MEET NOMINEE 3 OF 7 IN THE HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER OF THE YEAR AWARD CATEGORY – DAHIR DAUD

Dahir Daud Ahmed is a passionate human rights defender and paralegal in Tana River County. He actively started defending human rights back in 2010. He was motivated due to the rising number of arbitrary arrests by police, widow inheritance against their will, poor service delivery by the government, forceful evictions and lack of good leadership.

His focus area is women’s land rights, reproductive health rights and good governance, specifically ensuring the county government’s resources are spent prudently and citizens get service delivery.

Some of his achievements include stopping the forceful eviction of bulla salama village by the National Irrigation board, which claimed that the land belonged to them. Dahir organized community protests, and the land was eventually given to the residents of bulla salama. As a paralegal, he helped 7 widows file matrimonial property cases in hola law courts, and three cases were concluded in favour of the widows. Dahir drafted two petitions to the county assembly against 4 chief officers for gross misconduct, abuse of office and misappropriation of funds. One chief officer was removed from office, and the three of them surcharged the amount of money they could not account for, which served as a deterrent to the other county officials.

Dahir is a full-time human rights practitioner who encourages other human rights defenders to cater to their financial well-being. He operates a cybercafé and earns from his facilitation as a certified budget trainer on the devolved system of governance.