Guaranteeing equal rights for women and men = Peace

For the past 10 years, Inter Pares has worked with two incredible women’s rights organizations in Sudan – Salmmah Women’s Resource Centre and the Sudanese Organization for Research and Development (SORD). They believe that for peace to last in their country, women and men must have equal rights.  

Meet Maha from Sudan:  

Salmmah and SORD have been very active on the issue of women’s rights in Sudan. Here are a few examples of what they achieved:

• setting up three legal clinics in the Khartoum/Ombdurman area to support women in overcoming the abuse and oppression of the flawed legal framework in Sudan;
• organizing an annual campaign with over 1,000 young people to demand access to justice for women survivors of violence;
• publishing and raising awareness about an alternative family law which raises the legal age of marriage from 10 to 18; and
• providing human rights-based literacy training to 250 marginalized poor women.

Despite these successes, the context in which Salmmah and SORD work is very difficult.

In June 2014, five plainclothes state authorities entered the offices of Salmmah Women’s Resource Centre. They ordered that staff stop their work and leave the premises. Then they proceeded to confiscate all the physical infrastructure, as well as the 3,000 books held in the resource library. Inter Pares is deeply concerned that an important voice for women’s rights in Sudan has been shut down and silenced by the government. In recent weeks the staff of Salmmah have been able to re-register as a new women's rights group in Sudan and Inter Pares is helping them to rebuild their organization and their programs.

In a context of human rights organizations being harassed and fragile peace agreements, the work of our counterparts in Sudan is more important than ever.

Please consider a gift to Inter Pares today in solidarity with Maha and our colleagues working for women’s rights and peace in Sudan.