Photo Credit: Physicians for Human Rights
This year, the Save Darfur Coalition is participating in 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence — an international campaign which recognizes the strength of women around the world and challenges advocates and global leaders to raise their voices to end the violence.
Over the next 16 days — from International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th to International Human Rights Day on December 10th — the Save Darfur Coalition will recognize leaders in the fight to bring peace, security and opportunity to women in Sudan and offer corresponding actions to help end violence against women in Sudan.
On the first of these 16 days, the Save Darfur Coalition is honoring not one individual leader, but the Darfuri women living in the Farchana refugee camp in eastern Chad. On this day, we hope you will read and share with your friends and family “The Farchana Manifesto,” a declaration of women’s and human rights written by a group of Darfuri refugee women after the brutal beating of several women in their camp by community leaders.
Most of us who have taken part in years of advocacy for peace in Darfur will at times reach points of overwhelm, even of hopelessness. News coverage — and sometimes our own awareness-raising — about the conflict in Darfur often focuses on the cold, impersonal and huge facts of death tolls and numbers of displaced people.
What has continued to ground me over my last three years at the Save Darfur Coalition are opportunities to connect with and learn the stories and actions of survivors. I am humbled each time I meet Fatima Haroun and Zeinab Eyega, two Sudanese community advocates now working in the U.S., whom we’ll honor for their leadership on December 4th and December 10th respectively.
I hope that reading and sharing the “The Farchana Manifesto” will similarly inspire and energize you. As we advocate to stop violence against women in Darfur, it can be difficult not to focus on acts of violence, on people as either victims or perpetrators. Reading and sharing the Farchana declaration is an opportunity to connect with Darfuri refugee women not as victims but as people, as survivors and leaders.
In their response to violence against women in their camp, the manifesto’s authors described deeply rooted challenges facing women in their community ranging from “Lack of freedom to go toe work or engage in life’s activities” to “Lack of opportunity for freedom of speech, and no one to listen to what women say.” They write that in their community, there is a “Failure to value the life of the woman. They only value her in bed. They like a lot of births, but they do not like raising sons and children.”
But far from hopeless, the women authors of “The Farchana Manifesto” end by writing “Thank you. We hope to achieve freedom for women in the whole world.”
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Tags: 16 Days, Sudan, take action, Violence Against Women
