I work in Sudan as a Programme Officer for the Salmmah Women Resource Centre. My first introduction to this work was through Sudanese women’s empowerment for peace. As a young Sudanese woman working in a non –governmental organisation, I committed myself to learning and also to dedicating myself to fully engage in peace issues as an advocate and activist. My work currently invoIves providing updates to and of the Sudanese women peace building movement SuWEP (Sudanese Women Empowerment for Peace). In addition, as I provide technical support that is needed in our daily office work and provide support using web tools for our campaigns and activities.

I call myself a feminist because I strongly believe that women and men should have equal rights. On a daily basis I commit my efforts to the realisation of women’s human rights as an extension of this belief. My work has allowed me over the last 3 years to work with women youth in building their capacity on gender issues and gave me the ability to conceptualize women’s issues in Sudan and link it to the global context. I constantly work on deepening my analytical capacity on issues such as gender, feminist and movement building as well as human rights.

I believe that women in Africa face different challenges, injustices and unfair working conditions, gender based violence, and the effect of detrimental laws. The only way for us to make a real difference to women’s lives is through working collectively. Working on our own will not change the realities of women, so we need to network, develop new strategies and we also need to reflect on our existing strategies. In addition to this, we need to continue raising the awareness of the injustices women face, as well as of our efforts to address this. This will ensure that more people (both men and women) who identify with what we share could join our efforts, and we will also build a chronology of evidence of our work for future generations. A good way to do this is to augment the current African Feminist Charter with real stories of women from all ages and countries as they use it and as they grapple with the principles and ideology of feminism in reality.

In my personal and professional life, I am committed to working toward empowering youth, women and men, in Khartoum and in conflict areas, on policy advocacy and on issues of human and women’s rights, feminism, and reproductive rights. I also participate in action research and in documenting and publishing the struggles and stories of women (old and young). At a personal level, as a young women, I work at connecting with other young women in my own country as well as regionally and globally, and to learn as much as I can from those who are willing to mentor me.

I am inspired by women’s achievements and the dreams of youth. I am always inspired when I connect with people and epically women from around the globe and get to know their life stories.