KHARTOUM: When a Sudanese teenager was sentenced to death last week for killing her husband, who had allegedly raped her, activists knew that a new fight had begun for women’s rights in Sudan.
Noura Hussein, 19, received the sentence for the “intentional murder” of the man her father had forced her to marry.
“Noura is facing death. Her case has brought us closer to an execution,” said Sudanese women’s rights activist Wini Omer, who witnessed the sentencing on May 10.
“The situation is dangerous and necessitates taking women’s rights more seriously so that we can protect them,” she said.
Hussein’s case has triggered outrage, with activists launching a campaign called “Justice For Noura” and the United Nations’ women’s agency appealing for clemency.
The teenager’s plight has also focused attention on issues facing women in Sudan such as marital rape, child marriage, forced marriage and the arbitrary application of Islamic law, along with tribal traditions that often target women.
‘Bad Laws’
Even before Hussein’s sentence, rights activists had been urging Washington, which in October lifted decades-old sanctions against Khartoum, to push the Sudanese authorities to allow women more freedoms.
“We are trying to cooperate with the government to assure them that allowing more freedoms enhances the society,” Steven Koutsis, top US envoy to Khartoum, told AFP at an event in March to honour courageous Sudanese women.
He said there was a will within the government to improve the human rights situation in Sudan.
“But that is tempered by fears (about) how to react to threats of instability,” he said, adding that for Washington, human rights included women’s rights.
Sudanese officials claim that many issues facing women are to do with the African country’s centuries-old traditions, often tribal in nature.
“Had Noura gone to a court right at the beginning when she was being forced to marry, she would have been protected,” insisted Abdulnasser Solom, an official from the government’s Human Rights Commission.
But activists say Hussein’s case is just the tip of a vast iceberg.
“There are tens and thousands of cases like Noura in our community that no one knows about,” said leading women’s activist Amal Habbani, who was detained for weeks for participating in opposition protests in January.
Sudanese laws do not consider women as human beings who can take their own decisions, she said.
“Bad laws create a bad environment in which women get oppressed,” Habbani said.