Her Story: an Interview with Neimat Kuku Mohamed
Click here to view video excerpts of the interview with Neimat Kuku Mohamed.
Neimat Kuku Mohamed is the Research Coordinator at the Gender Centre, and is one of six founding members. Here she shares with Caroline Boudreau her story of working for social change in Sudan.
Neimat, you have always been proud to call yourself an activist. What inspired you to become so involved in community issues?
By the time I entered university, the commitment to the struggle for human rights and democracy was already part of who I was. I was also quite independent and went on my own to study at the faculty of agriculture at Zagazig University in rural eastern Egypt. There I worked with small farmers, getting to know their daily struggles.
When I returned to Sudan in 1981, I immediately joined the Sudanese Women's Union (SWU) and the Agriculturist Trade Union (ATU). This was when structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank were beginning in Sudan, affecting all aspects of Sudanese society, from education policies to small-scale farming.
During those years, working for the governmental agricultural agency, I felt that I needed to understand how women farmers in particular were being affected. When I first asked my boss for permission to visit the rural areas, he was astonished that a woman would want to do that. After I convinced him, I went to el-Gadarif, where I was particularly struck by the fact that women farmers could not own land.
In my work, I stressed the importance of addressing women's issues, while continuing to be active in the SWU and the ATU. After the military coup in 1989, when the current fundamentalist regime seized power, many unions were dissolved, including the SWU, and many union members with positions in the government were dismissed. I was one of them. However, they could not fire me simply for union affiliation, they needed an excuse. I was asked to sign an internal memo forcing me to wear "Muslim clothing," which meant wearing a veil. I refused. This is the official reason I lost my job.
In 1997, I was part of a group of six Sudanese women activists who came up with the idea of creating the Gender Centre for Research and Training, where we would be proactive and assist people - women and men - in raising critical questions about women's rights and gender equality. We did not want to do research and training simply for the sake of it. For us it was essential that these activities be grounded in women's experiences, and that women start organizing themselves, in their own interests.
How are Sudanese women organizing today?
One radical change that took place over the last 20 years is that women started to organize themselves without the traditional platform of the SWU. Today there is a diverse women's movement emerging in Sudan. Women from camps of internally displaced people, from the informal sector, and from rural areas are getting together and speaking in their own voices. The political culture of respect for human rights is taking root among women with many different interests and backgrounds. One of the challenges ahead is to find a way to enrich and enhance this diversity.
Over the last ten years, how has the Gender Centre worked to effect change?
We have always worked at various levels with different groups of people, from women in the camps to policy-makers in Khartoum, from lawyers advocating for constitutional amendments in favour of women's equality, to community leaders.
Over the last ten years, the Gender Centre has contributed to developing a culture of dialogue between civil society and the state. We are working to help civil society actors realize that they can effect policy change, and create positive links between the people, the state, and its institutions by using legal instruments such as our Bill of Rights and the national Constitution, which include a fairly progressive human rights framework. For example, women from the informal sector successfully used the Constitution to challenge the wali decree, a legal order that prevented them from working in public places.
Given the current political and social transitions in Sudan, how do you see the future for young Sudanese women and men?
Our youth have completely lost faith in the older political institutions, be they of the state or civil society. They don't recognize themselves within the current fundamentalist government, but they also don't feel represented by re-emerging traditional unions like the SWU or even many Sudanese NGOs.
After the signing of the peace agreement between northern and southern Sudan, we are seeing a lot of activity on university campuses where young people are talking about peace, human rights, and even issues of sexuality. I think that the middle-aged generation needs to be open to new forms of activism. It is no longer by just organizing fora or conferences that we can contribute to debate within society. Young people are using music, the Internet, and mobile phones to organize themselves. They are finding their own alternatives and answers because their society has failed them. We need to adapt to these new ways of mobilizing people and sharing our struggles.
Please click here to view excerpts from the interview with Neimat Kuku Mohamed from the Gender Centre for Research and Training who speaks about her experience as an activist in Sudan.
| Reviewed June 11, 2007 |  |
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