Our Impact

Fifteen years of survivor-led work — protecting lives, advancing justice, and ensuring Sudanese women shape decisions about Sudan’s future.

Over the past 15 years, DWAG has worked extensively to implement programs on the ground, focusing on responding to the needs of and empowering communities impacted by genocide, while conducting policy advocacy aimed at preventing genocide and atrocity crimes and combating gender-based violence (GBV). Through direct interventions and project implementation, DWAG has supported the protection of women and girls and access to justice in Sudan — emphasizing protection, participation, inclusion, and empowerment as the core strategic pillars of its interventions, both in Sudan and in the diaspora. This work includes advancing women’s rights, providing protection for human rights defenders, monitoring and documenting GBV incidents, and advocating for accountability for serious international crimes committed in Darfur — including crimes against women in Darfur and across Sudan.

DWAG has served 500,000 direct beneficiaries and 2.5 million indirect beneficiaries through five different programs.

When the war erupted in 2023, international organizations and UN agencies left Sudan, leaving Sudanese women and youth to take on critical roles in supporting their communities. DWAG has been on the ground from day one, empowering communities to support their people, rallying volunteers to distribute medicine to those with chronic illnesses, distributing food to communities in dire need, educating affected communities about preventive health measures, responding to incidents of rape and sexual violence, documenting atrocities, supporting education for children cut off from schools in remote war zones, mobilizing resources and emergency funds, and keeping the international community informed.

DWAG implemented projects on Women and Girls Empowerment (WAGE), providing protection and responding to GBV and CRSV through access to justice –including referral pathways, psychosocial support, and trauma counseling. DWAG has demonstrated strong capacity in its approach to GBV prevention and women’s empowerment by putting women survivors first and creating platforms for policymakers to directly hear from those most impacted by crises. Despite its relatively recent history, DWAG has effectively helped shape the women’s rights and broader human rights debate by placing Sudanese women at the center of discussions and decision-making on the global stage.

In the wake of the 2019 revolution that overthrew Omar al-Bashir, then-Sudanese dictator, DWAG developed a Strategic Framework for the Protection, Participation, Inclusion, and Empowerment of Women in the Republic of Sudan to guide the interventions of both international and local actors. The framework emphasizes the prevention, protection, and participation of women as fundamental priorities for women’s empowerment at all levels in Sudan. The framework is utilized as strategic guidance for all of our interventions and partnerships.

DWAG has established Women Empowering Women Centers (WEWC) in some of the most impacted and hard-to-reach areas of Sudan. These centers are culturally competent, protection-focused safe spaces offering integrated services that are not limited to addressing the immediate impacts of violence against women. They also promote local ownership, connect women’s movements at the grassroots, regional, national, and international levels, and enable women to share knowledge, develop skills, and restore their dignity.

Through these centers and mobile centers, DWAG has trained trainers, service providers, and community leaders, and created a strong foundation for protection and GBV response in the project areas.

Women and Genocide in the Twenty-First Century Symposium: DWAG has successfully organized eight annual symposiums in Washington, DC, over eight consecutive years. The symposiums have engaged more than 2,000 anti-genocide activists from across the world since 2012, bringing together 150–300 dedicated anti-genocide activists, scholars, experts in international law, policymakers, survivors, and students annually to deliberate on genocide, atrocity prevention, the use of rape as a tool of genocide, and strategies to empower survivors to collectively pursue justice and restore their dignity.

For more than eight years, DWAG has brought survivors from nine conflict situations –including Sudan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, Nigeria, Guatemala, and South Sudan –to share their lived experiences, recognize their outstanding leadership, courage, and determination to fight for the rights of their communities, and rally support for their efforts. This has helped create a movement of dedicated individuals committed to fighting for a world without genocide.

DWAG’s policy development and advocacy campaigns are informed by the realities of its work on the ground, including in conflict-affected regions and communities. DWAG leverages expert knowledge informed by lived experience, as well as the expertise and perspectives of its partners and beneficiaries. DWAG strives to ensure that those most impacted by crises and the issues it addresses have a voice, that their needs and concerns are prioritized, and that their protection and ability to survive, live with dignity, rebuild, and thrive are centered in policy decision-making, interventions, and processes.

