No Oppression against Women Initiative calls for ‘social peace’ in Sudan

The No Oppression against Women Initiative has repeated its call on Sudan’s Sovereign Council to include women in the peace process, especially displaced women and war victims.

“Women are the pillars of social peace and peaceful coexistence,” Ihsan Fagiri, Coordinator of the Initiative, said in a speech on Tuesday, during the Initiative's celebrations of the anniversary of the December Revolution and the international campaign of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.

“For women, the concept of peace goes beyond signing agreements. For them, it also means social peace, and health and education,” she said. “And the signing of international agreements that protect women's rights.”

The woman activist appealed to “the democratic regimes in the West to fund projects to fight poverty and wars, in order to prevent young people from risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea”.

She also urged the Sudanese government to include single mothers, often working as food and tea vendors at markets and on the streets, in the social and health security systems.

Khartoum should ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Maputo Protocol governing the rights of women in Africa, harmonise the Sudanese laws with international agreements, and repeal all laws that consider women as inferior to men.

Fagiri further stressed that all perpetrators of women repression should be brought to justice.