The Situation of Sudanese Women After 10 Years of the Sustainable Development Framework 2030 – Nemat Kuku
The Situation of Sudanese Women After 10 Years of the
Sustainable Development Framework 2030 – Nemat Kuku
After the end of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015,
and through the United Nations Conference on Development, world leaders renewed
their commitment to achieving sustainable development in its three
dimensions—economic, social, and environmental—for the benefit of current and
future generations of humanity. This comes through the greatest challenge,
which is the eradication of poverty and hunger and the effort to reduce risks,
by states committing to promoting and achieving justice through serious work on
enacting fair legislation that contributes to improving the quality of life for
the benefit of the elements of sustainable development (people – planet –
prosperity – peace).
And since Goal (5) in the framework of the
Sustainable Development Goals 2030 is centered on equality and
non-discrimination between genders and empowering women and girls to fully
obtain their rights, it is evident that the Sudanese legal system contains
clear discrimination, which hinders the progress of women, restricts them, and
deprives them of many of their rights stipulated in the constitution, which
drew its reference from international agreements and treaties. Successive
governments, including the transitional government after the December
revolution, failed to conduct legal reforms to remove all forms of
discrimination against women, especially the Personal Status Law, where the
marriage of a girl is permissible at the age of 8 years, as well as the
Criminal Law, for example (Article 152) of the Criminal Code of 1991 concerning
indecent and immoral acts.
As for the Public Order Law, it was drafted during the first
two years of the Salvation regime as a mandatory law without an explanatory
memorandum, which made its application dependent on the discretion of police
and judges. And although during the transitional period (2019–2023) a package
of amendments was made by the transitional government to the Criminal Code of
1991, the government should have conducted a comprehensive legal reform of the
Salvation laws, which the regime inherited from the religious laws of
(September 1983).
Also, the lack of proof of rape turns the raped woman into
an accusation of adultery, which prevented many families from filing
complaints, especially during this catastrophic war where rape has become a
systematic weapon against women and girls. It should also be noted that Sudan
has not signed nor ratified CEDAW, which calls for non-discrimination, thus
limiting the possibility of implementing legal reforms.
The phenomenon of rape in the context of armed conflicts in
Sudan is one of the most heinous manifestations of the violation of human
dignity, where sexual violence goes beyond the limits of an individual crime to
become a systematic tool targeting entire communities. In the ongoing war since
2023, this phenomenon has spread in an unprecedented manner in terms of scale
and repetition. According to statistics from several international and national
organizations working in combating violence against women and children, the
number exceeds 1,138 cases of rape, including 193 against young girls
and 221 against boys, among them 4 under the age of one. This raises deep
questions about whether this sexual violence occurs randomly and
coincidentally, or whether it represents deliberate and systematic behavior backed
by military and social policies and agendas.
It is worth noting that estimates indicate that documented
cases do not exceed 2% of the actual total violations. Estimates also indicate
that more than 12 million women and girls in Sudan are at risk of sexual
violence. The statistics on sexual rape in Sudan vary according to this figure,
due to weak monitoring and documentation, which still constitutes a real
obstacle to determining the cases that should go to the courts of justice.
The current situation now, as our country goes
through a catastrophic war, is that Sudanese women are paying the heavy price,
suffering from forced displacement and migration. Statistics indicate that of
the total displaced and refugees, which reached about 14 million citizens, the
number of women is estimated at 8 million, with the percentage of women
responsible for families rising to nearly 80%.
With the collapse of the health situation, the horrific and
grave sexual violations, and the spread of cholera, which has claimed more than
316,000 lives, dengue fever, which claimed more than 576,000 lives,
in addition to the spread of all kinds of fevers, malaria, and tuberculosis,
the statistics of malnutrition among pregnant and breastfeeding women are
continuously increasing. 176,000 pregnant women are suffering from
malnutrition, and 850,000 breastfeeding women, with the death of 45,000
children due to malnutrition since the beginning of the war until now. The
number of deaths during childbirth reached 680,000 pregnant women and
perhaps more, due to the continuation of the war and the military blockade on
some areas of Darfur and Kordofan.
UN reports also indicate that about 30.4 million citizens
are facing famine catastrophe, and among them 756,000 people are facing
various levels of hunger. Statistics also indicate that 3.6 million children
are suffering from acute malnutrition. These indicators of famine and severe
food shortages are a natural result of displaced people losing their
livelihoods, which affected their ability to produce and access food,
especially since 85% of food security and participation in food security is
carried out by women in the agricultural sector, particularly in conflict areas
in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. This led to a large gap in the
production of food crops and consequently the expansion of the informal sector,
where the number of women increased in an unprecedented way, which reduced the
frameworks of social protection and exposed them to more violations, especially
violence and sexual exploitation.
The weak participation of women in efforts to stop the war
and build peace at the level of policy-making and decision-making in all
platforms and peace negotiations remains a prominent feature, despite the major
role women play at grassroots levels, whether at the level of emergency rooms
or community kitchens that confronted this catastrophic crisis by contributing
to the preservation of social fabric. It is worth noting that this
marginalization has persisted in previous periods, especially at the level of
the transitional government 2020–2023, despite the constitutional entitlement
that stipulates women's participation at 40% at all levels, but their share did
not exceed, even in the best positions, 20%.
Despite the prominent role of Sudanese women in the
revolutionary and political movement since 2019 and expectations of some
progress in their participation in leadership positions at the level of
policy-making, this participation remained limited in both quantity and
quality, as they held ministries of a service nature without wide powers. Even
when they were granted two sovereign positions in ministries during the two
transitional governments (Foreign Affairs and Finance), they faced some
difficulties, rejection, and at times lack of necessary cooperation, which led
to their quick exit. This confirms the dominance of the "patriarchal"
institutional culture that works to restrict the active role of women in all
structures and institutions of governance.
In conclusion
Ending the war becomes a top priority to protect life in Sudan, given the
comprehensive destruction that has not occurred in any of Sudan’s prolonged
wars since before national independence in 1956. Sudan has witnessed several
wars due to the absence of a national democratic project agreed upon to achieve
economic and social liberation as one of the requirements of political
independence. This requires comprehensive change of all state structures and
confronting all forms of economic and developmental discrimination, which is
the foundation that paves the way for women’s liberation from all forms of
social and gender oppression and opens the path to achieving gender equality as
one of the humanitarian foundations.
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