Nyadol Nyuon

Last updated

Nyadol Nyuon, OAM (born 1987) is an Australian lawyer and human rights advocate, who was born in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, of a family fleeing the Second Sudanese Civil War. She works as a commercial litigator in Melbourne and is a regular media commentator.

Contents

Early life and education

Nyuon was born in the Itang refugee camp in Ethiopia in 1987, where she lived until the age of four. The family was forced to leave the camp due to conflict in Ethiopia, taking 40 days to walk back to an area then in southern Sudan (since 2011, part of South Sudan). Not long after arrival, Nyuon was separated from her mother. She rarely saw her father, Commander William Nyuon Bany, one of the founders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, as he was away fighting, and died in 1996. [1]

She was raised by various step-mothers in Nairobi, Lodwar and at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where she did her primary and secondary schooling. It was also at Kakuma where she was inspired by the work of UNHCR lawyers and decided that she too wanted to be a lawyer. [1] Her mother came and found her after her father's death and when she was about 14 years old, and brought her other siblings to Kakuma. Eight of them lived in a mud house. [2]

In 2005 the family was accepted as migrants to Australia, and Nyuon was 18 years old when they arrived in Melbourne, penniless. [1] After attaining her Victorian Certificate of Education, she earned a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University before being accepted into Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, where she was resident at Ormond College and graduated Juris Doctor. She was helped to achieve a scholarship by one of her professors, and was later given $10,000 by a woman she met by chance at a dinner, who was touched by her story. [2] Her younger brother Bigoa became an Australian rules football player.

Career

Nyuon has previously worked for prominent law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler. [3] [2] [4]

Nyuon was drawn into fighting for the rights of African Australians after a number of racist incidents targeting her, her friends and others. [5] She was trolled mercilessly after speaking out about Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton's allegation in 2018 that Victorians were “scared to go out in restaurants” because of “African gang violence”. [6] She is determined to create a fairer Australia, pointing out the serious effects of racism on the victim's health. [5]

Nyuon is also a writer, a regular media commentator on programs such as ABC’s The Drum and Q + A , a volunteer and a keynote speaker. [2] [7]

Nyuon has written for The Age , The Sydney Morning Herald , The Saturday Paper , [7] The Guardian [8] the Australasian Review of African Studies , Australian Mosaic (quarterly magazine published by the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia [9] ) and Offset (Victoria University’s annual literary magazine). [5]

After an appearance on Q+A on 15 June 2020, Nyuon was sent abusive messages on Facebook which were later found to have come from a serving police officer in South Australia Police. After this had come to light, the officer was put onto administrative duties and became the subject of an internal investigation. She said that she was regularly sent abusive messages after appearing on television, and would be taking some time off. [10] [11]

In September 2020 Nyuon was appointed chair of Harmony Alliance: Migrant and Refugee Women for Change, a national coalition of migrant and refugee women in Australia. [12] [13]

On 30 June 2021 Nyuon made a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, titled 'Australia Reimagined', in her role as chair of Harmony Alliance: Migrant and Refugee Women for Change. [14]

In 2021, Nuyon was a nominee for the 2022 Victoria Australian of the Year Awards. [15]

On 20 November 2021, Victoria University in Melbourne announced that Nyoun had been appointed as the Director of the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre. She will take up the position as Director on 31 January 2022. [16] The Centre provides legal education, training and research with a focus on law and cultural diversity. [17]

Recognition and awards

Selected works

Related Research Articles

Sudanese Australians are people of Sudanese origin or descent living in Australia. The largest population of Sudanese Australians reside in Victoria (6,085).

African Australians are Australians descended from the any peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa, including naturalised Australians who are immigrants from various regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and descendants of such immigrants. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within Sub-Saharan African ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to 1.3%.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian rules football in Africa</span> List of AFL Leagues by country

Australian rules football in Africa is most organised in South Africa, although there are programs under development in many African nations including Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe and there are plans to introduce the sport into more African countries.

William Nyuon Bany Machar He was a Southern Sudanese politician who was also one of the founders of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). He was appointed third in command after John Garang and Kerubino Kuanyin Bol. While he worked as a commander of the SPLA he lived in Itang, a small Ethiopian town in the Gambela Region.

Itang is a town in the Gambela Region in western Ethiopia. Within Gambela, Itang belongs to Itang woreda which forms a special woreda. Located on the Baro River.

Deborah Joy Cheetham Fraillon, is an Aboriginal Australian soprano, actor, composer and playwright.

Hilary Christiane Mary Charlesworth is an Australian international lawyer. She has been a Judge of the International Court of Justice since 5 November 2021, and is Harrison Moore Professor of Law and Melbourne Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, and Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University.

Agonia Radlmeier, OP, was a German religious sister of the Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She led a movement to care for the victims of the military conflicts in central Africa.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) is an asylum seeker support organisation in Australia. The ASRC, based in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, provides aid, justice and empowerment programs to over 1000 asylum seekers living in the community seeking refugee protection. The ASRC is run by a team of over 1000 volunteers and around 100 paid staff, and is headed by former university lecturer and lawyer Kon Karapanagiotidis.

South Sudanese Australians are people of South Sudanese ancestry or birth who live in Australia.

