Sudan’s women break ‘traditional rules’ to survive

Displaced mothers are forced into gruelling manual labour to feed families as new data confirm Sudan has surpassed COVID-19 records for school closures.Published On 25 Jan 2026In the displacement camps of Ad-Damazin in southeastern Sudan’s Blue Nile State, the war is reshaping social norms and introducing new realities that are forcing Sudanese women into manual labour to survive.Rasha is a displaced mother. She has ignored old boundaries and perceptions of what a man’s work is and started working as a woodcutter to feed her children.“Carpentry is hard, … but the axe has become an extension of my hand,” Rasha told Al Jazeera Arabic. “There are no choices left.”Her story is not unique. Thousands of Sudanese women have become their families’ sole breadwinners and work under harsh conditions. Rasha’s earnings after a day of back-breaking labour under the sun are often enough to buy only a packet of biscuits.She spends the money on food and soap. “You want soap. You want to wash,” she said. “As for clothes, we have given up hope on that.”The nearly three-year war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group has had a catastrophic impact on the country and its people.According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 30 million people from a population of 46.8 million are in need of humanitarian assistance.The population is facing acute food shortages and a nutrition crisis, especially in the Darfur and Kordofan regions in western and central Sudan. At the same time, disease outbreaks are worsening the situation.Moreover, Sudan is dealing with the world’s largest displacement crisis with an estimated 13.6 million people forced from their homes by the fighting.