Fatuma lives in a camp for internally displaced people in Mogadishu, Somalia. She married when she was 16 and soon became pregnant. But her husband beat her.
Not long after the birth of her daughter Halima, she became pregnant again and the abuse escalated. “We fought over how to cover the medical and household bills,” Fatuma says. “I tried pleading with him to provide for us and to take good care of us but instead he hit me and the children. After a while, I’d had enough. I wanted to leave the chaos behind and I had to get away.
“He told me to leave without the children, but I was still breastfeeding the young one.” In the end, he took Halima.
Fatuma begged for her daughter’s return. She learned that Halima was suffering from diarrhoea, but it was several weeks before her husband finally brought her back.
“Halima was in a bad state. Her skin had turned black. You could tell she was in pain.”