Raja Nicola
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Raja Nicola Eissa Abdel-Masih () is a civilian member of the
Transitional Sovereignty Council The Transitional Sovereignty Council () is the collective head of state of Sudan, formed on 21 August 2019, by the August 2019 Draft Constitutional Declaration. The initial council was dissolved by its Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in the ...
,
Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...
'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 Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Abdelrahman al-Burhan (; born 11 July 1960) is a Sudanese army general who has been the ''de facto'' List of heads of state of Sudan, leader of Sudan since 2019. Following the Sudanese revolution, Sudanese Revolution in Ap ...
after he seized power in the 2021 military coup d'état. As such she is, along with fellow council member Aisha Musa el-Said, one of the first two women in modern Sudanese history to hold the role equivalent to a federal minister and is also the first
Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...
(as a member of the Coptic minority) to hold such a high political office in the country. As a judge, she is responsible in particular for the legal system in Sudan.


Education

Nicola was born in
Omdurman Omdurman () is a major city in Sudan. It is the second most populous city in the country, located in the State of Khartoum. Omdurman lies on the west bank of the River Nile, opposite and northwest of the capital city of Khartoum. The city acts ...
and graduated in 1980 with a
Bachelor of Laws A Bachelor of Laws (; LLB) is an undergraduate law degree offered in most common law countries as the primary law degree and serves as the first professional qualification for legal practitioners. This degree requires the study of core legal subje ...
from
Cairo University Cairo University () is Egypt's premier public university. Its main campus is in Giza, immediately across the Nile from Cairo. It was founded on 21 December 1908;"Brief history and development of Cairo University." Cairo University Faculty of En ...
.


Career

Being a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...
by education, Nicola also served as a
judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...
. She worked in the Sudanese Ministry of Justice from 1982 until her 2019 appointment to the Sovereignty Council.


Minority rights

In September 2012, Nicola said that religious rights of Christians in Sudan asserted under the 2005 Interim National Constitution were not fully implemented, with some employers not giving Christians their legal two hours' right to prayer and schools not allowing Christian children to be absent on Sunday for attendance at religious services. Nicolas also stated in September 2012 that the ''Special Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Non-Muslims in Khartoum'' that had been created in 2007 had been active in advocating to law enforcement agencies on the behalf of non-Muslims arrested for allegedly violating Shari'a law, and in publishing regular reports and recommendations to the government in relation to non-Muslims' rights. She stated that the Commission had been closed down in 2011, against the wishes of the Christian community, after the secession of South Sudan. In a meeting with the Sudanese Solidarity Organization Against Racial Discrimination (SSOARD) in June, 2021, she stressed the need for the implementation of "all legislations and laws against
racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their Race (human categorization), race, ancestry, ethnicity, ethnic or national origin, and/or Human skin color, skin color and Hair, hair texture. Individuals ...
".


Sovereignty Council

The August 2019 Draft Constitutional Declaration that defines the state bodies and procedures for the
2019 Sudanese transition to democracy Nineteen or 19 may refer to: * 19 (number) * One of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019 Films * ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film * ''Nineteen'' (1987 film), a 1987 science fiction film * '' 19-Nineteen'', a 2009 South Korean film * '' Dici ...
creates a Sovereignty Council as the collective head of state of Sudan. The signing of the July Political Agreement and the Draft Constitutional Declaration by the Forces of Freedom and Change alliance (FFC) and the Transitional Military Council (TMC) followed half a year of sustained civil disobedience and the 3 June
Khartoum massacre The Khartoum massacre occurred on 3 June 2019, when the armed forces of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, headed by the Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan of the Sudan Armed Forces and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daga ...
. The FFC and other civilian groups had insisted on a fully civilian government. The Draft Constitutional Declaration compromised by creating a Sovereignty Council with five civilians chosen by the FFC, five military chosen by the TMC, and a sixth civilian to give the Sovereignty Council a formal majority of civilians. The sixth civilian had to be mutually agreed on by the FFC and the TMC. In late August, Raja Nicola was nominated by the FFC and the TMC as their mutually agreed-on sixth civilian member of the Sovereignty Council. The choice of Nicola, as a member of the Sudanese Coptic community, was seen as a concrete measure for social diversity, in particular for Sudanese Christians. Shortly after being sworn in as a member of the Sovereignty Council, she described her vision of the task of the council, stating,


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nicola, Raja Members of the Transitional Sovereignty Council Sudanese judges Coptic Christians Sudanese Christians Living people 21st-century Sudanese women politicians 21st-century Sudanese politicians 21st-century judges 20th-century judges Cairo University alumni People from Omdurman Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century women judges 21st-century women judges