Women flee El Fasher with children, but often without husbands

Every day, Samira Younis’ five children ask her when their father will come back.

And every day, she must give them the same agonizing answer: She does not know.

It has been weeks since they watched paramilitary soldiers march him away as the family fled their home in the Sudanese city of El Fasher.

Why We Wrote This

Women have faced displacement, hunger, and violence amid Sudan’s civil war. After the fall of El Fasher in Darfur, they must hold their families together even as their world falls apart.

After a siege of more than 500 days, the pivotal city in Darfur fell to that paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in late October, sending at least 89,000 people fleeing.

El Fasher's fall marks a turning point in Sudan’s two-and-a-half year civil war between the RSF and th