Thirteen years after her own journey to safety, a Sudanese refugee woman leads protection support for others

Arwina Al-Amin has spent more than a decade in South Sudan, and most of it working for the women around her. A survivor of the conflict in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, she is a mother, a student and an elected women’s leader in Ajuong Thok Refugee Camp, where she helps other women access protection services, understand their rights and rebuild their lives.

“I came because there was no security, no protection, no food, no safe water,” she recalls. “We were forced to leave.”

In June 2011, fighting escalated in her home area of Amdoren, in South Kordofan. Air strikes destroyed homes, schools, hospitals, and the market. In one attack, Arwina lost her brother. With services collapsing and no safety in sight, her mother decided to take the family across the border. They walked for more than a month, mostly at night to avoid attacks. When they reached the then Yida refugee camp on 2 February 2012.

In 2013, the family moved to Ajuong Thok, in the Ruweng Administrative Area, where there was better access to schools and services. Arwina finished secondary school and went on to work in community services with the Danish Refugee Council, supported by UNHCR.

Empowering Women

In 2022, she was elected a women’s leader, a role that places her at the centre of protection work in the camp. She runs awareness sessions on women’s rights, the prevention of gender-based violence, and the services available to survivors of gender-based violence. With support from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), these sessions have reached women and men across the camp.

“When we talk with women, they share their ideas and their proposals,” Arwina says. “It is one way of empowering women.”

KOICA’s support has also contributed with visible improvements in Ajuong Thok, including latrines and shelter assistance. “The support is doing a lot of work, and the community appreciates the awareness, and they wish it could continue.”

That wish carries more weight now than it did a year ago. More than 650,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in South Sudan risk losing access to lifesaving assistance because of funding shortfalls. The final food and nutrition assistance for the most vulnerable 240,000 refugees is being distributed this month, with nothing yet in place to follow it. And every week, up to 3,000 refugees and returnees continue to arrive from Sudan with almost nothing.

In Ajuong Thok, women are asking Arwina for regular awareness sessions, for livelihood opportunities such as kitchen gardening, and for stronger case management for survivors of gender-based violence, needs that grow sharper as food assistance disappears. The rainy season makes everything harder: roads flood, markets thin out and prices rise just as families have the least to spend.

“Kitchen gardening can help women,” Arwina says. “They can sell what they grow and support themselves.”

She is continuing her own education online while working alongside the camp’s other women leaders. Asked about the future, her answer is simple. “We are really longing and hoping to go back to our homeland,” she says.

Until that becomes possible, support from partners such as KOICA is what allows women like Arwina to keep doing the work their communities depend on, at a time when funding cuts threaten to stop all the assistance.