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In Sudan, after a whole year of war, women human rights defenders in Sudan continue to try and help those who are suffering.
Women human rights defenders with the Support Sudan Campaign lost everything, but they did not lose their determination to help others.
A number of them have shared their stories over the past year, reflecting the magnitude of the tragedy caused by the Sudan war: poverty, death, hunger, disease, displacement, and asylum.
Shelling and death in Khartoum
Wassal Hamad al-Nile, a university student and activist, was forced to leave her home in Khartoum’s Bahri neighbourhood.
“Amid the sounds of artillery and bullets, indiscriminate shelling, and endless days of death, we spent all our time shaking under our beds,” al-Nile says. “Even our food, which was scarce, was eaten under the beds.”
Al-Nile and her family did not have enough money at that time, so her mother had to sell all the jewellery she had, for a pittance, to buy bus tickets to Shinde.
“We stayed in a shelter inside an old elementary school that lacked the basic necessities. The place was unsanitary and overcrowded with inadequate ventilation, the number of bathrooms was not enough for the people there,” she said, adding that food distribution was very little and irregular.
She had been trying to help others there, by providing assistance and psychological support to women and children but was harassed by the authorities. “I was bullied, and we volunteers were called names by them and by some who were war advocates and those opposed to peace,” she says.
We lost hope of finding a decent place that preserves our humanity and what remains of our dignity
“We contracted a number of diseases due to the unhealthy environment and the lack of food, and we couldn’t find medicine,” she says. This ultimately affected her father’s health, as the family had no money to buy him medicine. He was later transferred to Shendi Education Hospital but died while undergoing treatment. “We lost hope of finding a decent place that preserves our humanity and what remains of our dignity,” she says.
Al-Nile and her family moved to the village of Um al-Tayyur, where they now live in a rented room.
War in Darfur, again
Nahla Youssef, head of the Coalition of Women Human Rights Defenders in Darfur, fled the city of Nyala with her 11-year-old son. They went through Juba before settling in Kampala, Uganda.
“At the end of May, I was forced to leave Sudan for a safer place,” Youssef says. “As I left, the Rapid Support Forces [RSF] took over my house and most of the houses and streets in my neighbourhood.”
They had a hard time getting out, as both sides clashed. “We would lie on the ground for fear of the shells falling on us like rain and often crawling on the ground while covering my son in my arms to protect him,” she says.
With three of her colleagues, they began the journey to the city of Al-Daein hoping to finally reach Abu Matariq, but the roads were unsafe. “We were exposed to random shooting by stragglers, and we felt that someone was following us to rob us,” she says.
They decided to change course and left for Kampala, Uganda, where they found a safe place to stay. It is from here that Youssef continues her work in assisting women human rights defenders.
“In Sudan, extensive violations of human rights and international humanitarian law were committed, so my colleagues in the coalition and I continue our work and will not stop,” she says.
RSF in the state of Gezira
Khartoum was tense before the large-scale mobilisation, and Hajar Mahjoub, a feminist activist and researcher, says she was unsure of how to keep the family together.
“My husband and I did not know [what to do] in such a situation, especially that my husband’s mother is sick and unable to walk, and she has been living with us at home for three years,” she says. They decided that she and their five children would leave first, in the company of his older brother. The husband would follow them later after he found a suitable way to carry his mother, she says.
So they left for Abu Usher in Gezira State in central Sudan, some 110 km southeast of Khartoum, but on the way there, they were subjected to humiliation and harassment at numerous checkpoints. Yet after getting to Gezira, Majoub was forced to leave again after the RSF took over the city, as she feared for her life and that of her children.
But these harsh experiences have not prevented them from supporting their communities. “Despite the stress and oppression caused by the war, I [still] help women and children with disabilities, as this is my specialty and work that I have been doing for years,” Mahjoub says.
It is the same situation for Tahani Abass, founder of NORA, an activist organisation against gender-based violence, who is also a member of the No Oppression of Women Initiative. She found refuge in Madni city, Gezira State, after she fled the war with her two children.
She had started working again, consulting with doctors, human rights defenders, and civil society organisations on how to help people affected by the war, until fighting spread there last December.
Women human rights defenders at risk in Darfur
Human rights defenders are often targeted, which forces them to hide and reduce their movement or change their place of residence for fear of arrest or death.
Youssef, head of the Alliance of Women Human Rights Defenders in Darfur, says the war has affected women defenders because some families see human rights work as a great risk for women, especially in displacement camps. She adds that some community elders have gone to the extent of warning families about women defenders.
“The war affected me psychologically, she says. “I was displaced and left the country [Sudan] with my children, at a time when my family depends on me. I did not find a stable job sufficient for housing, expenses, children’s studies and treatment, and I cannot return to my country.”
Youssef says many other women human rights defenders are subjected to bullying and smear campaigns on the Internet as a result of their demands to stop the war, while others have been killed.
One of them is Bahjaa Abdelaa Abdelaa, who before her death, had been sent death threats for monitoring rape cases.
August 7, 2024
Photo: Wikimedia commons
