of war crimes against Bosniaks loyal to the Bosnian government by a court in Croatia and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, which was later reduced on appeal to 15 years by the Supreme Court of Croatia. On 9 March 2012, he was released after having served two thirds of his reduced sentence.