GSW alumna nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

AMERICUS — Georgia Southwestern State University alumna Jaha Dukureh has been nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for her work toward ending female genital mutilation and child marriage in her home country, The Gambia, in West Africa and across the world.

Born in a small Gambian village in 1989, Dukureh was a victim of genital mutilation at just one week old. Her arranged marriage to an unknown older man at age 15 brought her to New York City. After two months, Dukureh was able to leave her husband and continue her education in the United States, where she became a naturalized citizen in 2015.

Dukureh was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian parliament member Jette Christensen.

“I nominated Jaha because she is living proof that the belief of a single person can cause them to change the world,” Christensen said in a news release. “I introduced Jaha as a hero who has done the impossible. Several times. Two hundred million women suffer every day from the injuries of female genital mutilation. If peace is the absence of violence, we won’t get it until this is stopped. And if there’s someone who can fix it, is it Jaha Dukureh.”

There are 329 candidates for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the second-highest number of candidates ever. It is awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses,” according to founder Alfred Nobel’s will. Only 16 women have been awarded the prize since it was introduced in 1901.

“My whole country is celebrating with me,” Dukureh said of her nomination. “This has brought the global female genital mutilation movement to the forefront of the conversation. This is not a win for me, but a challenge and an opportunity. An opportunity to get the world to listen and take action. Ending FGM is not a one person journey.”

Dukureh earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration and management online at GSW in 2013.

“We are so proud of Jaha,” GSW School of Business Dean Elizabeth Wilson said. “Even while completing her degree online from her Atlanta home, she was leading the fight against FGM and successfully changing laws. We are proud to have played a small part in this amazing woman’s journey and wish her well as she continues to make a difference in the world.”

Remarkably, Dukureh is not the first GSW alumna to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. President Jimmy Carter won the esteemed award in 2002, donating a large sum of his winnings to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving, a unit of GSW.

The same year Dukureh graduated from GSW, she founded the nonprofit organization Safe Hands for Girls, which provides support for survivors of FGM and advocates for an end to such practices. She was then part of the movement that successfully banned FGM in The Gambia in 2015, a journey chronicled in the 2017 documentary “Jaha’s Promise.”

By age 25, Dukureh’s activism earned her a place on Time Magazine’s 2016 list of 100 Most Influential People in the World and on New African Magazine’s 2017 list of 100 Most Influential Africans. She won the Humanitarian of the Year award at the African Diaspora Awards in 2017 and just last month was named the first Regional Goodwill Ambassador for Africa by UN Women. Her appointment coincided with the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation.

Dukureh lives in Atlanta with her husband and three children. She is continuing her work to end FGM, drawing inspiration from her own journey and the need to protect her daughter and the millions of other young women at risk.