Almas Elman, a prominent Somali rights activist, was killed Nov. 20 in Mogadishu, struck by a bullet while riding in a car. She was apparently heading to the airport after attending a meeting at the Elman Peace Centre [11], which was founded by her mother Fartuun Adan in 1990. Elman came from a long line of activists. She was the sister of aid worker Ilwad Elman who was recently short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her father was the respected Somali activist Elman Ali Ahmed, who was himself assassinated in Mogadishu in 1996. She became a dual Canadian and Somali citizen after her family fled to Canada in the early 1990s during Somalia's civil war. But she remained a leading voice for human rights in Somalia.
Elman's sisters Ilwad and Iman—a commander in the Somali armed forces—along with their mother, run the family's foundation, a nonprofit "dedicated to promoting peace, cultivating leadership and empowering the marginalized brackets of society to be decision makers in the processes that ensure their wellbeing," as described [12] on the organization's website. (OkayAfrica [9], Canadian Press [13])
In recent years, the Elman Peace Centre has documented rights abuses in Somalia by government troops [14], Ethiopian occupation forces [15], Islamist insurgents [16] and rival clan militias [17].
