Jalila Khamis Koko Essay

Growing up in the Nuba Mountain region of Sudan, Jalila Khamis Koko grew up to face an incredible challenge in her life. Born in South Kordofan around 1968, Koko experienced and witnessed many violence from the civil war in her country. South Kordofan, centered in the Nuba Mountains with its capital, Kadugli, is the only state in northern Sudan to produce oil in its fertile area of Abyei, claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan since the two countries could not decide which one should own the oil-producing area (Sudan Tribune, 2016). This made the state’s Nubian people a target of the military in the north. Ran by their governor, Ahmed Haroun, civilians of the area have experienced an ongoing war. The five-year battle in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan began in 2011 between the combined force of South Sudan 's army (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) and the military organization of the rebels of the north (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement - North) against the army of Sudan (Wagen, 2016). Ever since South Sudan gained independence from Khartoum, Sudan in 2011, the border, the Nuba Mountains, left on Sudan’s side, had become the battlefield where Khartoum militants fought to destroy all the rebels in the border, affecting the Nubian people living in the area. Civilians were killed, and schools, homes, and hospitals were destroyed. The conflict in South Kordofan forced Nuba refugees to move away from the area. Many moved to its neighborhood, South Sudan, but Jalila Koko moved to Khartoum with her husband and six children. Koko, 43 years old, worked as an elementary school teacher. She promoted education and was worried about the local children having to walk far distances just to go to school in a nearby village. “I fought and struggled to obtain the necessary documents to open a school in my village. I received some resistance from the village people and the mayor at first, but eventually I was successful in opening the school. I went back to Khartoum and returned with volunteer teachers and items donated for the construction of the school. Everything was made of very basic materials. The children did not need to walk 3 kilometres a day and reach school in exhaustion” (Elsanosi, 2013). Even with the circumstances her and her people had to face, she was brave enough to take the initiative, that first step, to achieve the work she believed in. When the war in South Kordofan broke out, she welcomed 24 refugees into her home in Khartoum (Hogan, 2012). She is a member of the Nuba ethnic group from South Kordofan and a member of the opposition party SPLM - N as an activist and volunteer promoting humanitarian work in South Kordofan. All the violence, sexual abuse of women, and the genocide of her people filled her with range. On June of 2011, Koko had appeared in a youtube video in which she spoke about the conflict that led the people of South Kordofan to face horrible conditions, criticizing the treatment of her Nubian people by the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, stating that a cease fire should take place (Sudan Tribune, 2013). Because she expressed her views, even though she did it peacefully, she was arrested on March 15, 2012 by the National Security Services, spending three months in a solitary confinement and later transferred to the Omdurman …show more content…
It may not be a relevant thing in other countries, especially those ones that are underdeveloped, but in a country like the U.S., with so much freedom bestowed on everyone, it is not impossible to start a feminist movement or even make it a popular thing again. With all the technology and instant forwarding of messages, it is easy to make this type of movement trending. In my opinion, if a feminist movement would occur today, it would be from young women in today’s generation who are not afraid to voice their opinions. Witnessing how the election this year turned out, I was not surprised how many young women in our country supported and campaigned alongside Hillary Clinton not just as a way to go against Donald Trump and what he stands for, but to mainly focus on promoting feminism and a new era with a woman president to really make a mark and establish more progress in women’s history in this