A voice for the marginalised women – Wajir county (by Raia Development Initiative (RDI)

Ubah Abdikarim, a former nominated member of County Assembly of Wajir county has decided to use her story to challenge the community discrimination in political leadership. She uses all the forums available to share her first-hand experience of suffering as a nominated MCA. During the stakeholder engagement forum organised by RDI through the WVL program which brought on board male community leaders, Ubah openly quoted that ‘politics in this county is 100% male dominated and women leaders are frustrated with demeaning campaigns, threats, discriminations and other acts of violence such as cyber-bullying, electronic type attacks on their morality, and intellectual capacity. At the family level, female leaders & candidates experience various forms of violence, including disinheritance and divorce for choosing to compete against men in an election, Personally I was divorced because of my commitment to my work and challenging the patriarchy & negotiated democracy, endorsements, deviation from traditional the normalized gender roles for Somali women’. Ubah supports women leadership and out of the forum the leaders signed a pledge to support women participation in leadership positions.