In a displacement camp in eastern Sudan, Nosaiba has a clear-eyed vision for what women need, not just to survive, but to rebuild. This International Women’s Day, her words are a blueprint, not just a testimony.
When Nosaiba sits down to talk, she begins the way many Sudanese women begin – with bismillah (in God’s name), and salawat (salutations) upon the Prophet (PBUH). It is the opening of conversations, of letters, of everything important in Sudan. And what Nosaiba has to say is important.
Nosiba is a mother of 3, living with her husband and children in a displacement camp in the locality of Algalabat Al-Arabiya in Al-Gedaref state, eastern Sudan. Like more than 12 million people across the country, she was forced to flee her home in Khartoum when conflict erupted in April 2023. She made her way east, first to a school in the city, then to the camp where she lives today.
“Since we arrived here, the first organisation we came in contact with was Islamic Relief,” she recalls. “They provided us with aid packages and women’s necessities. They came to us more than once.”
She says this with warmth and without hesitation. The basics – including food and hygiene products – have been provided. The water tank works. She says alhamdulillah for this.
These basics matter enormously in a camp housing hundreds of families. But Nosaiba is clear that for the women in this camp, the absence of something less tangible is also urgent.
Overcrowded with nowhere to go
The camp, as Nosaiba describes it, is overcrowded and static. There is nowhere to go. No school – only a basic alternative education programme run by a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) that teaches the alphabet and simple maths. No television. No electricity. In a context where women are expected to stay close to home, and where moving around the camp alone carries its own risks, the boundaries of their daily world shrink even further than everyone else’s. For women especially, the days stretch out without structure or purpose.
“We need a centre for women’s development and empowerment. We can sit as women together and exchange ideas. Because in the end, we are raising generations.”
Nosaiba is describing something very concrete: a space where women can learn, talk, support each other and stay connected to a sense of themselves beyond the crisis. She is thinking about what her children will grow up to be, and she understands that begins with her.
“When the mother is educated and aware, she will be able to raise her children well,” she explains. “She can know her rights. And her responsibilities. She can be successful in life and raise generations that can rely on themselves in the future.”
In the middle of a displacement camp, with stagnant water pooling nearby and insects in the evenings and a mobile clinic that is due to leave within months, Nosaiba is thinking about the next generation of Sudanese women. She is already planning what she will teach her children at home, what books she would bring them, if she could afford them and if there were electricity to read by.
The gaps that don’t make headlines
There are 305 families in the camp but only 11 sanitation facilities. The toilets fill up and need emptying regularly, but that doesn’t always happen. At night, she says, it is frightening to walk to the toilet alone, the weeds are overgrown and you cannot always tell what is moving in the dark.
The mobile clinic has been a lifeline, but it is temporary. When it leaves, the nearest health facility will again be a long journey away – and without income, that journey simply will not be possible for most families.
“If any disease happens in the camp, it will be severe,” she says. “We need a permanent clinic.”
Psychosocial support is another need she raises; for herself, for the women around her, for children who have grown up knowing only displacement.
The life she is hoping for
When asked what she wishes for, Nosaiba answers in 2 parts. First, she speaks as a Sudanese woman who wants to go home. She wants the war to end. She wants Sudan to return to the way it was. “There is no safety except to be in your home,” she says simply. “With your family.”
Then she speaks as someone who, in the meantime, wants the people around her to be looked after properly.
“My wish is that the people in the camp are provided with better services. Because these people here came displaced by the war. Their psychological state is in need of attention.”
She is not asking for the extraordinary. She is asking for a clinic that stays. For toilets that are maintained. For a space where women can gather and think and learn. For her children to have a real education while they wait to go home.
These are not wishes. They are rights.
How Islamic Relief is helping
Islamic Relief has been working in Sudan for over 40 years – and since the current conflict began, we have reached more than 1.2 million people with food, clean water, cash assistance, hygiene and dignity kits. In camps like where Nosaiba lives, we have been among the first to arrive and have continued to return with support.
But needs of the scale Nosaiba describes – in a country where more than 30 million people require humanitarian assistance, where women and girls face compounded risks in displacement, and where international funding continues to fall far short – require sustained support from all of us.
This International Women’s Day, you can stand with Nosaiba and the millions of women like her across Sudan. Donate to Islamic Relief’s Sudan Emergency Appeal today and help us continue providing the assistance that women and families across the country so desperately need.
