On June 24 Sudanese authorities shut down the Salmmah Women’s Resource Center in Khartoum without explanation.
“They immediately entered and they said: ‘Please ask your staff to stop the work’,” said Fahima Hashim, director of Salmmah Women’s Resource Centre, “We have just left the office. We closed everything.”
Salmmah Women’s resource Center was initiated by a group of leading Sudanese women in 1997 as a non-profit civil society organization specially dedicated to support women’s organizations and women’s issues, with special devotion to the combat of violence against women and to the acquisition of human rights.
The closure is one in a string of shows of government animosity towards activists, despite rhetoric promising reform and increased inclusion of civil society. Just this March the government intentionally disrupted celebrations for International Women’s Day.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative compiled evidence and testimony of the widespread discrimination and violence women in Sudan face in the 2013 report “Survivors Speak Out: Sexual Violence in Sudan”.
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Sudan shuts women’s rights centre despite freedom talk, Global Post, 24 June 2014.
Survivors Speak Out: Sexual Violence in Sudan, Nobel Women’s Initiative, November 2013.