Key Highlights from the Gender Alert

In all crises, women and girls eat the least and eat last. In Sudan, most women and girls may not be eating at all. 

Our field interviews confirmed that women often skip meals so their children can eat, and adolescent girls frequently get the smallest share – undermining their long-term nutrition and health. In besieged and remote areas, like Darfur or Kordofan, women and girls are often the ones scavenging for survival. Field reports describe women foraging wild leaves and berries to boil into soup [1].While doing this, women and girls face additional risks of violence – including abduction, sexual, and gender-based violence.  Women’s nutritional deprivation has dire ripple effects. Health workers report rising cases of severe, acute malnutrition in infants – often linked to mothers’ starvation and reduced breastfeeding. 2 Health services have collapsed: over 80 per cent of medical facilities have shut down since the war began.3 Local women-led clinics in Darfur report acute maternal risks, 28 per cent high‑risk pregnancies and 45 per cent with a miscarriage history.4 

Women speaking to us from El Fasher, the heart of Sudan’s latest catastrophe, tell us they have endured starvation, displacement, rape, and bombardment. Pregnant women have given birth in the streets as the last remaining maternity hospital was looted and destroyed.  

The crisis is worsening dramatically as fighting expands around El Fasher. Thousands of women and girls have fled to Tawila, Korma, and Malit, where humanitarian presence and services are scarce.  

On their horrific journey, they report that every step they took – to fetch water, collect firewood, or to stand in a food line – carried the risk of sexual violence. There is mounting evidence that rape is being used deliberately and systematically as a weapon of war. 5  Women’s bodies have become crime scenes. There are no safe spaces left, nowhere for women and girls to gather, seek protection, or access even the most basic psychosocial care.  

Basic dignity has collapsed. In North Darfur today, a single packet of sanitary pads costs roughly USD 27. Families receiving humanitarian cash assistance are given slightly below USD 150 for a household of six members. Imagine. One basic necessity for women and girls now takes up a quarter of an entire family’s aid. 

So, when families are forced to choose between food, medicine, and dignity, the essential needs of women and girls fall to the very bottom of the list. These are not abstract numbers – they reflect impossible decisions made every day. And they show, clearly, that when the needs of women and girls are deprioritized, their suffering deepens, and their dignity is lost. 

Women fleeing El Fasher describe witnessing killings, rape, and the disappearance of their children –horrors that no one should ever endure. Many are in severe psychological distress, yet there is almost no access to mental health services or psychosocial support anywhere across the affected areas. 

Women-led organizations warn that this absence of safe spaces in Tawila, Korma, and Malit is among the most glaring gaps in the humanitarian response. 

Even in these dire conditions, it is women-led organizations who have remained a bed rock, and are sustaining the humanitarian response.  

In North Darfur, they manage communal kitchens that reach families beyond formal assistance. In Kordofan, they identify malnourished children and teach mothers how to prepare nutrient-dense meals.  Yet only three per cent of humanitarian funding reaches women-led organizations directly. They mostly rely on volunteers and one-off small grants.  

Sexual violence, forced displacement, and the collapse of essential services have transformed Sudan into the world’s most extreme crisis for women and girls. Simply put, the war in Sudan is a war on women, one that requires the world’s immediate and urgent action.

UN Women Calls for:

An immediate halt to all violence in Sudan. The proposed humanitarian ceasefire offers hope, but it must be fully implemented. All parties to immediately ensure safe corridors for women, girls, and all civilians. All routes for humanitarian relief must be opened, and communications restored to enable lifesaving coordination and the documentation of violations. Humanitarian actors to prioritize women and female-headed households in food assistance, restoration and in rebuilding of their livelihoods  The protection of all humanitarian personnel; particularly local women aid workers, who risk their lives daily to sustain their communities. All parties to protect women and girls and uphold their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law.  Increased direct support to the women-led food kitchens that are the lifeline to thousands of families across Sudan. Women’s health and protection to be at the center of the humanitarian response, including access to reproductive health care, psychosocial support, and gender-based violence services. Where feasible, provide context-appropriate agricultural inputs, cash/voucher assistance, micro- and small-enterprise support, and safe market spaces.  Lastly, UN Women urges donors to recognize, resource, and partner with women-led organizations based on Grand Bargain6 Commitments and Localization agenda. They are sustaining what remains of the response for women and girls. We urge all donors to provide direct, flexible funding and ensure women’s full and equal participation in decisions on access, protection, and recovery.

UN Women maintains a strong presence in Sudan, working closely with local partners including women-led organizations to deliver lifesaving support, promote women’s leadership and sustain essential services under extremely challenging conditions. As UN Women, we carry the weight of every woman silenced by the war in Sudan.

Women and girls in Sudan are not statistics; they are the measure of our shared humanity. And every day the world delays acting on Sudan, another woman gives birth under fire, buries her child in hunger, or disappears without justice.