From one manual to many networks: How SNAC helped raise gender awareness in Sudan

From discussions among academics and students in meeting rooms at the University of Khartoum to training police officers in the Blue Nile State. The journey of a manual on violence against women shows how SNAC has contributed to raise awareness and strengthen research on gender in Sudan.

Samia al-Nagar will never forget the puzzled look from the two young women staying with her at the time as she was working intensely by the kitchen table early in the mornings. ‘Why are you working so hard?’, they asked. ‘I must write this in a logical way so people will listen. That is why I must work so hard on this’, she told them.

What she was writing was a manual on violence against women and gender-based violence (GBV). Drawing on her own experience as a researcher and trainer, she presented logical and persuasive arguments showing that violence against women cannot be justified as a means of maintaining discipline or protecting Sudanese culture but is instead fundamentally wrong.

Her arguments were quickly turned into practice. By sharing information through networks and actively recruiting new trainers, what began as an initiative led by a handful of female academics and activists has evolved into a network spanning the entire country. And all along, the manual Samia al-Nagar developed has played a central role in fostering important changes in the thinking, relationships, and practices of both trainees and trainers.

A manual rooted in experience
Samia al-Nagar’s engagement with gender issues began long before her role in the Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC). Already as a master’s student, she was determined to do her part to show her fellow Sudanese that something was ‘off’. She became interested in how women claiming possession by spirits were perceived and treated, not only in Sudan, but across many African and Muslim cultures, and understood this as part of a broader pattern of women’s subordination.

Over time, gender-based violence became increasingly central to her work. Continuing her work as a researcher, trainer, and consultant, she provided training using the manual, to women groups, including activists, government employees, and university students in several states. The training and use of the manual was elaborated and extended to many groups in different states after she met Liv Tønnessen, research professor at CMI and SNAC project leader. Through their discussions and a joint research project on child marriage in Eastern Sudan, the idea for including training on gender-based violence in collaborative CMI/University of Khartoum programmes emerged.

And so the work on a comprehensive manual, in which al-Nagar included stories of the people she had met throughout her training sessions, started. The manual, which has become a permanent feature of the SNAC trainings on violence against women and gender-based violence, outlines not only definitions of central concepts like gender and feminism, but also on methodology for anyone engaged in the field of gender research and has been published in both English and Arabic.

Another idea that emerged was employing a ‘training of trainers’ method. Up to fifteen participants from universities, national, civil society organisations, and activists are invited to each training session where they engage in discussions and do role play, all with the manual as a starting point. Some go on to become trainers themselves, like many of the academics and activists that have been interviewed for this article, and what started as just a handful of trainers in a few localities has now evolved into a countrywide network of trainers discussing violence against women and raising awareness about women’s rights.

Importantly, the approach emphasizes dialogue over instruction. Rather than telling participants what gender inequality is, the trainers ask questions: Who decides? Who benefits? Through discussion, participants arrive at these insights themselves.

-You can work around sensitive issues by simply guiding people with questions, says al-Nagar.

From knowledge to confidence: Individual change
For many participants, the training and the manual marked a turning point at a personal level.

Hanaa Ibrahim, a medical professional and affiliate at the Blue Nile University, says that the training gave her a solid foundation for raising and addressing questions like: Why are women subordinate? Why are they excluded from decision-making processes despite all their hard work? She confirmed that participating in the training also created a strong sense of accountability.

Through the training, she came to see gender roles as socially produced rather than natural, and power relations as something that can be challenged, also in her own family. After reading and discussing the manual together, her husband went from skepticism to fully embracing her work against, for example FGM. After training Ibrahim realized that she was burdening her daughter with domestic chores, so she changed the division of labour in their household also giving her son and husband some responsibilities.

She now continues to share her knowledge on gender issues in her new role as a medical professional for an international NGO.

-In this work, I continuously draw on the knowledge from the manual and training, for example, making them aware that service provision must be gender sensitive.

In her collaboration with the University Peace Center, Ibrahim introduced the practice of emphasizing the presence of women in invitations for any event.  The increased presence of women in the center’s seminars and discussions drew attention.

Classrooms as sites of change
The impact of the manual has not stopped with individual reflection. In classrooms and universities across Sudan, it has reshaped teaching and learning.

At Sinnar University, Ahkam Tayfour  Ahmed, lecturer and Head of the Department of History, has integrated gender perspectives in her teaching, explicitly addressing women’s subordination, gender discrimination, and GBV where relevant. Her relationships with students have changed as well:

-Many of my students come from rural communities. As young women, I know that they experience discrimination every day. I advise them to respect themselves and not accept subordination. And I make sure to tell my male students that in academia, there is no difference between students. Men and women students are all equal and change will come.

After a while, the effects of the focus on gender became apparent in the students’ work.

-Both female and male students were encouraged to consider a gender perspective in their work, and we now have two students working on issues related to women’s roles in specific historical epochs, and women’s role in the national movement, says Ahkam.

Training the trainers: Multiplying impact
A core strength of the SNAC-supported work has been the emphasis on training of trainers.

Zainab Onour, from Red Sea University, attended a training of trainers’ workshop in 2014 that she describes as a ‘landmark in my life’. It was her first visit to Khartoum and the first time she saw young women from other universities speaking so confidently and openly about gender. The practical guidance during the training, spanning from how to stand to how to build arguments, gave her the confidence to become a trainer herself.

Since then, she has conducted trainings with universities, civil society organisations, government units, and international organisations, using the manual developed in the SNAC project. In one case, training agricultural associations dominated by men led them to reconsider women’s inclusion after women demonstrated their competencies and production work. In others, women used the training space to share stories of discrimination and restriction that are seldom publicly articulated.

