UNHCR-supported refugee-led organizations help Sudanese refugee girls find their voices in South Sudan

When violence intensified in Sudan, 16-year-old Minattallah Ali Omer fled to South Sudan with her mother and older sister, eventually finding safety in the Gorom refugee settlement in Juba. Life in Gorom settlement felt strange, from the language barrier to daily routines. Later, when her sister had to go back to Sudan, Minattallah stayed with her mother.

Things started to change in 2024, when she joined the first cohort of Girl Shine, a program for girls that helps prevent and respond to gender-based violence by teaching life skills and building support. “The Girl Shine program provided me with a safe space where the other girls felt like sisters, something I had never experienced as a refugee. The kind mentors and facilitators acted like family, helping me build self-confidence and belief in myself,” Minattallah says.

Girl Shine, supported by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, started in the Gorom settlement and later moved to Juba and is being implemented by the Women for Peace Culture and Development Organization (WPCDO), a refugee-led organization, provided Minattallah and others with a series of guided sessions. These sessions offer safe spaces for girls to meet, learn about their rights, and openly discuss the specific challenges they face as refugee, returnee, internally displaced and host community girls.

More than just classes

The sessions soon meant more than just classes. “The other girls felt like my sisters,” she says. “The mentors treated us with respect and listened to us. For the first time since I left Sudan, I felt that I belonged.”

Through weekly life-skills sessions, Minattallah learned about trust, emotions, health and hygiene, safety, solidarity, early marriage, and how to plan for her future. Crucially, she discovered that her voice mattered, whether she was speaking in front of a group, standing up for herself, or supporting a friend. In particular, the discussions on gender-based violence and early marriage stayed with her the most.

“I will never allow anyone to force me into something I do not want,” she says. “Girl Shine taught me that it is my right to be educated, to learn new skills, and to help my community through my education, not through early marriage.”

On 16 February 2026, after three months of training, Minattallah graduated from the second cohort of Girl Shine with 72 other girls. “I learned that I can be a role model today,” she said. “I can challenge people through my good behavior, my qualities, and my achievements.”

Solution-builders

For UNHCR, supporting refugee-led organizations is central in placing refugee communities at the heart of the solutions to issues that affect them.

“Refugee-led organizations are not just implementing partners; they are also solution builders,” says Gloria Nyaki, UNHCR’s Assistant Representative for Protection in South Sudan. “They understand the lived realities of the people they serve in ways that no outside actor can fully replicate. When we invest in women and refugee-led organizations, we are investing in trusted spaces where adolescent girls and women, both refugees and members of the host community, can come together, learn, heal, and lead. We need to do more to strengthen these organizations, expand their reach, and ensure that the girls and women they serve are not just protected but are genuinely empowered to shape their own futures and their communities.”

UNHCR’s support to Girl Shine in South Sudan helps create safe spaces where refugee, returnee, internally displaced and host community girls like can grow. Partnering with WPCDO, the programme not only provides life skills and information but also a network of caregivers, peers and mentors. This effort aims to prevent gender-based violence and foster girls’ leadership in displacement settings.

Minattallah hopes that Girl Shine will continue in South Sudan and expand across Africa and beyond, and she even imagines it becoming part of the national school curriculum so that all girls can learn about their rights and potential from a young age. “It would be something great,” she says with a smile, “for other girls to learn what I learned from Girl Shine.”

Since 2024, 112 girls (85 refugees and 27 South Sudanese) have finished Girl Shine training in Gorom through WPCDO. Together, they are becoming a new generation of informed, confident young leaders in and around the camp.