Edna Adan Ismail

Edna Adan Ismail (Somali: Edna Aadan Ismaaciil / Adna Aadan Ismaaciil; born 8 September 1937) is a nurse midwife, activist, and was the first female Foreign Minister of Somaliland from 2003 to 2006.

She is the director and founder of the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa and an activist and pioneer in the struggle for the abolition of female genital mutilation. She is also President of the Organization for Victims of Torture. In March 2022, she became the president of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.

She was married three times, including to Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, who was the prime minister of the State of Somaliland

== Early life ==

Ismail was born in Hargeisa, in what was at the time British Somaliland, on 8 September 1937, the daughter of a prominent Somali medical doctor. She was one of five children born to her mother, but two died at the time of delivery. At the time girls weren't educated in Somaliland, but her father hired a tutor for some local boys and she learned to read and write with them. She later went to a school in Djibouti where her aunt was a teacher. When she was eight years old, she underwent FGM. It was arranged by her mother and...