Abdulrahim Abby Farah
Abdulrahim Abby Farah (1919 - 2018) was a politician and diplomat born in Barry. His father Abby Farah was a Somalian sailor who was awarded the MBE for services to sailors in wartime. His mother, Hilda Anderson ran a guest house. He was born in the aftermath of the South Wales Race Riots of 1919 which affected Barry and Cardiff.
Farah (right) was educated at Gladstone Road School and Barry Grammar School, succeeding to University College Exeter, then Balliol College Oxford. It was obviously a family of high achievers - both of his brothers also studied at Oxford.
He had already visited Somalia, or as it was then, British Somaliland, at age 17, being sent by his father to work in the Colonial Service. After serving in the Second World War he returned to Britain for his studies.
When Somalia became independent in 1960, however, he returned there. having become Director of the Somali Information Service, Farah was appointed Somali Ambassador to Ethiopia in 1961. He held the post until 1965, also representing Somalia at the Organisation of African Unity.
It was in 1965 that his association with the United Nations began.
Between then and 1972 Farah was the Permanent Representative of Somalia at the United Nations, working at the UN in its New York headquarters, becoming the Chairperson of the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid in 1969. In 1971 he served as president of the UN Security Council. He arranged the Security Council's first meeting in Africa, at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1972.
More United Nations posts followed. Farah was Undersecretary-General for Special Political Questions between 1973 and 1978, becoming the Undersecretary General of the United Nations in 1979, a post he held until 1990. He headed the 1990 UN Mission on ‘Progress made on the Declaration on Apartheid and its Destructive Consequences on South Africa’.
Farah retired thereafter, but his humanitarian work continued. He established an amputee hospital for landmine victims in Somalia. In 1998, he became a founder of the Partnership to Strengthen African Grassroots Organizations, eventually becoming its Chairperson.
Although the majority of his life's work was concerned with Africa in general, and Somalia in particular, the boy from Barry never forgot his Welsh connections and never lost his Welsh accent.
