By Danny Tye
Since the start of the Civil War in Sudan last April, when tensions between the country’s de facto ruling junta and dissident militants boiled over into all-out fighting, over 11 million people in the country have been forcibly displaced.
Image courtesy of BBC News
Eight million of these refugees remain in Sudan, while nearly three million have fled, primarily to neighbouring Egypt, Chad, and South Sudan. In terms of finances, these refugees, as well as the states and organisations endeavouring to help them, have been severely neglected. According to the Refugee Funding Tracker, only 27% of the $1.51bn required by the Sudan Refugee Response Plan has been received thus far.
Continuous appeals by international bodies for funding have secured some of the necessary cash flow. Most recently, the African Development Bank Group pledged $19m in September to assist South Sudan – which has itself experienced ethnic conflict and civil war in recent years – with resource strains posed by the influx of displaced persons. However, Sudanese refugees are still a long way away from security. Widespread ignorance in the international community towards the plight of the Sudanese has been condemned, with Western publications including the Times, the Guardian, and the Lancet all describing the conflict as a ‘forgotten war.’
Yet, as the Byline Times has perceptively noted, this faux concern is being propagated by outlets and organisations who have themselves deliberately ignored the conflict to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths about the legacy of colonialism and the vulturous role of the international arms trade. Quoting Sudanese activist Ameen Mekki, ‘we’re not seeing as much as we should about Sudan in the media, because the world stands to benefit from exploiting Sudan.’
If the conflict and its victims can be considered forgotten, then global awareness of the plight of queer Sudanese people lies in a state of oblivion. Gay Community News, based in Ireland, has been one of the few publications to centre the situation for displaced LGBTQ+ people in its column inches. At times of war or other disasters, it can be easy to assume that sexual- and gender-based issues go straight to the back burner, forgotten amidst the haze of violence and the tenuous fight to survive. Yet, as GCN writes, based on conversations with activists from Liberate Sudan, queer Sudanese people in forced displacement face a uniquely challenging situation. Those who have found security in peacetime by establishing chosen families with other queer people have been forced into refugee camps with their biological relatives, pushing them back into ‘a world of performance’ in which conformity with expected gender and sexual roles can be a matter of life and death.
Those who have fled the country to refugee camps in other African countries face similar peril. The National Catholic Reporter described the violent treatment of queer refugees, including Sudanese, in the large Kakuma camp in Kenya. Kakuma houses over 200,000 refugees from across Africa under a joint administration by the UNHCR and the Kenyan government, which punishes “sodomy” with up to 21 years imprisonment. Domination of the camp by religious, particularly Catholic figures, has resulted in queer refugees facing ‘physical attacks that sometimes may lead to deaths, rape, stigmatisation, arbitrary arrest by police, and denial of essential services, including food, health care, education, and security.’
In the Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan, where homosexuality is criminalised by laws that often go unenforced, the situation for queer refugees is similarly dire. The Washington Blade has reported that they face ‘daily attacks, lack of police assistance, death threats, stoning, abuses, discrimination, bullying, denial of medical care, and the inability for their children to access education.’ Yaga Piuson, a queer activist for the camp, reported that the UNHCR and other NGOs involved in the overseeing of Gorom were either unable or unwilling to help queer people. The only solutions offered, primarily relocation to other camps or urban areas within South Sudan, are unsuitable due to the lack of guaranteed safety for the camp’s queer inhabitants.
The outbreak of the civil war last year seems to have dashed any hopes of advancement for Sudan’s queer population. Following the revolution which ended dictator Omar al-Bashir’s thirty-year rule over the country, the first tentative steps towards this advancement were taken by the ‘transitional’ junta, which abolished the punishments of execution and flogging for same-sex activity. Noor Sultan, the founder of Bedayaa (a queer advocacy group active in Egypt and Sudan) praised the ‘positive change on the path to reform’, but acknowledged the role of societal discrimination on a par with, if not superseding, the impact of legislation.
As Africa Is A Country summarised, ‘The Sudanese experience, caught between the forces of Africanism and Arabism, is marked by identity crises that resonate deeply within the collective consciousness.’ This existence in a state of flux is rooted in Sudan’s colonial past, particularly the Anglo-Egyptian joint domination of the country in the first half of the twentieth century. It was during this period of imperialist governance that homosexuality was first criminalised. Even after Sudan was nominally liberated in 1956, the following decades of near-constant conflict and dictatorship have inhibited any attempt at social liberalisation in the country. Quoting again from Liberate Sudan, ‘how could they get it when all they’ve known post colonisation is military rule? […] You need lots of privilege to be able to sit down and say “I’m looking at a different perspective.”’
Drawing parallels between the threat posed to queer Sudanese people and the problems faced by queer people in Palestine, discussed in a recent article for GAY45, the importance of queer Westerners avoiding idealist pontification from our position of safety cannot be understated. It is not our place to demand utopia, but to carefully examine the situation and do what we can to alleviate material suffering. One of the most steadfast resources that queer people have is our strong sense of community, which facilitates the sharing of knowledge and resources, however limited. The Liberate Sudan activist quoted in GCN’s article made clear their view on what queer people outside the country can do while institutions falter:
‘We don’t rely on politicians. […] I don’t need the BBC or Sky News, or Al Jazeera or whatever. That’s not what I need. What I do need is the queer community. We need people to donate directly to Sudanese fundraisers, to show up if someone says, ‘Hey, there’s a protest.’ We need people to show up for Sudanese people if there is an actual humanitarian and activist spirit in anyone.’
Hanin Eisa contributed reporting.
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