Jurma Tikmasan was born in Tuburan, Basilan, Western Mindanao. She took her elementary and high school education in Jolo, Sulu. Without meaning to, she witnessed the burning of Jolo, Sulu in 1974 when the Moro National Liberation Front entered the town. She and her mom evacuated to an island fronting Jolo known as Bangas. Their relatives initially thought they were dead as it took days for them to find them in the mountains of Sulu. This was her first direct experience of real violence that became the seed of her passion for peacebuilding.
Buh Jurma dedicates her life to the promotion of women and girl-children’s welfare through gender sensitivity training highlighting the Islamic perspective to create an atmosphere for better dialogue especially at the community level. She works with different NGOs outside of the province and promotes peace building efforts in Mindanao.
She refuses to accept injustice. While in college, she visited the Muslim inmates in the Muntinlupa Bilibid Prisons (National Prisons) in 1983 as a member of the University of the Philippines Muslim Student Organization. To her surprise, she saw her stepdad in the prison. She, therefore, worked to have his case reviewed by seeking the assistance of the Office of Legal of the University. Despite her being a student, she requested for the speedy review of the case in the Supreme Court and her stepdad was freed.
Buh Jurma wanted to devote her life at the service her community that she went back and settled in Tawi-Tawi. She became one of the founders of the Tarbilang Foundation Incorporated that was established in Tawi-Tawi in 1988 and registered formally in the Government’s regulation office in 1990.
The first project was livelihood then branched out to education, research and advocacy. It began by helping in the economic livelihood of Muslim communities through launching a credit line in the form of loans for tricycles. It paid special attention to the much needed social awareness on gender and reproductive health. A breakthrough project was the publication of a booklet on gender-sensitive reproductive health in Islam for the Muslim religious leaders to be used during Khutba or the Friday religious sermon inside the masjids.
Because of diverse conflict issues that crop us in the communities, Buh Jurma inadvertently find herself in the world of conflict mediation. She would be invited to be one of the mediators between warring parties. In one of the mediation dialogues, one of the parties in the conflict brought high powered guns. A confrontation was avoided because Buh Jurma was able to talk the party and a peaceful agreement was arrived at between the two parties.
She is continuously engaged in promoting awareness on women’s rights in Islam. A highly complicated and challenging task as the community members generally believe that women have less rights than men. She gently promotes women’s rights in Islam through community-based education sessions.
She would travel in far flung islands and engage the community in sharing information on the rights of women and how Islam protects them. She would start sitting on the floor to signal that she is one with the community despite the difficulty of squatting. There is no blackboard or materials to be used as reference because a good number can not read and write. She would often tell us that we have to be very sensitive when we approach the community. They should feel comfortable with us and that should be our number one concern. She would not drink water unless offered water by the community. Her sensitivity, humility and depth of experience are three of the best qualities she has that has kept Tarbilang Foundation and her advocacy on women’s rights very effective. While doing peace building, she would remind us that we have to pursue the call to peace for this is the only way we can all win the battle of poverty, conflict and injustice. A martial law survivor herself, she knows how difficult it is to live a life full of uncertainties. “We need to assert ourselves and fight for what is right for our people. The conflicts should stop with our generation but it has not. That only means we need to do more work so that the next generation will have safer and better times ahead.”
She helps other development workers and is very generous with her time and energy. She does pro bono activities being resource person in workshops. She facilitates trainings and writes proposals to raise funds for programs. She is a woman who never gives up dreaming, fighting and working hard to have a beautiful Bangsamoro that we will all enjoy soon, in shaa Allah.
Buh Jurma is actively involved in the promotion of UNSCR 1325 so women in conflict areas are attended to and empowered to decide for themselves. is the desire of her heart that ture peace will finally be experienced by the people in Muslim Mindanao – no more armed conflict and people live an empowered life of dignity and joy. She firmly believes that one instrument that can make this happen is the passage of a Bangsamoro Basic Law that is faithful to the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro – a product of 17 years of negotiation between the Moro International Liberation Front and the Government of the Philippines. Buh Jurma engages in advocating for the passage of this basic law and enjoin the women in the communities to understand its contents in order that they can promote it as well.
