War has been one of the most constant realities for Sudanese women with many conflicts happening since 1955. The latest conflict that began on several fronts in April 2023 and is ongoing has impacted millions of women across Sudan. This war has robbed them of their safety as different forms of gender-based violence have been endemic and have created a situation of perpetual vulnerability for women which has negatively affected their access to economic empowerment, education opportunities and political participation.
Formally, estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project put civilian deaths at over 10,400 people and this is a modest figure due to inaccessibility. Moreover, over 5 million have been displaced with the majority of them being women and children and over one million fled to neighbouring countries. UNICEF estimated that at least 435 children including girls have been killed in the war with scarce information on rising infant mortality as well as maternal mortality.
In this article, we want to move beyond the official and UN statistics and dive into the stories of women who were affected by this war first-hand and are now fighting personal and public wars to rebuild their lives and create new temporary ones, protect their dignity and maintain their bodily autonomy. The women are of different ages, but all of them had their lives upended due to the war that erupted in Khartoum between the national army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). When they left their houses to escape death and sexual violence, they not only left most of their personal belongings, but they also left their jobs and studies and their dreams and hopes for an independent future.
Let us dive into the daily lives of three displaced women from Khartoum and find out what they did before the war and how they are coping with displacement.
A student feels that she has no choices
M.A., whose initials will be used to protect the privacy of the interviewee, is a 21-year-old student who lived in Sharg En Nile (Eastern Nile), one of the neighbourhoods in Khartoum state and a month into the conflict, she became displaced and is now living in Abu Hamad, a town in River Nile state.
“We left our home when the RSF began raiding houses in our neighbourhood, but the main reason for leaving is when we began hearing stories of rape and kidnapping of women. I left with my family to River Nile state as this is where I am originally from.”
Before the war, M.A. was a university student and due to the current situation, she is unable to continue her education or transfer to another university. To make a living, she used to have an online store where she sells women’s items and although she is now displaced, she is trying her best to keep her business in operation, but it is no longer a stable source of income to her.
“When we first arrived, we lived with my paternal uncle, but now we have built a small house using very basic building materials,” said M.A.
As a woman, her life is not easy in Abu Hamad and the society is very conservative. She is struggling to find her basic needs as a woman, for example, sanitary pads are not easy to find and the available ones are of very poor quality. The houses are built in a way that is not friendly to women as the toilets are outside the actual house and this impacts the privacy of women. M.A. explained that women and girls have to wait until the end of the day (or until the evening) to use the bathroom and they have to dress a certain way the whole time because there is no privacy.
M.A. feels a great loss. She lost her ability to finish her education which would have given her a better life, she is struggling to restart her business because she still doesn’t have a network to buy products and sell them locally. She also lost most of her belongings including merchandise when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias entered their house and looted it.
“I can’t imagine a life here for myself and I don’t know how I will finish her education or find a partner,” said M.A.
She is still in pain about the journey from their home to Abu-Hamad.
“We took a bus from a bus station in Khartoum and we couldn’t move because there was heavy fighting. We ran and hid for a few hours behind a mosque, the bullets were literally above our heads as we were on the ground trying to stay safe. We were supposed to move at 7 am, but we ended up leaving at 4 pm and after we moved, a bomb fell a few meters from the road and we had to change direction.”
The RSF also intimidated them on the way from Khartoum North to Al-Jeily, a town that connects Khartoum North to the River Nile state.
“It took us two days to get to our destination. It was a terrible journey,” said M.A.
“I only feel hate”
M.M., whose initials will be used to protect the privacy of the interviewee, is a single 39-year-old who lives with her family and before the war, she worked in the logistics sector. She lives in Omdurman and due to the conflict, she moved from Omdurman locality to the Al-Thawra neighbourhood which lies in Karary.
Karary and Omdurman Locality are localities that lie within Khartoum state.
M.M. left her house and became displaced in Karary locality in mid-July after their house came under the bullets of the RSF who held them at gunpoint for over an hour and interrogated and threatened them before telling them that they would be killed if they didn’t leave their house.
“I am from Omdurman so I have nowhere else to go. Of course, the stories I heard about rape and kidnapping affected our decision, but that incident made us decide to leave.”
