A feminist perspective on the armed conflict in Sudan
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John Ashworth
Jun 14, 2024, 4:25:28 AMJun 14
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Attached please find a paper by Zeinab Abbas Badawi entitled "A Feminist Perspective on the Armed Conflict in
Sudan" from Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, June 2024.
Introduction
Despite the magnitude of the violations and galling experiences that women have been subjected to throughout the current armed conflict in Sudan, what has been discussed is only the tip of the iceberg. Women’s experiences of this conflict have yet to be properly revealed and explored. The few experiences that have been documented resemble a cinematic tragedy with events that nobody could imagine happening in real life – events that defy our ability to describe them. And yet the reality is that there are millions of other tales both short and long, and every woman carries a personal and unique saga including horrors and suffering.
War and conflict continue to have a strong presence in women’s lives, though they may take different forms. Some, like the current armed conflict, are open, and some are hidden, insidious conflicts waged against women. These are the product of systematic discrimination embedded in cultural, social, economic, and political norms.
Sudanese women played a central role in the December 2018 revolution and the toppling of the Bashir regime in the name of freedom and societal justice. Though women showed their ability to lead and presented a model for creating a new status quo of equality, dignity and making discrimination a thing of the past, the transitional period devolved into a fierce and bloody armed conflict in which the ugliest kinds of crime and violation were committed and many women have lost their homeland. Now, women are faced with a new and harsher chapter as the conflict spreads, becomes more complex, and increasingly reflects racial bias.
This is not a report on violations of women’s rights during the conflict, though such violations do feature in its analysis. Rather, it aims to view the conflict from a female point of view: analyzing the wide-ranging effects of the conflict on power dynamics and gender roles, and the circumstances of Sudanese women. It goes beyond treating women as victims only capable of morally denouncing and condemning male economic, political, and social violence, and assesses their ability, grit, and will to take part in social transformation in which women play leading roles and look beyond the conflict to address its structural causes through their insights and new working approaches.
Despite the magnitude of the violations and galling experiences that women have been subjected to throughout the current armed conflict in Sudan, what has been discussed is only the tip of the iceberg. Women’s experiences of this conflict have yet to be properly revealed and explored. The few experiences that have been documented resemble a cinematic tragedy with events that nobody could imagine happening in real life – events that defy our ability to describe them. And yet the reality is that there are millions of other tales both short and long, and every woman carries a personal and unique saga including horrors and suffering.
War and conflict continue to have a strong presence in women’s lives, though they may take different forms. Some, like the current armed conflict, are open, and some are hidden, insidious conflicts waged against women. These are the product of systematic discrimination embedded in cultural, social, economic, and political norms.
Sudanese women played a central role in the December 2018 revolution and the toppling of the Bashir regime in the name of freedom and societal justice. Though women showed their ability to lead and presented a model for creating a new status quo of equality, dignity and making discrimination a thing of the past, the transitional period devolved into a fierce and bloody armed conflict in which the ugliest kinds of crime and violation were committed and many women have lost their homeland. Now, women are faced with a new and harsher chapter as the conflict spreads, becomes more complex, and increasingly reflects racial bias.
This is not a report on violations of women’s rights during the conflict, though such violations do feature in its analysis. Rather, it aims to view the conflict from a female point of view: analyzing the wide-ranging effects of the conflict on power dynamics and gender roles, and the circumstances of Sudanese women. It goes beyond treating women as victims only capable of morally denouncing and condemning male economic, political, and social violence, and assesses their ability, grit, and will to take part in social transformation in which women play leading roles and look beyond the conflict to address its structural causes through their insights and new working approaches.
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
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