Thomas Jok Deng is a professional soccer player who plays as a central defender for J1 League club Albirex Niigata. Born a South Sudanese refugee in Kenya, he has represented the Australia national team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Sudan at the 2016 Summer Olympics</span> Sporting event delegation

South Sudan competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. South Sudan had been an independent nation since 2011, but its civil war had delayed its membership with the International Olympic Committee until 2015, making 2016 its first official appearance at the Olympic Games. The country was offered three universality placements in athletics, as no South Sudanese athletes met the Olympic qualifying standards prior to the Games. Three athletes, two men and one woman, competed in three track and field events, but did not win any medals. The sole woman, Margret Rumat Hassan, was given a spot eight days prior to the start of the Games that had been allotted previously to Mangar Makur Chuot. This change was against the advice of the South Sudan Athletics Federation and was due allegedly to pressure from Samsung, for whom Hassan had appeared in an advertisement. The flagbearer for both the opening and closing ceremony was Guor Marial, a marathon runner who, then unable to represent South Sudan, had competed as an Independent Olympic Athlete in 2012. Five South Sudanese nationals also competed as members of the Refugee Olympic Team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emtithal Mahmoud</span> Sudanese poet and activist

Emtithal "Emi" Mahmoud is a Sudanese-American poet and activist, who won the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam championship. In 2018, she became UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, and in this capacity, has traveled to refugee camps in Kenya, Greece and Jordan, drawing wider attention to the situation of refugees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akec Makur Chuot</span> Australian rules footballer (born 1992)

Akec Makur Chuot is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Fremantle Football Club, Richmond Football Club, and Hawthorn Football Club in the AFL Women's competition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adut Akech</span> South Sudanese-Australian model

Adut Akech Bior is a South Sudanese-Australian model. Akech made her fashion week runway debut as an exclusive in the Saint Laurent S/S 17 show and went on to close both their F/W 17 and S/S 18 shows as an exclusive. In 2018, she was chosen as "Model of the Year" by models.com, an honour which was repeated the next year. Models.com includes Akech in its list of the "New Supers."

The Darfur Bar Association is a Sudanese lawyers' organisation created in 1995. In 2020, the group received the Democracy Award for supporting marginalized people in advocating for their rights and providing legal assistance to vulnerable activists before and during protests in Sudan.

Raja Nicola Eissa Abdel-Masih is a civilian member of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Sudan's collective transitional head of state. She was chosen for this position as one of six civilians to hold seats in the original 11-member council. She was the only one of them whose name was agreed upon through a consensus between the Forces of Freedom and Change alliance (FFC) and the Transitional Military Council (TMC), as was foreseen under the terms of the Draft Constitutional Declaration of August 2019. She is the only civilian member of the TSC to have been reinstated by Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan after he seized power in the 2021 military coup d'état.

Mercy Akuot Marang is a South Sudanese social activist and singer. She currently lives in Kenya.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bigoa Nyuon</span> Australian rules footballer

Bigoa Nyuon is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the North Melbourne Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL), having initially been drafted to the Richmond Football Club. He played his first AFL match in round 9 of the 2022 AFL season against Hawthorn.

Akuch Kuol Anyieth is a South Sudanese-Australian academic and writer.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Rayson, Hannie (24 May 2019). "I feel free: Lawyer Nyadol Nyuon's journey from horror to hope". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Dent, Georgie (17 June 2020). "Nyadol Nyuon is a lawyer, a former refugee & an incredible advocate". Women's Agenda. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 Spierings, John (1 October 2019). "Australian Financial Review Women of Influence Awards". Reichstein Foundation. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  4. ↑ Nyuon, Nyadol (26 March 2021). "'Go back to your s---hole country': the high cost of standing out, speaking up". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Gill, Sonia (4 January 2019). "Rights Activist Wins". F Magazine. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  6. ↑ Allman, Anna (16 April 2019). "A day in the life of Nyadol Nyuon". Law Society Journal.
  7. 1 2 "Nyadol Nyuon". Speaking Out. 26 June 2019. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  8. ↑ "Nyadol Nyuon". the Guardian. 24 June 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  9. ↑ "Australian Mosaic". FECCA. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  10. ↑ Farhart, Claudia (18 June 2020). "SA police investigating officer for racist messages to Sudanese-Australian lawyer Nyadol Nyuon". SBS News. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  11. ↑ Davies, Richard (17 June 2020). "SA Police officer investigated for racist messages to Sudanese-Australian Q+A guest Nyadol Nyuon". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  12. ↑ Brancatisano, Emma (28 September 2020). "New Harmony Alliance chair Nyadol Nyuon on Australia's African communities being heard". SBS News. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  13. ↑ "Harmony Alliance". National Women's Alliances. 20 February 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2020.
  14. ↑ "National Press Club". 30 June 2021. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
  15. ↑ "Victoria Australian Of The Year". 30 November 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  16. ↑ "Director Sir Zelman Cowan Centre". 30 November 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  17. ↑ "Sir Zelman Cowan Centre". 30 November 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021.
  18. ↑ "Awards". Future Justice. Retrieved 19 June 2020. Winner Future Justice Prize 2016
  19. ↑ "Harmony Alliance First Anniversary Celebration". Harmony Alliance. 26 November 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  20. ↑ "Ms Nyadol Nyuon". It's an Honour. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.