Although they were lucky to find a house to move to through acquaintances, it is difficult for her as a woman to live in an area that is constantly bombarded and affected by conflict. Karary locality is the only locality that is completely controlled by Sudan’s national army making it a refuge for families who live in surrounding localities. It now hosts thousands of internally displaced persons
(IDPs) who are hosted by families or are living in schools and public buildings. This doesn’t make it safe, it is impacted by fighting between the army and the RSF and the RSF shells Karary on an almost daily basis to force the residents to evacuate. As a result, dozens of residents in Karary are killed every week, but they are unable to flee because many of them have nowhere else to go
M.M. explained her everyday life in Karary, her new home.
“ I can’t leave the house for long to get food items and can’t be on my own as well. I have tried finding a job, but the jobs available are mainly for men, even some of the jobs that recruited women are now for men because of the current situation. Currently, the only jobs available are for health workers and those living on daily subsistence such as selling tea and food,” said M.M.
M.M. feels hurt and angry at what happened to her and her family. She feels that they were degraded and inside her is a raging volcano directed at everyone involved in this war.
“I don’t feel well at all. I only feel hate,” stated M.M.
Moreover, she doesn’t have the resources to leave Sudan or move to a safer state because she would have to pay extortionate rent prices and her family doesn’t have this kind of income now and this makes her think about her fate. She is extremely worried about sexual violence and kidnappings.
As a young woman who had a job and an independent life, all she can do now is wait for this madness to end.
“I just don’t feel safe around my family”
T.B., whose initials will be used to protect the privacy of the interviewee, is a young woman who worked in the media industry and who chose to live an independent life in Khartoum to protect her mental health away from Al-Jazeera state where she is originally from.
She worked in Khartoum and lived on her own for years before she was forced to move to a place where she felt she did not belong to. She is not on good terms with her family but left Khartoum to seek refuge as she believed that her displacement would be short-term. She left Khartoum also because she was fearful of the RSF because she knew that the sexual violence that is part of their war culture in Darfur would be replicated in Khartoum.
“I didn’t want to be with my family because of the violence they subjected me to. I just don’t feel safe around my family,” said T.B.
T.B. chose Al-Jazeera because she had family there and she couldn’t afford anything else. She added that “because of inflation, my salary in Khartoum only covered my basics in terms of rent and living expenses, but it also saved my dignity. I moved from a physical war to a psychological war, a war on my mental health.”
In her new home, she is unable to find work because there are no opportunities in her town and she has to commute to Wad Medani, the capital of Al-Jazeera state, to make a living. She has been doing some unpaid work to keep herself busy because not doing anything and not having a job was affecting her mental health, however, she needs to make an income for her empowerment.
“If I get a job and make money, I will move from my family’s house right away,” said T.B.
Right now, she spends her time listening to music or watching films when there is internet and she is living on the memories of her living the life she wanted in a past life. She said she rarely speaks anymore and she is not on good terms with her father whom she describes as “verbally abusive and having extremist ideas”. She can’t enter any battles now with her family members because she feels that she is not in a good mental health state.
As a woman, there is discrimination against her and commenting on this, she said, “Two of my male friends also moved to Al-Jazeera around the same time and now have jobs in Wad Medani and I noticed that men get cheaper rent, it is easier for them to move around and people trust them faster. To fit in, I changed the way I dress. I wear very loose pants, but I still get met with looks and people believe that girls who come from Khartoum are loose and they want to do anything they want to them. I feel that the community feels that it is their right to harass girls who came to the city from Khartoum because of the war. They always tell me that I look like I was displaced by the war. This limits my movement and makes me feel vulnerable.”
T.B. is also doing much of the house chores right now with no support from her brothers who also began interrogating her if she wants to go out which limits her movement as well.
“This is not my life. I had a life, a life where I had bought everything for my home. Every single tea cup and utensil was carefully selected. It took me a long time to build my life and in the end, I only left with a back-pack.”
Right now, T.B. feels very vulnerable as she has no income and has to rely on her father.
“Sometimes when we are not on good terms, I can’t even ask him for money to buy sanitary pads. I have to use any piece of cloth which affects my dignity,” said T.B.
As a single woman who had an intimate life in Khartoum, she finds no privacy for any sexual activities. “I have no intimate life right now because of privacy issues and I also can’t satisfy my needs on my own (masturbation) because there is no place to do that. I feel so sexually frustrated. There is no privacy, you share your space with a lot of people and even children.”
To answer the questions, T.B. said that she had to sit under a tree inside the house and speak at a low volume. T.B. is facing two wars, the war of the generals in Khartoum and the war against her personal life.
This essay excerpts an unpublished paper called “War on Women in Sudan: Sharing Experiences of Displacement, Violence and Personal Struggles” written for The African Middle Eastern Leadership Project
