Fear for Women In Sudan

Amnesty International is expressing concern over the welfare of three female lawyers working on women's issues in Sudan. The lawyers who have been brought in for questioning by the National Security Service over the past two days had just participated in a local Human Rights Workshop composed of local lawyers and NGO groups, in Dar al-Katah, Port Sudan, Eastern Sudan.

The women played a very active role in the meeting and thus may have become targets of the government. The women are Nijalla Mohamed Ali, Sana Hassan Babiker, and Halima Hussein Mohamed.

The workshop concluded by issuing recommendations that the Sudanese Government sign an agreement ending discrimination against women and prohibiting female genital mutilation (it is estimated that, at least, 70% of women in Sudan have undergone the “procedure.”).

The National Security Service said they were called in for questioning about possible links to foreign Non Governmental Organizations.

Amnesty says in the past, the Security Services have used continued questioning as a form of harassment of human rights activists.

Amnesty International calls for the cessation of repeated summons as a means of harassment against civil society activists.

According to many women activists, the Nairobi peace agreement, which supposedly ended 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan, should signal a new phase for the engagement of Sudanese women.

"A major problem with this peace agreement is that it is an agreement negotiated without the participation of other political parties or civil-society organizations in which more women are represented," said Sonia Asis Malik, lecturer at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman and member of the Babik Budri Scientific Association.

"Women were basically excluded from this peace agreement," Malik added.

Malik also pointed out that while various Sudanese constitutions since independence had granted equal rights and duties to all Sudanese, irrespective of their origin, race, sex or religion, in reality things were quite different.

"It is not practiced and it will not be practiced," Malik said. "Since our independence, [the constitution] gives women rights with one hand and takes them with the other. A lot of discrimination also happens in the private sphere."

Mary Cirillo Bang of the New Sudan Women's Federation told IRIN last May that women and children had been most affected by the wars that raged in Sudan since 1955. "When two elephants are fighting, the grass suffers," she said. "Women and children are the grass."

Kezia Layinwa Nicodemus, Commissioner for Women, Gender and Child Welfare of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), in an interview last year said, "Women's position in Sudanese society is not very good, because women have not been taken on board when men are making decisions. So women are sort of left behind. But with this secretariat for women [which Kezia is head of], we are trying to bring up women so that they develop quickly and are on the same footing as men.”

Nicodemus was not uncritical of the SPLM itself. “They are scared of giving rights to women. They say too many rights are not good for women. So we need this to be improved so that men and women come together and they listen to new ideas, so that men can accept that they are human beings and their wives are also human beings. She has her rights, I have my rights. At the moment, very few men get that.” She added, “In the SPLM hierarchy there is only me. Even if I have a good idea, who will support me? All men will be against that idea. So I hope that in the near future we will get more women. I am not supported very much. It is still difficult for women, because you can be appointed but you are not assisted financially. Then you have no power.”

Considering that the negotiated “peace agreement” was between the SPLM and the Sudanese government, it’s difficult to see any great improvements for women in Sudan on the immediate horizon

And least we forget, in Darfur, where genocide is the name of the game, armed forces and militia members have raped thousands of women and tens of thousands of women suffered other violence and forced displacement in the conflict there. Women were raped during attacks and frequently abducted into sexual slavery for days or months. Sources: Irin, Sudan Times, Amnesty International