“During the last 20 years, Sudanese women have been trained in negotiations and mediations. Not because this was a favourable subject for them—but because we’ve had so many crises”, said Shaza Bala Elmahdi, the Sudan Country Director for the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). 

Women and women’s organizations were involved in negotiations during the wars with South Sudan and in Darfur, and during the country’s subsequent upheaval.

Those groups have “done a lot of work in terms of raising the capacity, which was needed”, Elmahdi said. “But when you look at the results of all this work, there is still little representation happening at the top.”

Sudan’s civil war will mark its one-year point on 15 April. While women are facing disproportionate violence, displacement, and humanitarian need during the crisis, they are not equally represented in the talks that may help end the conflict.

During negotiations in late 2023, Elmahdi noted, even an attempt to add a quota to women’s representation at the table fell short, with a mandate that women make up just 30 per cent of negotiators. 

“We’ve seen researchers saying that, if you have women at the negotiating table, then you have a more sustainable peace process”, she said. “But they are not taking this into account. Nobody’s keen to bring women to the table.”

Women were utterly cut out from the process during negotiations about humanitarian access, said Hanin Ahmed, a young activist who founded an emergency room program serving those in need in the city of Omdurman.

In the meantime, Sudanese women are facing some of the worst humanitarian challenges in the world.

“Right now, we have a famine looming on the horizon”, said Ahmed. She described how humanitarian aid and women’s dignity kits are frequently intercepted and blocked by warring parties, and how the conflict has affected everything from pregnancy care to sexual assault.

“Victims are in fear to file complaints about rape cases because they fear re-violation”, she said.

UN Women has partnered with women’s organizations implementing an emergency humanitarian plan in Sudan, and has supported local partners supplying life-saving assistance to millions. But the scale of the need is fast outpacing the speed that it can be delivered.

“Sudanese women are very resilient and have been for decades fighting for peace and the return to democracy. They strongly aspire to live in a life without fear violence”, said Adjaratou Ndiaye, UN Women’s Sudan Country Representative. “They are always calling for the return to democratic governance, and it is very important that this is highlighted.” 

“Women can’t find access to a hospital to give birth, they can’t have access to a refrigerator to store fresh blood for them when they are facing death”, Elmahdi said. “In the time of the war, women are not necessarily killed because of bullets or bombs. They are killed by having less access to basic social needs.”

The two crises—women’s lack of political empowerment to resolve the conflict, and the steep humanitarian challenges they face—can compound one another, Elmahdi said.

“These are practical issues. You cannot talk about women playing a role in a peace building process, or in a political resolution, if they are lacking basic life needs, if they are at stake of living or dying”, she said. “There are no hospitals, no food, no water, no electricity. And then you ask them to be part of the political conversation? That’s sometimes not realistic. You need to fulfil the basic human need.”

As the conflict enters its second year, however, Ahmed and Elmahdi have seen some glimmers of hope.

“The generals of the two-armed groups, they made this war happen—but they might not necessarily be the one who silence the guns, especially if you have a strong civilian movement”, said Elhamdi. “I think this is what we need to build.”

“For me, there is a reason for hope”, Ahmed said. “It is the passion of our young generations, who are sacrificing themselves every day to get humanitarian access, to innovate new solutions, to help civilians on the ground.”

As part of the emergency room programme, Ahmed described how “localization hubs” have served as de facto decision-making bodies, bringing together activists from grassroots, local, and international organizations, with a gender balance.

“We bring women from different ideologies, different religious, and ethnic groups”, she said. “And we’re working together on the ground to deliver humanitarian aid, supporting each other.”

At the emergency rooms, women learn skills to negotiate the conflict, and develop methods to protect themselves and others, Ahmed said.

“We’re all we are working in a strategic way to build future leaders for Sudan”, she said.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UN Women.

On 15 April 2023, war broke out in Sudan in between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In the year that followed, some 8.2 million people have fled their homes, and an estimated 24.8 million are projected to need humanitarian assistance in 2024. 

As the conflict reaches its one-year mark, women and children are bearing the brunt of the crisis, with 19 million school-age children out of the classroom and more than 100 reports of sexual violence.

Women throughout the country recently shared their stories of survival and endurance during the year of war. Their names have been changed to protect their safety.

Fatima’s story

“At my worst moment, I could not have imagined that I would be in this painful situation as now”, said Fatima, a woman in her 40s.

“At the beginning of the war, we were all frightened by the sounds of the blows and the frontlines near us”, she said, noting that her home in the village of Al-Assal, in the southern state of Khartoum, was nearby an RSF camp. 

Fatima and her family fled the area and made a harrowing drive towards safety.

“I expected the worst to happen to us on the way”, she said, describing how her family drove past bodies on the road, heard constant sounds of fighting, and ran dangerously low on money.

When her family finally arrived at an airport, authorities told Fatima that Sudanese nationals were not allowed to board flights out of the area for at least two months. While her children and her husband hold foreign passports, Fatima does not.

“At that moment, my children started crying hysterically and they refused to travel”, she said. An official encouraged Fatima to allow her children to accompany her husband on the flight, saying “that they would find a better situation away from the war”.

Amid tears, Fatima bade farewell to her family and hoped to see them in a few short months. She found refuge in an internally displaced person (IDP) shelter, and awaited her reunion with her family.

But as of early 2024, nearly a year had passed since Fatima last saw her children. She is still in contact with them, but fears for their lives abroad, where only one of her daughters, at age eight, has been able to find a place in a local school, while the others in their teens and twenties have taken jobs.

