Peace Is the Right to Return Home Without Fear

When I first heard that Khartoum was being bombed and the war had begun, I could not believe that the city we knew all our lives had turned into a battlefield in a single moment.

I immediately reached out to my sisters and the women of Sanabl Al Ataa. As we spoke, I could hear the terrifying sounds of gunfire and explosions surrounding them.

Many of them had left their homes that morning thinking it was just another ordinary workday.

But it was not an ordinary day —

it was a day filled with death and fear.

In just moments, everything changed:

Gunfire everywhere.

Women screaming.

Children crying as they watched bullets take lives in front of them.

Each woman felt that any moment could be her last.

They did not flee only from death —

they fled from the fear of sexual violence and the crimes spreading around them.

They ran out with nothing but their trembling bodies and their terror.

They left behind their homes, their clothes, their memories.

They passed streets filled with bodies and burned cars.

These moments were enough to change their lives forever.

This is what war is:

destruction, fear, death, and wounds that never fully heal.

Later, when I taught displaced children outside Sudan, I saw how deeply the war lived inside them.

Their games were not about joy — their games were about dying.

Their stories were not about imagination — they were about gunshots, explosions, and escaping death.

If this is the reality of children who managed to flee the war, what about the children still living it every day?

For us, peace is life itself.

Peace is safety.

Peace is dignity.

Peace is the moment children can sleep without fear,

and the moment women can walk to their homes without praying to survive.

Peace is rebuilding our homes, our documents, our hope, and our future.

Peace is the right to live again — without fear.

— Zinab Ismail

Founder & President

Sanabl Al Ataa Organization – Sudan

