Lonely Lives: Three young girls walk back home in Maiduguri, Nigeria | Photo: Getty Images Lonely Lives: Three young girls walk back home in Maiduguri, Nigeria | Photo: Getty Images
The vulnerability of being a woman on the move, the constant fear of sexual exploitation, permanent displacement—for Omnia Mustafa, a Sudanese woman, life has been a blur for almost two years now.
Belonging to Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, Mustafa was first displaced in April 2023 when the civil war started and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—a paramilitary force formerly operated by the Sudanese government—invaded the town. She fled to Wad Medani, the capital city of Gezira, where she stayed for nine months before moving between two other states in Northeast Sudan. Mustafa finally escaped to Egypt with her mother. She narrates her journey through voice notes sent on WhatsApp. Among the fears she encountered, the fear of being sexually exploited was the most pronounced.
Deep Dive | Episode 29 | Understanding War In SyriaIn Sudan, it is a war on women. Sexual violence is a weapon in armed conflicts—used during the war leading to South Sudan’s secession, continuing through the ethnic cleansing in West Darfur and now reemerging in the ongoing civil war.
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“When the RSF came to the village (in Gezira), our families, especially the men, had hidden all the women inside rooms and locked us in so that they wouldn’t see us,” recounts Mustafa. “While I was moving from one place to the other, I did have a constant fear of being exploited or harmed, especially by the RSF as they were notorious for sexual violence and terrorism,” she adds. Mother and daughter did not have enough money to leave Gezira as the RSF looted everything. “Most of the streets were blocked, and there was a lot of active shooting and active conflict, so we had to plan very carefully the routes we were going to use,” says Mustafa. “The trip from Gezira state to a different state took us two days when it usually takes less than six hours. There wasn’t enough food—we had a single meal every single day,” she recalls. Eventually, she had to take the help of a crowdfunding platform and the funds helped her leave the country—her home—forever.
The story of Mustafa reflects what most displaced women have to endure. Apart from the looming threat of sexual exploitation, the lack of healthcare facilities and basic amenities, such as sanitary pads and other feminine hygiene products, pose another threat to the already vulnerable group. According to UN Women, the need for gender-based violence-related services has increased to 100 per cent in Sudan with more than 6.7 million people needing assistance.
spy77 slotPhotos | Women In The Face Of War And Displacement“One of my cousins almost miscarried on the way because the journey was so dangerous and long,” says Ameen Mekki, the founder of Sudan Updates, a social media platform for amplifying the voices of Sudan. “She was around six months, but she wasn’t even sure because there were no doctors. She went to Elgedaref in the east, then Port Sudan, and finally left Sudan to Qatar. They travelled mostly by car, but it took long because there was also no fuel, a lot of traffic, and the risk of encounters with the RSF. Mother and child are safe now in a different country,” Mekki shares.
The suffering of women in war is not just limited to Sudan. To the southwest, in the neighbouring country of Nigeria, the decade-long insurgency by Boko Haram and Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) has made northeastern Nigerian women tragic instruments of war. In March this year, more than 200 people—mostly women—were reportedly kidnapped by Boko Haram near a camp in Gamboru Ngala while collecting firewood. When asked to narrate an account of a Boko Haram survivor that stayed with her, Rukaiyatu Idris, a journalist from Borno, Northeast Nigeria remembered a woman from the Gwoza local government area. The woman was made to watch the insurgents kill her husband and their eldest son.Then they ordered her to drag their bodies and dispose of them in a distant place before taking her captive.
Al’amin Umar, a reporter for HumAngle Media, explained that women held captive by the insurgent group are categorised into three groups—‘slaves’ comprising of women and girls over the age of 15 who denied forced marriages, ‘wives’ comprising of those married to the insurgents and ‘girls’ comprising of children below the age of 12 considered too young to be married. They are supervised by Amira—a designated older woman who is well-respected among the group and hence responsible for maintaining order.
“Girls, usually from the age of twelve, are made to sit on a (wooden) mortar. If their feet reached the ground, it signalled to the terrorists that they were old enough for marriage. One woman was abducted when she was nine from her village in Bama. When her feet touched the floor, she was given out as wife to an older fighter,” Umar narrates.
Children In War-Ravaged Syria: The Hidden Costs Of The Long Civil WarIt has been a decade since Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from their dormitories in rural Chibok, which sparked the #BringBackOurGirls movement globally. Many girls and women are rescued by the military through operations across the coasts of Lake Chad and around the Sambisa Forest, in Borno state, where the main camp of the insurgents is located. A few manage to escape from the enclaves of Boko Haram insurgents while many continue to remain in captivity. Yet those who survived the violence and escaped have been failed by their families and society.
“There is a family that couldn’t take their daughter back in. She was abducted by Boko Haram. They based their argument on the fact that she has been with the insurgents for over nine years and has borne them children, so they are afraid of her, and maybe someday the insurgents will come looking for her,” says Idris.
According to ACLED, 1.8 million civilians have been terrorised by Boko Haram since 2020, with the group extending their influence to Chad, Niger and Cameroon. Between January and July 2023, Human Rights Watch reported the death of 169 civilians in attacks by Boko Haram and ISWAP in the Far North region of Cameroon with many others facing abductions.
Meanwhile, civilians in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions continue to face the Anglophone crisis that has been going on since 2016. In Cameroon, sexual assault is a weapon of war used to subjugate opposition groups through the domination of women in the community. Arrey Elvis Ntui, senior analyst for Cameroon at the International Crisis Group, explains: “Rebels and government soldiers target women for rape and use them sometimes to spy on armed participants. Generally, communities view it as violence to which their whole community has been subjected to, through no fault of theirs and just as a result of politics gone wrong.”
The Syrian Spirit That Does Not Submit To WarDespite these significant risks, Cameroonian women have assumed dangerous roles as peace negotiators and humanitarian advocates. Many women-led platforms and associations have campaigned for separatists to stop attacks on schools; protesting on streets for the government and rebels to end war. In Beau and Muyuka, women have protested against arbitrary arrests of men. Meanwhile, in Big Babanki, they have protested, complaining about the excess of rebels.
When speaking to Fanny Bessem, the Southwest Regional President of the National Women’s Convention for Peace in Cameroon, about some of the challenges she has faced as a peacebuilder, she recounts her sister being kidnapped in 2022: “They came to my house and kidnapped my sister. The insecurity is complex—you’re doing this work and asmediators, you’re working for free and you are also putting your family at risk.” For her sister, the trauma affected her psychologically because there were guns involved. “She still locks her room and sleeps because she was sleeping when they took her. It has affected me as well. They did not come for her. They took her because I was away,” says Bessem.
During the phone conversation, she also mentioned that her other colleagues had been sexually violated, with young women being assaulted even when some were pregnant. When asked, what gives her the courage to continue doing this for the community she said: “If you allow the men, they will not put issues of the women on the table. Only women can do that. When it comes to effect of conflicts, men will only talk about men.”
This appeared in the print as 'Our Bodiesjilipark, Their Battlefeild'