Ongoing Campaigns: DWAG mobilizes, educates, and empowers ordinary citizens to shift the agenda at both national and international levels by bringing the voices of women, survivors, and conflict-affected communities to the global stage. This ensures that these voices effectively inform measures related to civilian protection, humanitarian assistance, atrocity prevention, accountability, and fostering long-term peace and sustainable social change. Through public forums, awareness campaigns, and direct training, DWAG has reached over 150,000 activists, advocates, and policymakers who have become voices for the people of Sudan.

DWAG has been actively documenting atrocities, sounding the alarm, organizing around the clock, and advocating for policymakers to respond to the dire civilian protection and humanitarian needs on the ground, while promoting an atrocity prevention approach to Sudan.
Advocacy for Atrocity Prevention and Justice in Darfur: In response to the longstanding atrocities in Darfur, DWAG launched a project focused on atrocity prevention and justice. The project established a network of 20 Sudanese CSOs within Sudan and the diaspora to analyze the root causes of crises, take historical grievances into consideration, promote capacity building, develop an atrocity prevention approach to resolving the crisis in Sudan, and collectively advocate for the international community to adopt this framework.

The core objective of this project is to take a rights-based, nontraditional conflict resolution approach to the crisis in Sudan that prioritizes civilian protection and accountability measures, creating an enabling environment for a lasting political settlement.

Over the last 15 years, DWAG has provided opportunities for civil society, human rights defenders, women and youth leaders, and survivors from affected communities to participate in international and regional forums and bring their voices to the global stage. This has included participation in CSW forums, African Union Peace and Security Summits, UN Security Council briefings, and Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute forums, including more than 223 leaders from communities on the ground.

DWAG has so far supported 1,100 students to reach safety and sit for their exams.

DWAG has provided support for 425 elementary students from Kalma Camp, 350 students in North Darfur to attend exams in Chad, and 335 Darfuri students to attend exams in Omdurman. Early this year, with many Darfuri students trapped by the war, DWAG was called to action and responded.

In North Darfur, despite school closures due to the war, students spent the year studying from home and in small groups, hoping that peace would come, allowing them to sit for their exams in their own cities. When the time came for national exams, however, there were no safe examination centers in Darfur. At the same time, the RSF prevented many students from traveling, including through the arrest and imprisonment of high school students.

Parents and teachers attempted to help, but their resources were severely limited. They reached out to DWAG, and despite having limited resources itself, DWAG decided to help. It rallied friends and supporters and successfully raised more than $15,000 in less than a month. DWAG was able to help all registered students travel safely to Chad and Omdurman and provided meals, transportation, and counseling sessions for students, accompanying parents, and teachers.
When asked why they did not approach larger organizations, community members cited protection concerns and the lengthy application processes, noting that funding is not guaranteed. This demonstrates why organizations like DWAG exist: DWAG knows the community, the community trusts DWAG, and even when circumstances seem impossible, DWAG works to make assistance possible.

Over the years, and especially during the recent war, DWAG has facilitated access to protection for more than 150 human rights defenders, including human rights activists, lawyers, women human rights defenders, journalists, and student activists working to document and monitor the human rights situation in Sudan.

“We were targeted, trapped, and lost hope, had it not been for DWAG, we would have been killed in El Fasher” said Z.M, a prominent female human rights defender from El Fasher, North Darfur.

As DWAG’s geographical reach has expanded, its programs have grown and expectations from its constituencies have increased beyond its current capacity. This prompted DWAG to organize strategic planning and review sessions for staff, board members, and friends of DWAG in 2024, resulting in the development of an organization-wide change management strategy.

The strategy resulted in three actionable strategic goals for DWAG to pursue in taking the organization to the next level:

This process has energized, informed, and motivated those involved and strengthened the organization’s vision for a more predictable and sustainable future.