Published at: http://worldpulse.com/node/74618
Kamilia is the founder and Executive director of Nuba Women for
Education and Development Association (NuWEDA). She dreams about a Sudan
that respects the diversity of its own people. She hopes for people to
live in peace and dignity and to be treated as Sudanese citizens not
according to their ethnic, religious, regional and gender identities.
She says “I want the old days of Sudan to revive; when people were just
Sudanese”
She was born on 1969 to Christian parents in Kadugli; the capital of
South Kordofan state. Kamilia’s father decided to sell his flock of cows
and move to Khartoum seeking a better life for his family. They
migrated to Khartoum when she was an infant. She was raised in the
church and volunteered to teach at Sunday schools since she was 14 years
old.
Kamilia kept her eyes on attending the university and not have the same
fate that most of her peers face; getting married and have children
before reaching high school. Her family was willing to get her married
soon after she graduated from intermediate school. The bishop Butrus
Kura; her uncle and role model saved her by demanding that her father
allow her to attend high school. The Bishop Butrus was supporting girls’
education; he advised many families which came to the church to allow
their girls to attend high school, and many husbands to allow their
wives to attend the university.
Kamilia is keeping her uncle’s favor and wishes all the girls could
access higher education. She got married after high school and moved to
Nigeria with her husband where she got a diploma on community
psychosocial intervention from Saint Jose State University on 1996.
On 1997, Kamilia was back to Sudan while the civil war in the south
was raging between the government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army
Movement. Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons were arriving in
Khartoum. She talked to her friend Fatima Sulieman "We need to do
something for our mothers and sisters who escaped the war to Khartoum"
Along with one of the church elders; they have mobilized people to join
them, conducted meetings, collected donations and provided humanitarian
relief. On 2002, the group was registered as a nonprofit organization
under the name Nuba Women for Education and Development Association
(NuWEDA) to access grants that maintain the sustainability of their
services and widen their community outreach. It kept growing and its
mandate extended beyond providing humanitarian assistance to advocating
for women’s rights, peace, building the capacities of women and youth
through education, training on development related issues and awareness
raising.
Threats by government security agents have always accompanied the
work of Kamilia as a leader of a non-registered group and as an
executive director of NuWEDA. Community based initiatives in the 1990’s
were very limited; additionally most of the IDPs were coming from the
war zones in South Sudan, Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. The authorities
in Khartoum regard them as rebels and spies and everybody who helps them
as having a relation to the rebel groups. Till now the authorities are
not keeping good intentions in the work of national civil society and
Kamilia is subjected regularly to harassment and interrogations.
Changing social norms that violate women's rights, such as domestic
violence and lack of women’s control over their bodies, is the challenge
that NuWEDA has taken on. Kamilia was labeled by conservative men in
displaced communities for spreading immoralities through educating women
about family planning and inciting them against domestic violence.
Girls’ and women’s education is NuWEDA’s missing key to empowering
and securing women lives and well being through offering them better job
opportunities, and a better life with choices. While NuWEDA is raising
the community awareness by girls' education, public higher education is
so expensive for most of the displaced families which are struggling
with earning the daily living. NuWEDA is willing to run a program for
sponsoring displaced women and girls’ university education. They have
been seeking funds for this program for the past 5 years, although they
couldn’t receive enough funds for the program launch.
In June, 2011, the civil war broke out again in South Kordofan region
between the government and Sudan People’s Liberation Army/North.
Bombardments of Kadugli and more than 40 towns, limited access to food,
high incidents of rape by government militias, arbitrary arrests and
forced military recruitment of women has made life terrible for families
and forced 300,000-400,000 persons either to flee to Khartoum or seek
refuge in South Sudan. Displaced families are living in poverty and
women are heading the households. The majority has limited professional
skills which leave them with limited and highly competitive employment
opportunities like domestic work. There is no legislation protecting the
rights of domestic workers by defining minimum wage, working hours,
leaves and end of service benefits. NuWEDA is coordinating an economic
empowerment program with other civil society organizations with the
purpose of organizing displaced women in cooperatives to advance their
economic status through savings, acquaint them with small business
skills, improve their access to loans and form a sort of informal trade
union.
Kamilia believes in empowering women to advance the status of
displaced communities; her vision drove the formation of NuWEDA. The
people’s needs for assistance have inspired her to form a group of
volunteers, and then build a nonprofit organization. She finds the
motive and legitimacy of her work from the people she serves.
