Breaking silence and stigma, Sudanese refugee women in Uganda come together to tackle period poverty

Even before fleeing Sudan’s war to Uganda’s Kiryandongo refugee settlement in 2023, Ranad Abdel Rahman struggled to manage her period without sanitary products.

The war took a toll on her, and the shortage and inaccessibility of pads – a need that humanitarian aid rarely addresses – left her feeling ashamed and alone.

The 20-year-old had to resort to using cloth rags, which caused painful skin rashes, missed school, and the stigma of visible stains and shame from classmates.

“I was always afraid and embarrassed about not having sanitary pads,” she tells The New Arab from the sprawling refugee camp that houses thousands of Sudanese refugees.

Unsurprisingly, Sudan’s war has torn communities apart. As it stands, the war has displaced over 12 million people — mostly women and children — who struggle with basic necessities and face period poverty, relying on improvised solutions that increase the risk of infection.

That risk is even greater for the roughly 87% of Sudanese women and girls aged 15 to 49 who have undergone female genital mutilation. In Uganda, nearly 40,000 Sudanese refugee women and girls are living this reality.

To challenge the systematic neglect of menstrual health in humanitarian responses, Sudanese activists Marwa Taj El-Din and Fidaa Ashraf co-founded Red Card, a grassroots initiative that distributes reusable pads and delivers menstrual health education in refugee settlements and conflict zones.

Marwa, a Sudanese reproductive health advocate who fled to Egypt in April 2024, turned her five years of workshops and health education in Sudan into direct action after recognising that awareness alone was not enough.

"I always worked in awareness and education, but there was no extensive field work with women. After the war, we decided to break through these limitations," she explains.

Before fleeing, Marwa recalls that in December 2023, the urgency of the crisis led her to partner with local organisations to launch the One Million Sustainable Pads initiative, working with the Salam factory in Khartoum, which was later forced to relocate to Port Sudan and then Egypt due to the conflict.

The project has since evolved into Red Card, which she says “embodies a feminist reimagining of how refugee women can maintain dignity and autonomy even in displacement.”

Breaking the silence

In Kiryandongo settlement and Kampala’s crowded communal housing, Red Card volunteers navigate deeply entrenched taboos surrounding menstruation.

After fleeing to Uganda in June 2023, just two months after the war erupted, Fidaa witnessed firsthand how even well-intentioned aid efforts failed to address the issue comprehensively.

"Even organisations that distributed sanitary pads, like UNHCR, when they gave out sustainable pads, there wasn’t sufficient awareness, and women didn’t feel comfortable," she notes.

That is why the organisation has developed culturally sensitive strategies to combat this stigma, running separate educational programmes for older women and younger girls.

The founders believe this approach acknowledges generational differences in comfort levels while ensuring comprehensive reproductive health education reaches all age groups.

"We make sure to be sensitive,” Fidaa tells The New Arab. “We have two programmes. One is for older women and the other for younger girls. We encourage them that talking about menstruation is normal, whether organisations provide pads or not.”

The environmental and economic revolution

Ethar Nimr, a Sudanese volunteer doctor in Kiryandongo camp, points to the difficulty of accessing medical care in both Kiryandongo and Kampala, where women in communal housing only receive their sanitary pad allocations if they travel to distant camp distribution points.

"The lack of clean and adequate water, and weak health services, are among the most prominent challenges," she says. “The camp's inadequate environment, including the shortage of appropriate toilets and privacy, negatively impacts women's mental and physical health.”

Red Card’s distribution of reusable pads – designed to last up to a year and made from plastic-free, biodegradable materials – tackles several of these challenges at once.

In refugee camps where waste management is virtually non-existent, disposable pads pose an environmental problem, as traditional single-use pads can take up to 500 years to decompose.

So far, the initiative has distributed approximately 90,000 reusable sanitary pads to more than 14,000 women and girls across Kassala, Northern, South Kordofan, Blue Nile, Gedaref, South Darfur, and West Darfur in Sudan, and refugee camps in Chad and Uganda.

Despite a funding gap of more than $50,000, Red Card is pursuing long-term solutions. A small grant from the International Network on Appropriate Technology (INAT) is supporting the creation of a pad production facility in Kiryandongo, now in its early phase of importing equipment.

"We want to register the initiative as an official organisation because that will expand our opportunities, and we're working on establishing local factories instead of importing," Fidaa explains.

According to Marwa, the factory represents “a crucial step” toward economic empowerment. Rather than perpetuating dependency on humanitarian aid, it will provide employment opportunities for refugee women while producing affordable, sustainable products locally.

"Girls miss school for five days monthly, and women breadwinners lose their work. We seek to achieve reproductive justice through these initiatives," Hanan Bahr, a Sudanese feminist activist involved with the initiative, states.

Technology meets tradition

Without a doubt, innovation has been crucial to Red Card’s expansion. In October 2024, volunteers used Starlink satellite internet to conduct virtual training sessions and awareness workshops, overcoming the logistical challenges of reaching women in remote areas.

This technological adaptation allowed the initiative to maintain momentum despite security concerns that sometimes result in supply convoys being raided by armed groups.

Furthermore, the organisation works with local partners, including the Sila organisation in Northern State and groups in Blue Nile, North Darfur, and Kordofan, ensuring that education and distribution align with local contexts and languages.

"We work with grassroots organisations that deal with women in the appropriate language and manner," Fidaa notes.

For beneficiaries like Abdel Rahman, the impact has been life-changing. After participating in Red Card’s workshops and receiving reusable pads, she experienced “a fundamental shift in how she understood her body and rights.”

"The sustainable pads made me feel comfortable and allowed me to continue my studies without worry and maintain my normal movement in the camp environment and beyond," she says. "I didn't know much about menstruation, but the workshops taught us how to take care of ourselves and understand our bodies and not be ashamed of talking about it, even in front of men."

Overcoming challenges

As of March 2025, Red Card has distributed pads to nearly 2,000 women in Kiryandongo alone, despite weak infrastructure and persistent social stigma.

The organisation has also submitted five project proposals for refugee rights in Uganda, Chad, and Sudan, seeking stable funding to expand their reach.

Yet, challenges remain formidable. Customs duties on imported materials, transportation costs, and security concerns continue to hamper distribution efforts. Social media critics question the initiative’s priorities.

The movement’s leaders envision policy changes that would eliminate customs duties on sanitary products. The local factory being established in Kiryandongo marks the first step in a strategy to help Sudanese refugee women move beyond reliance on humanitarian aid and work toward reproductive justice in displacement.

"We currently aim to change customs policies on sanitary pads and economically empower women so they can depend on themselves," Fidaa says, adding that this activism would help establish local manufacturing units across refugee settlements.

“From the start, we aimed to create solutions that were both sustainable and environmentally friendly.”

Mohamed Wad Alsak is a Sudanese freelance journalist and multimedia producer covering conflict, displacement, and human rights across Sudan and East Africa. Combining investigative reporting with visual storytelling, his work centres on marginalised voices and explores lived realities with depth and nuance

This article is published in collaboration with Egab