On January 30, 2024, AMEL brought together a diverse group of activists, young leaders and allies for a webinar entitled “Elevating Sudanese Voices in the International Community”. AMEL President, Mohamed Abubakr, opened the webinar by highlighting that one of the main motivations for creating AMEL was to fill critical gaps, especially between those making/influencing policy in the Global North and those championing human rights/democracy across Africa and the Middle East. Such champions are much better poised to formulate more nuanced stances backed by lived experiences and research.
AMEL Executive Director Megan Hallahan noted that this was critically needed back in 2016-17 when AMEL was created, and even more so since the Sudan war broke out in April 2023. So AMEL commissioned research from key Sudanese civic activists, including Reem Abbas and Hamid Khalafallah. The very impressive bios of Reem and Hamid can be found on this page.
Reem, who is also an Alumnae of the AMEL Institute, discussed her research and findings, including the following highlights.
In her research, Reem sought to understand war through the personal experiences and stories of Sudanese women, who she views as being faced with constant structural violence that has always been supported by a social economic and political infrastructure, and lately, also full-blown conflict.
Half of the country, at least, is impacted by this war, leading to mass displacement and suffering. The war upended the life of women, robbing them of personal safety, robbing them of their economic security and putting them into a situation of perpetual vulnerability. Everything was affected - all that they worked so hard for, whether it was educational opportunities, economic opportunities, political participation – all of a sudden it all became challenged due to the war.
Moving beyond the official statistics, she used case studies to understand how war has affected women because they're actually fighting personal and public wars to rebuild their lives, to make sense of their new temporary existence, to create new temporary lives to protect their dignity and maintain their bodily autonomy. One case concerns a young woman who had moved years ago to live on her own in Khartoum in order to get out of her family's home where she was being verbally and physically abused. In Khartoum, she had created a new life, supporting herself and living without abuse. When the war started, all of a sudden she was in a situation where it's not safe to stay in Khartoum because of the fighting, so she went back to her family’s home, where she again faces abuse, but she has nowhere else to go.
There are endless similar stories. Or stories in which education and/or economic empowerment had been pursued by young women as a way out of patriarchal settings or other oppressive or abusive situations, and now they've lost all that empowerment and can't even think about their futures anymore because daily survival in the current war context is all-consuming.
The paper highlights many such examples of the various layers of disproportionate impact that the conflict is having now on women and girls in Sudan.
Hamid introduced his paper, which delves into how displacement has altered the dynamics and priorities of Sudan's pro-democracy movement, focusing on the experiences of Resistance Committee members (who are the heart and soul of the movement). Below are highlights of the issues explored by the paper and the key points made by Committee members interviewed for it.
Sudan's history reflects a robust civic culture with several democracy movements since independence, all of which struggled to achieve their objectives. The latest pro-democracy movement, especially the Resistance Committee born during the 2018-2019 pro-democracy Revolution, have survived through a turbulent initial phase of democratic transition, a pandemic, a military coup and, now, a devastating war. Despite their own challenges, they've maintained legitimacy and emerged as pivotal new political actors.
Resistance Committees are composed of thousands of activists who are organized horizontally, without rigid leadership structures. Their role and influence is inherently peaceful, recognizing that armed conflicts by nature lead to repression of civic spheres. Most Committee members put their young careers on hold to help the mass pro-democracy movement that began in December 2018 and continued consistently in the ensuing five years. Committee members displaced by the war have struggled to find work as they have very little professional experience. Many have shifted to volunteering to help address the dire humanitarian needs in their area, becoming part of local “Emergency Response Rooms”, which provide communal feeding programs, medical care access, etc. (in many places they are the only group responding to these basic needs as international aid is largely being prevented from entering/operating).
Both warring parties (the Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces) are arresting, intimidating and threatening activists, trying to force them to support one side over the other. This has caused polarization within the pro-democracy movement and threatens to break it. There are increasing calls to arm civilians for self-defense, but this is in conflict with the nature of the movement, which is nonviolent and pro-democracy. So the war is changing the dynamic and affecting the movement.
The harsh displacement circumstances and pervasive uncertainty make it very difficult for members of the movement to think about the future and democratic prospects. They struggle to navigate between their aspirations - their hopes for Sudan and its democracy - and daily survival. All emphasized immense financial difficulties. Additionally, as the war has seemingly pushed Sudan back to pre-Revolution times - when there was only dictatorship and no transition to democracy - most are devastated, feeling that their sacrifices for the movement over the past five years were all in vain. The psychological impacts of these struggles make finding motivation for activism very hard.
Although the International Community could provide support to help the democracy movement to survive this war, it is failing to do so. The paper contrasts the international community's response to the Sudan war with that of similar conflicts, such as the one in Ukraine. While the Ukraine conflict is consistently framed in terms of democracy, Sudan's struggle for democracy is often overlooked in the international response. For instance, Ukrainian civil society received significant support to ensure their pro-democracy voices were sustained and heard globally, while Sudan's civil society has not received comparable assistance, despite the fact that the war in Sudan cannot be separated from the country’s struggle for democracy.
As one interviewee so aptly put it, the warring factions are fighting two wars in parallel. One war is a power struggle between RSF and SAF, but collectively they are fighting a war against the democracy movement and the Sudanese civil society. So there's a pressing need for the International Community to prioritize supporting Sudan's pro-democracy actors and empower the movement to play a key role in shaping the country's future. This has to start now if we are to save Sudan's future.
Megan noted that Sudan's democracy movement really is historic in the truest sense of the word - it will go down in history as one of the world's largest and most impactful mass social movements of all time. It mobilized millions consistently and strategically between 2018 and the outbreak of the war in 2023. And even after the war broke out, many of those same activists continued organizing and mobilizing, turning their attention to the very dire humanitarian needs that are facing everyone in the country right now. So even though the democracy movement has been interrupted, the civil society that was driving it is still active on the ground, and is responding to the most critical needs of the people of Sudan.
Mohamed concluded the presentation part of the webinar by highlighting the importance of activist-led research for international issue education. He underlined that the institutions he is talking to - in Europe, the Middle East and North America - are set up to inherently not grant the support that is needed because it's not politically expedient. So they need to be convinced with compelling evidence and updated information. For example, when he was in London in 2023 meeting with the Home Office about Sudan, he discovered that the latest update on how to treat refugees coming from Sudan was from about 2017. So the UK government was not taking into account any of the numerous and momentous changes that Sudan had been through in the past five years. But when he can go there and leave Hamid's paper, or Reem's paper or other papers that likewise have been meticulously researched and are backed by lived and activism experience, then the institution has better information to utilize during decision-making. So this type of research helps to remove bureaucratic excuses and hurdles for not acting and provides compelling reasons for doing more.
The webinar concluded with the panelists answering questions posed by audience members who were joining from all over the world.
The full recording and the full papers can be accessed here.