Conflict, Violence, Deprivation from basic resources and Psychological Distress in Sudan has compelled Sudanese feminists to redefine their feminist voices. This article attempts to observe those choices and unpack how they affect the future of abolitionist justice in Sudan.
Feminists have differing viewpoints about militarism. Some feminists condone the existence of institutions meant to monopolize violence, and tools of violence, such as the military, police etc. Instead, they think more women should participate in these institutions, thus, mainstreaming more gender sensitive and women centered practices. A lot of those women subscribe to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) UN agenda.
Others adopt a more radical anti-militaristic and abolitionist perspective. The latter see the very existence of the military as a threat to women’s lives and prosperity. They believe we should work on eradicating institutions of violence rather than fixing them. Some also view the use of violence in armed resistance against injustice and hegemony, not just as a necessity, but as a noble feminist act.
History and experience tell us that the answer is no. The ways that we understand feminist principles and put them into practice can be influenced by external influences and changes in context. The rise of armed conflict and war is one such change in context.
When wars break out, feminist discourse is affected by broader processes of societal militarization. Abolitionist feminists are part of these processes as well, but what is crucial to consider is how this militarization might shape feminists’ notions of justice, and particularly in relation to abolitionist feminist stances.
After the outbreak of war in Sudan on the 15th of April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a “No To War” narrative emerged within Sudanese civil society, with a prominent hashtag of La Lil Harb going viral on Sudanese social media. The “No to War” political discourse was not intentionally or consciously abolitionist, but it did advocate for a non-violent political process and acknowledged that a military victory was impossible. And even if it had been possible, it would come at the cost of so many Sudanese lives.
There was popular support for the Jeddah peace talks initiated by Saudi Arabia and the United States. While it failed to implement a ceasefire, increasing condemnation of the RSF became apparent. This was partially a product of the RSF’s atrocious crimes against civilians, damage of cultural heritage and infrastructure, and evidence of crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide different areas in Sudan. This produced even more militarized stances across Sudanese civil society, and among feminist groups in particular. Those militarized stances shouldn’t be reduced to a binary paradigm of supporting either SAF or RSF.
For instance, some women in Sudanese states such as Red Sea, Kordofan and River Nile underwent military training, in conjunction with SAF’s call for popular mobilization (Al-istinfar Alsha’abi), but mostly to develop skills of self-defense. With a long history of human rights violations against civilians, youth, women activists and civilians in Darfur strongly perceived fighting the RSF as a responsibility to protect their land and people, even independently from the SAF command structure.
On the other hand, Sudanese people in places under the control of the RSF face aerial attacks initiated by the SAF. Sometimes these aggressions are committed in civilian areas and result in civilian casualties. The De Facto Sudanese government led by SAF also implemented decisions such as introducing new banknotes, in an attempt to nullify money looted by the RSF. While justified to be a government’s attempt to restore its banking system, this move automatically excluded Sudanese people in RSF controlled areas who will not have access to this new currency. Again, you will find some women and feminists, from specific areas and ethnic groups in Sudan not having so many choices, and in fact existentially motivated to lean towards the RSF.
The current militarized feminist political discourse, regardless of where it lies in relation to SAF and RSF as the primary warring parties, will affect any future political process and will persist beyond the current period of active conflict. Little to no space for abolitionist thinking on justice and punishment will be available as the current morale is built upon militarism and violence. In fact, an anti-abolitionist narrative is expected to flourish due to the dire security and humanitarian situation Sudan is experiencing. This narrative assert that the country will only be safe through a tight and strong security apparatus.
This is not new to Sudan. After the Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, security institutions such as the National Intelligence for Security Services (NISS), became stronger than ever under the disguise of “stability”. The RSF themselves are argued to be a product of this agreement, as they believed that the formalizing of the “Janjaweed” under a formal paramilitary force would discipline them. Just recently, police forces in Eastern Khartoum raided the premises of Elgereif’s resistance committees, destroying graffiti art that memorialized the martyrs of the 2018 Sudanese revolution, in an attempt to suppress and erase any sign of revolutionary work.
