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More than a year into the war in Sudan, the prospects of an end to the fighting are elusive. Leading powers have picked sides and are fanning the flames of the conflict for their own economic and political gains. In the meantime, civilians caught in the fighting and going hungry, pay the high price.
All this comes as no surprise for Niemat Ahmadi, an exiled Darfuri who survived the genocide in the early 2000s and has been tirelessly raising awareness for the past two decades. For her, only justice can pave the way for lasting peace and documenting abuses through the Human Rights Council is a crucial part of that. |
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Sudanese activist Niemat Ahmadi founded Darfur Women Action Group which has been documenting cases of rape and sexual violence being perpetrated during the war. (Geneva Solutions/ Michelle Langrand)
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Niemat Ahmadi was working with a development organisation in Kabkabiya in North Darfur when war erupted in 2003. What started as a state-backed campaign to quash an insurgence would escalate into the massacre of hundreds of thousands of ethnic non-Arab Darfuris in what came to be known as the first genocide of the 21st century.
“I barely escaped several attempts on my life,” she tells Geneva Solutions, as she sits on the terrace of the Serpentine café of the Palais des Nations in Geneva, where the Human Rights Council is in session this month.
Ahmadi, who was targeted for trying to document violations, thought her time away would be temporary. Little did she know that she would spend the better part of the next two decades as a refugee in the United States, seeing the violence back home persist, quelled only for short periods at a time and erupting t into an all-out war between two of the very perpetrators of the Darfur genocide last year.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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Here's what else is happening
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♀️Women defending women.
Antonia Mulvey is an international human rights lawyer who devotes herself to defending women. Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), a Geneva-based not-for-profit that she founded, provides legal assistance to women, very often in conflict zones. In this podcast, Mulvey describes the courage and bravery she witnesses in her job and her own hope to inspire other women.
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