African Centre for Justice and Peace studies
(16 July 2020) REDRESS and partners welcome the law reforms announced by the Sudanese Ministry of Justice over the weekend, which move Sudan a step closer towards eliminating structural violence against women and minorities, and complying with its human rights obligations.
The reforms include the abolition of the crime of apostasy, which until now was publishable with the death penalty in Sudan. Further, the reforms involve the criminalisation of female genital mutilation, and the removal of the requirements for women to seek permission from a male relative to travel with children.
In several policy-dedicated reports, REDRESS and partners had highlighted the discriminatory application of the law in Sudan for decades, which had had a negative impact on woman. Our 2017 report Criminalisation of Women in Sudan: A Need for Fundamental Reform showed how public order laws designed to protect morality had disproportionally targeted women, who could face long spells in jail, flogging for infractions such as wearing trousers, and other forms of violence that in some cases constituted torture and ill-treatment.
Last year, the transitional Sudanese government repealed the public order laws which had governed women’s presence in public spaces but had left in place some aspects of the public order regime that have a discriminatory effect on women and minorities, including the crime of apostasy.
In 2014, REDRESS and partners brought a complaint on behalf of Mariam Yahia Ibraheem and her family before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the body tasked with promoting and protecting human rights throughout the African continent.
In 2014, Mariam, a Christian woman born to a Muslim father, was sentenced to death and corporal punishment of 100 lashes for apostasy and adultery since she had married a Christian man. She was imprisoned while pregnant with her infant son, and following her birth, with her newborn daughter, in inhuman conditions in Ombursman’s Woman Prison for over four months, leaving her with long-lasting health issues.
The complaint sought a number of remedies from Sudan, including an effective investigation of her arrest, detention, conviction and sentencing, and a public apology. It also called for amendments of Sudanese legislation to make it compatible with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Sudan ratified in 1986. The case is still pending before the ACHPR.