That is not to assume that Sudanese feminists are not aware of this expected trail of events. But feminist voices have not been loud nor assertive enough in speaking out against this popular militarization. Superficially speaking, this anti-abolitionist narrative will look like an attempt to protect Sudanese people from the direct insecurity of conflict and violence, but will contrarily be a process of strengthening the military complex, and by default other systems of oppression such as patriarchal capitalism.
Wars are essentially an extreme manifestation of threats to survival, one that pushes our moral compasses to their limits. As Sudanese feminists, we continuously acknowledge our varying political positionalities bounded by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic class. Our relationship with the state is neither neutral nor uniform. Yet we continuously attempt to create common grounds in pursuit of collective possibility for a better reality for Sudanese people.
What we must learn, and perhaps more urgently remember, is that our feminist dreams transcend the question of which warring party is more horrific or holds better legitimacy. Militarism and feminism cannot truly co-exist when it comes to intellectual curiosity, imagination, and radical hope. This war has succeeded, to some extent, in militarizing our feminist positions – But we must not let it rob us of our curiosity. We must continue to be curious feminists.
Samar Abushama is an advocate and practitioner of feminist peace and transitional justice. She works as a project manager at Adeela for Culture and Arts, where she leads a platform and archive focused on documenting human rights violations.
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
+961 1 202491+961 1 338986feminism.mena(at)fes.de
This site uses third-party website tracking technologies to provide and continually improve our services, and to display advertisements according to users' interests. I agree and may revoke or change my consent at any time with effect for the future.
These technologies are required to activate the core functionality of the website.
This is an self hosted web analytics platform.
Data Purposes
This list represents the purposes of the data collection and processing.
Technologies Used
Data Collected
This list represents all (personal) data that is collected by or through the use of this service.
Legal Basis
In the following the required legal basis for the processing of data is listed.
Retention Period
The retention period is the time span the collected data is saved for the processing purposes. The data needs to be deleted as soon as it is no longer needed for the stated processing purposes.
The data will be deleted as soon as they are no longer needed for the processing purposes.
These technologies enable us to analyse the use of the website in order to measure and improve performance.
This is a video player service.
Processing Company
Google Ireland Limited
Google Building Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin, D04 E5W5, Ireland
Location of Processing
European Union
Data Recipients
Data Protection Officer of Processing Company
Below you can find the email address of the data protection officer of the processing company.
https://support.google.com/policies/contact/general_privacy_form
Transfer to Third Countries
This service may forward the collected data to a different country. Please note that this service might transfer the data to a country without the required data protection standards. If the data is transferred to the USA, there is a risk that your data can be processed by US authorities, for control and surveillance measures, possibly without legal remedies. Below you can find a list of countries to which the data is being transferred. For more information regarding safeguards please refer to the website provider’s privacy policy or contact the website provider directly.
Worldwide
Click here to read the privacy policy of the data processor
https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
Click here to opt out from this processor across all domains
https://safety.google/privacy/privacy-controls/
Click here to read the cookie policy of the data processor
https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en
Storage Information
Below you can see the longest potential duration for storage on a device, as set when using the cookie method of storage and if there are any other methods used.
This service uses different means of storing information on a user’s device as listed below.
This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
This cookie measures your bandwidth to determine whether you get the new player interface or the old.
This cookie increments the views counter on the YouTube video.
This is set on pages with embedded YouTube video.
This is a service for displaying video content.
Vimeo LLC
555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011, United States of America
United States of America
Privacy(at)vimeo.com
https://vimeo.com/privacy
https://vimeo.com/cookie_policy
This cookie is used in conjunction with a video player. If the visitor is interrupted while viewing video content, the cookie remembers where to start the video when the visitor reloads the video.
An indicator of if the visitor has ever logged in.
Registers a unique ID that is used by Vimeo.
Saves the user's preferences when playing embedded videos from Vimeo.
Set after a user's first upload.
This is an integrated map service.
Gordon House, 4 Barrow St, Dublin 4, Ireland
https://support.google.com/policies/troubleshooter/7575787?hl=en
United States of America,Singapore,Taiwan,Chile
http://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/