She feels like “what happened is a kind abduction of my children”, Amid said.

“They are now collecting money to get passports so that they can come back again to Sudan”, even while the war continues, she said. 

While staying at the IDP facility, Fatima is working with the Women Awareness Organization (AWOON), a local organization and UN Women partner, to help other refugees find shelter while continuing to advocate for her own case.

“I complain about my affair to God”, she said. “My children are mine, and I have hope of living with them soon.”

Kawther’s story

“We left our house in August last year [2023] after we were told that armed people were asking for us, as my husband works as an officer in the army”, said Kawther, a mother of five.

Kawther and her family fled their home on foot and were repeatedly stopped at checkpoints.

At one checkpoint, a soldier approached Kawther and started touching her body inappropriately while trying to confiscate golden bracelets tied around her waist, she said. 

Kawther stopped the search and said she would voluntarily hand over the bracelets, her 13-year-old son attempted to defend her. 

“The soldier held the gun to his head to threaten him”, she said. “I was afraid for my son and begged him, screaming that my son is still a child and does not understand what he is saying.”

The soldier searched the family’s documents, claimed that foreign visas in her son’s passport were illegal, and placed her son under arrest. Kawther spent the rest of the day desperately seeking her son’s release, seeking reprieve from soldiers nearby.

“After an exhausting and dangerous search trip, I found my son at eight o’clock in the evening in one of the RSF camps”, she said. “He was in a very bad condition, especially as he had diabetes.”

The family was detained together at that camp, where Kawther described poor treatment and daily beatings. After 15 days, the chaos of nearby military clashes allowed the family to escape, and they eventually found their way to an IDP shelter.

When she arrived at the shelter, “I broke down psychologically” due to the stress of the previous weeks, Kawther said, adding that her humiliation in front of her children had caused her to have suicidal thoughts and had damaged her son’s mental health.

“I suffered and still suffer a lot from the effects of the beatings on my body and from exhaustion”, she said. “But I found great support from my husband, who is also wounded in a military hospital. He calls me every day and talks to our son to explain to him what happened to him… and that I am not to blame for what happened.”

Mariam’s story 

Mariam, a mother of three, often buys household goods and provides occasional help for a woman in her neighbourhood whose husband recently died.

One day while walking to her neighbour’s home, two soldiers stopped Mariam on the street. 

A soldier “asked me to come to where he was standing, held my hand tightly and asked me to give him the money and if I was wearing gold”, she said. “Then he asked me to remove my veil so that he could search me.”

Mariam told the soldier that she was not carrying any gold, but the man retorted, “You are a woman, and you cannot run like a man, so it’s better for you to tell the truth.”

The other soldier then added, “We will take you with us. What do you think?”

“And here a real terror came over me”, Mariam said. “I thought of my children and what would happen to them.”

Mariam pleaded for the soldiers to release her, and they eventually did so after finding that she was not carrying money or valuables. A young man from her neighbourhood met Mariam in the street after she was released and offered to walk her home to safety.

“I refused for fear of those who would harm him”, she said. “But they saw him standing near me from afar.”

“In the evening, we got the news that this young man had been killed”, Mariam continued. “It hurt me so much that I cried a lot and asked myself: Am I the reason why he was killed? Is it because they saw him with me? How painful and sad what happened to him and to us…” 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UN Women.

Since 15 April 2023, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has resulted in the deaths of at least 14,600 people. More than 19 million children are out of school, in what UNICEF calls the “largest child displacement crisis in the world”.

As the war ends its first year, it has taken a particularly devastating toll on women and girls.

Since the beginning of the conflict, UN Women has supported women and girls in Sudan and in exile to help meet their immediate needs and to build the groundwork for a lasting peace in the country. But while aid through UN Women and partners has reached millions, the situation remains dire.

2.5 million women and girls are displaced

210,000 women are at heightened risk of gender-based violence

1.2 million women are malnourished

All parties to the conflict in Sudan must ensure that women, girls, and all civilians can live free from violence. Women must be represented in conflict resolution and peace-building processes; their voices are vital in the pursuit of peace for all people in Sudan.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of UN Women.

The crisis in Sudan is a life-and-death emergency on a massive scale that has been overshadowed by other crises in the world, said Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States (MSF) USA.

Benoît gave the following statement today after visiting MSF teams in eastern Chad and in Sudan’s Darfur region:

“When the war in Sudan exploded one year ago, it set off one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. But most of the world has turned away. This crisis is not getting even a tiny fraction of the international attention or assistance that people in Sudan require. More than 8 million people have been uprooted from their homes, extreme violence against civilians is widespread, and malnutrition is at alarming levels.

“We are seeing a catastrophe unfolding in North Darfur, where our teams have estimated that 13 children are dying each day of malnutrition and related health conditions at a camp for displaced people. Across the border in Chad, I met with refugees who fled ethnically targeted violence in Darfur, and who now risk losing access to even a bare minimum of food and water due to international aid shortfalls.

“MSF is one of the few international aid organizations still operating in Sudan, working in some of the areas worst affected by the conflict. And in many places, we are the only international organization present. We are calling on other organizations to step into the humanitarian void to meet the enormous unmet needs. We are also urging Sudanese authorities to stop blocking aid and preventing staff from reaching communities cut off from health care. What we see is alarming, but we’re even more worried about what we’re not seeing due to bureaucratic obstruction and access restrictions.

“This is a life-and-death emergency on a massive scale but it has been overshadowed by other crises in the world. It is past time for the international community to address this crisis head on.”

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Médecins sans frontières (MSF).