As the world looks away, women suffer in silence

By Tapiwa Gomo 

When the conflict broke out in Sudan in April 2023, Omnia* and her children fled Khartoum and sought refuge in an area in Sennar State. But instead of finding refuge, Omnia was kidnapped, threatened, beaten and raped by armed men in a house where she and other women and girls were held prisoner.  

She recalls a harrowing incident when an armed man entered their room late at night and took one of the young girls to another room. 

“I could hear her crying and screaming; they were raping her,” said Omnia. “Every time they did, she came back covered in blood. She’s still just a child. During the 19 days I spent there, I reached a point where I wanted to end my life.” 

Omnia is now in a safe place in Senna State, where she is receiving mental health and psychosocial support from a women-led organization to help overcome her trauma. She is just one of many survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, including young girls, receiving medical care, counselling and psychosocial support from women-led organizations operating across Sudan and other conflict-affected countries.

However, these vital services now face the threat of closure across most conflict-affected countries. 

Impact of devastating cuts 

Donors’ brutal funding cuts to humanitarian aid are having a devastating impact on programmes that specifically support women and girls at risk of gender-based violence. Thousands of front-line service providers have been forced to terminate their services, with no alternatives in place.

According to a recent OCHA survey, services to prevent and address the impact of gender-based violence rank second among the services most affected by funding cuts. This underscores a growing and urgent gap in life-saving support for women and girls.  

The systematic erosion of support and protection for vulnerable women and girls caught in conflict and humanitarian emergencies rarely makes headlines. 

Countless women and girls now have no access to critical, often life-saving, care. 

In Burundi, for example, Dr. Azarias Nkengurutse, the Chief Executive Director of United Partners for Humanitarian Welfare, a local non-governmental organization (NGO), recently pleaded for funds to procure antiretroviral drugs for HIV+ survivors of gender-based violence. These drugs are crucial to prevent HIV progressing to full-blown AIDS, but the NGO can no longer access them due to the sudden stop-work order issued by the United States. It’s now four months since these women, already struggling to recover from horrific abuse, lost all access to life-sustaining treatment. 

Burundi is enduring a humanitarian crisis characterized by displacement, food insecurity and health challenges. Yet it remains one of the world’s least-funded crises.  

Impact on women-led organizations 

Women-led organizations are the front-line service providers for survivors and those at risk of gender-based violence. There are 65 of these organizations in South Sudan alone. According to a recent UN Women survey, of the more than 400 women-led organizations across 44 countries, a staggering 90 per cent are affected by the funding cuts. Nearly half fear they will shut down within six months.  

Recognizing the growing funding gaps amid rising gender-based violence, the OCHA-managed Country-Based and Regional Humanitarian Pooled Funds provided direct or indirect support last year to 148 women-led organizations – 26 more than the previous year – and allocated US$146.4 million to gender-based violence interventions, reaching 7.4 million survivors.  

This included interventions in Somalia, Sudan and other conflicted-affected countries. In countries such as Burundi, the UN Central Emergency Response Fund allocated funding to sustain the response to gender-based violence, particularly in humanitarian settings. 

However, the gravity of funding cuts in the last six months means the gap in the response to gender-based violence will widen significantly, leaving millions of vulnerable people, mainly women and girls, without access to essential protection services.

As of now, only $104 million of the $1 billion required for gender-based violence interventions in 2025 has been received.

*Name has been changed.