Islam Adam Omer, a lawyer and activist from Sinnar, has similarly used the manual to conduct training, starting with university lecturers and a group of both men and women representing civil society organizations. Facing resistance from some participants, she relied on the methodology to guide discussions back to power relations and rights. By the end of the training, many of the participants who had denied that domestic violence even was an issue acknowledged the need for change, and the university has asked for additional training.

Seeing the positive effects of the training, she has expanded to holding training sessions on the community-level through her organization Pioneer Women. Her motivation is rooted in her professional experience as a lawyer, where she witnesses firsthand the urgent need for greater awareness of gender equality and women’s rights. In her legal practice, she works with Sudanese women and girls who face discrimination and violence in their everyday lives.

-For example, I have cases where women seek divorce due to domestic violence, yet the abuse they endure is legally recognized and justified as a husband’s right.

Onour and Omer’s experiences are among the many who demonstrate how the manual and the training of trainers model have contributed to raise awareness and spread knowledge on gender issues far beyond the original project team.

Research, institutions, and new agendas
Beyond individual change and classroom practices, the manual and the gender training have also had a lasting impact on the institutional level, shaping research agendas, organisational structures, and how universities and research centers engage with gender, peace, and development.

Importantly, several of the academics and activists who have been interviewed for this impact story noted that institutionalising gender in the way that SNAC has contributed to has helped normalise the topic within academic spaces. Gender-focused teaching, research, and training has become more legitimate, less easily dismissed as “political”, and increasingly recognised as essential to producing knowledge that can influence attitudes and inspire change.

At the University of Gedarif, Amna Eltayeb’s participation in Samia al-Nager’s training on GBV and gender-sensitive research directly influenced her to develop a research project on war, displacement, and gender for a SNAC funding call. The training shaped not only her proposal, but also how the research was conducted in practice. Ethical considerations such as consent, sensitivity to retraumatisation, and access to psychosocial support were discussed and addressed in the project design.

As such, Amna Eltayeb and the other team members’ research serves as a concrete example of SNAC’s wider impact: inspiring young scholars to focus on gender research while contributing to a systematic integration of gender perspectives within universities.

Institutional change is also clearly visible through the work of university centres. In 2020, one such centre was established at the University of Kassala. Through an initiative by academics working in close coordination with university leadership, gender has become an explicit and integrated focus within their broader work on conflict and peacebuilding.

Eltayeb Abdalla, lecturer at the university’s Department of Economics and affiliate at the Economic Research Forum, has played a key role in the centre’s development. He explains that gender is not treated as a separate issue but as central to understanding conflict dynamics in the region.

This has materialised in practice through the establishment of a specialised gender department, and the development of graduate programmes relevant to gender and peace/conflict issues. A focus on gender also guides the centre’s research and outreach activities. Sharing insights based on their research is central to the centre’s work, informing discussions both among their donors and in the local community.

-The centre’s adoption of gender issues and its linkage of these to peace and development have led to a shift in how many researchers view gender. This has contributed to improving the quality of related research and studies, as well as to changing community leaders’ perceptions of gender, says Abdalla.

Beyond academia: Inspiring change on the community level
Equally significant is the impact the manual and the training of trainers model have had far beyond academic settings.

Medical practitioner Abeer Dirar focuses on reproductive health in her work at a medical office of the ERR, which is part of a community initiative functioning widely in Sudan since the start of the war.

-ERRs are predominantly controlled by men, just like other organisations and bodies in Sudan. The initiative I’m part of reaches out to women engaged in ERRs in different parts of the country, bringing them together and laying the foundations for them to be able to work as a grassroots collective. In online sessions based on the SNAC manual, they have received basic knowledge on gender, and we have discussed the gender issues we experience in the ERRs and have agreed on how to deal with them. They now coordinate in advocating for women’s needs and rights to be put on the agenda, she says.

She stresses that they don’t see their work as simply ‘training’, but as the future of women. All over the country, in a context of war and displacement, women provide medical advice, they lead discussions in safe spaces and run community kitchens.

-We are very powerful when we come together like this, she says.

While collective efforts like these are a testament to women’s agency, there is still a long way to go. According to Hanaa Ibrahim, pushback can sometimes come from misconceptions and claims that gender sensitivity and training is a Western concept that aims to change Sudanese gender roles.

-When talking about patriarchal authority and its implications, we have had men challenging the entire legitimacy of the discussions because they have misunderstood the intention of the training. Some have seen us as challenging the responsibilities of fatherhood itself and not simply the discriminatory power that comes with patriarchy, she says.

But with open discussions and asking the same questions she had pondered herself in her training sessions, she sees what many may see as unlikely participants come around. After training police officers in Blue Nile State, she got a phone call from one of the police officers who had taken part.

-He wanted to thank me. He said he had never learned or even heard about these issues while he was training to become a police officer. In fact, there was an emphasis on using violence. ‘Now I understand different types of violence, and that it is my duty to be aware and avoid violence’, says Ibrahim.

Creating real change requires time, patience, and contextual knowledge.

 Lasting impact
And with an inclusive approach and interaction with local communities, the trainings that originate in SNAC have undoubtedly had a profound impact on many lives. In particular, they have shaped Samia al-Nagar’s own trajectory. She, her manual, and the now big network of trainers have undoubtedly inspired lasting change.

-Once, doing training in Gedarif, a well-known media personality participated. After the second day of training, he told me he had been violent to his mother and sister and apologized. ‘I have promised myself that I will change, and that I will let them make their own decisions’. I’m sure this change in attitude will be reflected in his media performances. These are the kind of results that matter the most to me, she says.