The Sudanese Women's Union (SWU, Arabic: الاتحاد النسائي السوداني, transliteration: Aletahad Elnisa'i Assodani) is a Sudanese women's rights organisation that is one of the biggest post-independence women's rights organisations in Africa.[1]: 43
In Sudan, the SWU campaigned in favour of girls' education during the British colonial period in which education was only organised for a small minority of boys and the British authorities opposed formal education for girls. The SWU created schools for girls in Khartoum and Omdurman and in 1970 organised an international conference against women's illiteracy that was attended by many women's organisations from around Africa. The SWU created evening classes for adult women, encouraging literacy and women's health education and opposing underage and forced marriages.[1]
The SWU also campaigned for polygamy to be regulated;[1] for the right to consent to marriage; against laws requiring abused women to return to their husbands;[6] for women's employment, for equal pay, and against discrimination against "Africans".[1]
The post-1964 prime minister Gaafar Nimeiry banned the SWU and Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim was held under house arrest for two years.[6]
Campaigning by the SWU and other feminists continued during the 1960s and 70s and led to improvements in family law and equal rights for men and women in the 1973 Constitution.[1]
1989–2018
The SWU (along with many other citizens' associations) was officially dissolved in 1989 when Omar al-Bashir took power in a coup d'état.[1] The SWU continued to operate unofficially. Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, in exile in London, created a London branch of the SWU.[6]
On 13 July 2012, the SWU together with other citizens' groups organised protests in cities in Sudan against the repression of demonstrators and against the torture and abuses of female activists by the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS).[1]
Sudanese Revolution
In August 2019, during the Sudanese transition to democracy period that followed the first 2018–2019 civil disobedience, coup and massacre phases of the Sudanese Revolution, the SWU argued that since women had played as significant a role in the revolution as men, positions chosen by civilian–military consensus in the Cabinet of Ministers should be allotted equally between men and women, stating that Sudanese women "claim an equal share of 50–50 with men at all levels, measured by qualifications and capabilities".[8]