Melissa Mahtani
Sulaima Ishaq Elkhalifa should have little reason to be hopeful. A trained psychologist and trauma specialist, she documents sexual crimes in Sudan, a country now in its third year of civil war. Deliberate sexual violence against women – including gang rape, sexual slavery, trafficking, and forced marriage – has been well documented as a cheap and highly effective weapon of war by both the Sudanese armed forces and the country’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF). To date, Elkhalifa has personally documented 1,385 accounts of sexual violence alongside the physical and psychological damage that accompanies it.
Yet, dressed in her finest traditional Sudanese thoub and heels, she is both radiant and defiant.
“We don’t want the world’s sympathy,” she told a packed audience at the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual gathering of human rights activists, last week. “We want your empathy and understanding. We need microloans and access to health. Our women will do the rest.”
Rita Kahsay, an Irob-Tigrayan activist, wants more. She recounted horrific stories from survivors of the widespread sexual violence inflicted on Tigrayan women during a two-year civil conflict that broke out in Ethiopia in 2020. Stories of women having foreign objects inserted into their bodies, “with some arriving at healthcare centres bearing notes placed in their genitalia, reading: ‘We will destroy you.’” That’s why Kahsay told me she’s fighting for accountability and justice for the victims. “It’s a necessary first step towards healing in order to break the cycle of violence against women and impunity.”
These women were part of a panel I moderated on “Gendered Violence under Authoritarian Rule,” along with Friba Rezayee, one of Afghanistan’s first female Olympians, and Libyan human rights activist Hajer Sharief. The panel explored the patterns of gendered violence as a byproduct of conflict, but one with deep roots that start in peacetime, as a deliberate tool of repression by patriarchal authoritarian rulers.
It’s a scenario the world is witnessing now, in real time under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Women’s rights have slowly been eroded since the Taliban consolidated power in 2021. Women are now forbidden from working, getting an education, or even leaving the house without a male guardian, despite the Taliban’s promises to honor women’s rights when they first took power.
“So how can we change things?” I asked them. “What can people like me do to help?”
1. Stand up for international law and hold the perpetrators accountable.
“There can be no peace without justice,” Sharief said. She explained that accountability is often sacrificed in post-conflict settings for the greater goal of “peace,” but that this is justice denied for the victims. As well as holding perpetrators accountable in court, she suggested the international community make it clear that once a person commits a human rights violation, they cannot hold any type of political office. If that were a red line, it would act as a deterrent to the kind of state organized gendered violence so often seen in conflict, she said.
2. Hold your own leaders accountable for their hypocrisy.
“We are tired, sick and tired, of world leaders’ hypocrisy,” Rezayee emphasized. “Your governments sent troops into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, and promised young Afghan women and men too, that we will have democracy, prosperity, human rights and social justice. Then when things got a little bit tough, they just withdrew,” she told the room. Rezayee outlined how Norway was one of the first countries to host the Taliban after they took power in 2021 and urged all of us to hold our own leaders accountable for the roles they play in these situations. “The Taliban were treated like VIPs in Oslo, while Afghan women and girls were being flogged by these Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and they violated our human rights completely.”
3. Label gendered violence as political violence perpetrated by a state.
“It’s not religious. It’s not related to Islam. Linking it to Islam perpetuates Islamophobia and obscures the patriarchy and systemic nature of gendered oppression,” Kahsay explained.
4. Tackle the root of the problem, not just the symptoms.
“The world needs to spend more time thinking about why this happens, why it’s allowed to happen,” Elkhalifa said, adding that it’s not confined to one country. “The world needs to recognize that gendered violence has no borders and we shouldn’t allow it to happen anywhere.”
5. Focus on the victims.
Invest in grassroots organizations focused on helping the victims, like the organizations these activists have set up. Whether it’s an organization getting medical facilities to women on the ground, providing mental health, or trying to help them get an education, donations make a difference.
Listening to these women’s stories, their lived experience of the horrors of war and their determination to create a better future, it’s hard to know whether they are naive for fighting the enormous odds stacked against them or incredibly brave. Even speaking out about the situation puts yet another target on their backs. All four women told me they have experienced online harassment, smear campaigns, and slut-shaming. They have received death threats, and at times been forced into hiding.
All of the women said they feel abandoned by the international community.
“I’m not asking you to do everything,” Rezayee said, “But I am asking you to do something.”
Melissa Mahtani is a journalist, host and moderator with a focus on international affairs, human rights and equality
