Background
McCune was born in Assam, India where her father ran a tea plantation. The family returned to the United Kingdom but her father did not adjust to life in England. Her parents divorced and her father committed suicide.
McCune was born in Assam, India where her father ran a tea plantation. The family returned to the United Kingdom but her father did not adjust to life in England. Her parents divorced and her father committed suicide.
She attended the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
Sudan
McCune went to war-torn Sudan in 1987 at age 23 to teach for the British organisation Volunteer Services Overseas. After reluctantly returning to England in 1988 McCune once again returned to Sudan in 1989 to work for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund-funded Canadian organisation Street Kids International, which founded or re-opened more than 100 village schools in the country"s south. McCune spent much of the late 1980s in the south in the midst of war and famine.
Riek Machar
They were instantly attracted to one another, and Machar, who already had a wife, proposed on their second meeting a year after the first.
After taking up with Machar, including using a United Nations-supplied typewriter to produce manifestos, she was fired by Street Kids International. She lived with Machar as war intensified and he split his faction away from the larger movement.
At one point they fled a machine-gun attack. Emma also saved more than 150 war children in Sudan including hiphop artist Emmanuel Jal and is the title subject of his song "Emma McCune" on his 2008 album Warchild.
