Surviving Violence, Rebuilding Communities

I stayed in Sudan through the war. I didn’t hear about it from far away. I saw it — the fear in people’s faces, the violence, the devastation. And I saw what it did to women.

When Ikhlas Awad Yaseen speaks about Sudan, she doesn’t mention statistics or reports. She speaks from memory.

She grew up in Kordofan, in a family of four sisters and three brothers, surrounded by women who held everything together – women who stretched meals when food was scarce, settled disputes between neighbors, and carried households through hardship. But nothing prepared her for the scale of devastation that later engulfed her region, one of the hardest hit when war swept across the country.

We lost everything. Even the small office where I used to sit with other women to plan things, discuss how to solve problems, and dream together. It was all gone.

Ikhlas is the former Executive Director of the Young Dream Charity Organization (YDCO), a Sudanese women-led civil society organization supported by the United Nations Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF). YDCO works across protection, education, peacebuilding, and health, responding to what women and children affected by conflict need most.

Since the war erupted in 2023, Sudan has become one of the world’s largest displacement crises, with millions forced to flee their homes. Women and girls have borne the brunt of the violence, facing widespread conflict-related sexual violence, abduction by armed actors, trafficking, rising child marriage, and the collapse of already fragile services.

There is no security. There is rape. There is violence. There is killing. Many women lost their husbands or fathers — the people responsible for supporting them. It is very complicated… Very painful.

As violence escalated, she, like many women, chose to stay. She remained even as funding dried up and fatigue set in. That was when support from WPHF arrived. With this funding, they were able to replace equipment and furniture destroyed in the conflict, allowing staff to return to work.

This funding helped us wake up again when we had lost everything. It rebuilt our confidence. It improved our skills. Before, we did not have the knowledge to deal with such big problems. Now we have the tools.

Through her work, Ikhlas has seen firsthand the devastating impact of the war on entire communities – but also the extraordinary resilience of Sudanese women. Across neighborhoods, women have created community kitchens, known locally as takaaya, cooking what little they have to feed displaced families. In hard-to-reach areas, volunteers provide psychosocial support, share life-saving information, mediate tensions, and advocate for safety.

Women know what other women need. We are not shy to speak to each other. We’re always searching for solutions. We want safety. We want our children to be safe.

She remembers a woman who came to YCDO after surviving brutal violence. At first, she was silent and withdrawn, unable to speak about what she had endured. Slowly, through counseling and support, she began to find her voice again, and over time, she was able to stand up in community meetings, helping other survivors to speak out and not to give up.

It is not the end. You can be strong.

For Ikhlas, the future of Sudan is already taking place in the places the war tried to erase – in neighborhoods, in community kitchens, in small women-led organizations rebuilding from rubble. It’s being shaped by women who refused to leave — and who refuse to give up.

We have the power to rebuild our country. We are already doing it. But we cannot do it alone.

Ikhlas Awad Yaseen at the Saada and Salaam gathering site in Port Sudan, April 2025 (Photo: UN Women/Ekram Hamad Fadlalla)