The war in Sudan is taking a heavy toll on the lives of Sudanese women and girls. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 2 million people have been displaced within the country, including 53,000 pregnant women. Primary health care services have become extremely precarious, especially those specialized, such as reproductive health, screening, timely control of risk factors and prevention of specific damages. Services that traditionally do not exist or survive in precariousness in most African countries, but which in some regions of Sudan were taken over by humanitarian aid institutions, many of which have had to leave the country due to the war.
However, the risk situations that most affect Sudanese women and girls are gender-based violence and sexual exploitation, which are specifically expressed in acts of rape, sexual assault and femicide. These situations have been coupled with the loss of their homes, the need to leave their communities to find food, and an increasingly difficult struggle for family survival.
According to a UN report, an estimated 2.6 million people in Sudan are at risk of gender-based violence. Almost 40 percent of women and girls reported having to avoid essential public places such as food and water collection points, markets and firewood collection, for fear of being attacked, raped or sexually exploited. The risk of sexual violence is particularly high when women and girls move in search of safer places, both within Sudan and across borders.
Given this situation, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) has intervened in the field to coordinate efforts of all kinds in the prevention and response to gender-based violence. To this end, they seek to provide humanitarian support and services in areas where women and girls are highly displaced, as well as in shelters where there is a large concentration of women, both in Sudan and in neighboring countries.
According to UNHCR in a statement released last July on the risks of the female population in Sudan, sexual exploitation and rape are perpetrated by fighters, criminals and traffickers.
Rape and sexual exploitation leave deep and lasting damage to the physical, sexual, reproductive and mental health of survivors, as well as the possibility of becoming pregnant.
Leaving Sudan involves great risks as well; many women have reported suffering rapes at the hands of border guards and at checkpoints. During journeys along migration routes to North Africa and Europe, females are sexually assaulted, harassed and even exploited by residents of transit or refugee-stay countries. As one of the actions to address gender-based violence and sexual exploitation, UNFPA organizes sessions every day at the Bulukat transit center on the threat to which Sudanese women and girls are exposed. These sections are attended by women and other residents to learn about the services and supports available to survivors. The number of violations is closely related to the escalation of the conflict. In those areas where the fighting is most intense, more women and girls are raped. The characteristics of migration routes also influence, where the greater the distance women move away from their communities of origin, there are greater situations of this type. Numerous violations were also being committed in transit communities.
The Bulukat transit center, adjacent to the port, currently hosts some 5,000 returnees from South Sudan. Women and girls at the centers told staff at a safe space supported by UNFPA, the UN agency for sexual and reproductive health, that they had witnessed or been victims of rampant sexual violence in Khartoum and Omdurman.
UNFPA works in Upper Nile, Unity and Grand Bahr el Ghazal states in South Sudan to ensure that returnees and refugees can access sexual and reproductive health support and gender-based violence response services. Staff work on the ground in health centers, safe spaces for women and girls and comprehensive care centers, providing comprehensive medical, legal and psychosocial support to survivors of gender-based violence.
Boys, along with girls, are also suffering physical and psychological damage. Many male minors are separated from their families to be recruited into the Sudanese armed forces. Exposure to combat and violent experiences at the front cause serious psychosocial and mental health consequences in these children.
Human trafficking networks have also been strengthened by the war conflict. Traffickers take advantage of women and minors who have no real possibility of transiting to other neighboring countries. They take advantage of this urgency in the absence of opportunities for vulnerable groups and end up kidnapping them. In this context, UNHCR has reiterated the need for neighboring countries to keep their borders open to the civilian population arriving from Sudan and to remove any impediments to entry, so that they can have massive and effective access to protection and assistance.
Currently, the high risk of living in Sudan for women and girls means that many are willing to risk everything to get to safe places. This situation combined with the decision of the Sudanese armed forces to continue to use excessive force in fighting with paramilitaries will further increase violence against vulnerable groups.
Within war there is a kind of war against women. There is total inertia to objectify women and girls when social chaos strikes society, especially in countries where women’s rights are historically violated. In the 1970s, under Colonel Gaafar Al Nimeiry, a process was carried out in Sudan to introduce laws from the standpoint of religious precepts and mandates. These laws were ultra-conservative and came to govern public and family morality, and allowed child marriages, male guardianship over women, as well as genital mutilation.
The country currently has one of the highest percentages of displaced and extremely vulnerable women on the planet; that is why the struggle for peace should not be limited to stopping the war. We must strive to gradually empower Sudanese women and make them the protagonists of cultural, social and political reform, not only in Sudan, but throughout the African continent.