Kenyan Women Achievers

It’s nothing new, Kenyan women have been selected for many prestigious awards, awards of excellence and service. From Professor Wangari Maathai to Hon. Njoki Ndungu. This December, Dekha Ibrahim Abdi will be receiving the Right Livelihood Award (2007) for showing in diverse ethnic and cultural situations how religious and other differences can be reconciled, even after violent conflict, and knitted together through a cooperative process that leads to peace and development.

The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those "offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today". It has become widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' and there are now 128 Laureates from 56 countries.

About Her
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi is a global peacemaker from rural Kenya. She has engaged in peace work and conflict resolution in many of the world's most divided countries. Her comprehensive methodology combines grassroots activism, a soft but uncompromising leadership, and a spiritual motivation drawing on the teachings of Islam.
Dekha's early life

Dekha Abdi, born in Wajir in 1964, grew up in a mixed neighbourhood of different ethnic groups and religions, in which, although a Muslim, her closest childhood friends were Christian and of a different ethnic group. At the secondary school she attended pupils were divided along religious and ethnic lines into two camps, but Dekha and her childhood friends created a space between these opposing camps by sticking together; a space which grew as it was joined by many other students who did not want to be in one camp or another. It is this background which informs her philosophy of inter-religious co-operation and subsequent peace work, for she maintains that working towards positive relations between different faiths is crucial to achieving durable peace.


Starting a grassroots peace initiative: The Wajir Peace Comittee

Wajir is one of the Northern Kenyan districts that was under emergency law from 1963-1990, with government forces fighting an active guerrilla movement (the Shifta war). When the emergency and quasi-occupation ended, the security situation deteriorated even more. There was an open conflict which claimed 1500 lives, and which resulted in a lot of hatred between different clans. In 1992 Dekha and other women as well as concerned men started a grassroots peace initiative, bringing together people from all clans. Despite opposition from the traditional clan leaders (elder men), they began to organise mediation between the warring parties (with representatives of minority groups acting as moderators). When an agreement was in place, they set up the Wajir Peace Committee, with representatives of all parties - clans, Government security organs, Parliamentarians, civil servants, Muslim and Christian religious leaders, NGOs etc. - to implement the agreement. Dekha, who had been working as coordinator for a mobile primary health care project for nomadic people, was elected as Secretary of the Peace committee hence undertaking dual roles.


More Info - http://www.rightlivelihood.org/abdi.html