No to Oppression against Women Initiative
Sudanese women's group active during the al-Bashir and Sudanese Revolution eras
The No to Oppression against Women Initiative (Arabic: مبادرة لا لقهر النساء Mubadarat La Liqahr al-Nisa' ), also known as the No to Women's Oppression Initiative, is a Sudanese women's rights group. The group was active during the Omar al-Bashir era and played a significant role during the 2018–2019 Sudanese Revolution.
Creation
The No to Oppression against Women Initiative was created in 2009 to defend women's rights in Sudan after Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a female Sudanese journalist working with the United Nations, was arrested for wearing trousers, which was considered by judicial authorities to be a violation of Sharia-based public order law. Hussein was arrested with twelve other women who had also been wearing trousers at a Khartoum restaurant. At the 4 August 2009 trial, two hundred women and men activists demonstrated in protest against the trial and were dispersed by riot police using tear gas, shields and sticks. Ten women had already been flogged for wearing trousers. One of the protest banners at the 4 August protest showed the slogan adopted as the name of the Initiative: "No to oppression against women".
Members and co-founders
Ihsan Fagiri
Amal Habani
Tahani Abass
Rashida Shamseldein
Najlaa Norin
Gomaria Omer
Amira Osman Hamed
Aims
The Initiative aims to defend women's rights via monitoring rights violations, supporting victims during court hearings, making press releases, organising workshops, providing pro bono lawyers for victims and visiting women in prisons.
Activities
The initiative implements a number of activities across Sudan, such as:
Monitoring violations
Advocacy and awareness raising campaign
Legal aid and specific need support
Finance and other resources
Al-Bashir era
In August 2014, the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) arrested 16 No to Oppression against Women Initiative members who were calling for the release of Mariam al-Mahdi, vice-president of the National Umma Party and daughter of former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.
In 2016, the No to Oppression against Women Initiative documented the sentencing of 15,000 women to flogging, out of a total of 45,000 prosecutions of women under the Public Order Act.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “No to Oppression against Women Initiative” is sudanese women's group active during the al-Bashir and Sudanese Revolution eras. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Oppression, against and Women, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “sudanese women's group active during the al-Bashir and Sudanese Revolution eras” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q74253804. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2019, 2009 and 2014.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “No to Oppression against Women Initiative”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow No to Oppression against Women Initiative primary sources, No to Oppression against Women Initiative archive and Oppression research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “No to Oppression against Women Initiative”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “No to Oppression against Women Initiative” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.