El Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, fell to Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters in late October 2025 after eighteen months of siege and slow starvation. Among those who remained as the city unraveled was Siham Hassan a former member of Sudan’s parliament, a community organizer, and one of many who chose to stay with neighbors rather than flee. Her killing during the RSF takeover crystallized the multiple violences of Sudan’s war: the targeting of civic leaders, the collapse of civilian protection, and the shrinking space for humanitarian survival.
Early Life, Politics, and a Voice for Darfur
Siham Hassan (also known as Siham Hassan Husballah) was born and raised in North Darfur. A graduate of El Zalingei University’s Faculty of Education (Physics), she built a reputation as an educator and advocate before entering national politics.
In 2016, she became the youngest person ever elected to Sudan’s National Assembly, representing Darfur under the Liberation and Justice Movement. In parliament, she was known for her candor and tenacity questioning ministers about displacement, underfunded schools, and infrastructure decay insisting that Darfur’s chronic crises demanded real remedies, not symbolic gestures.
Her constituents regarded her as a defender of local dignity, a parliamentarian unafraid to challenge both bureaucratic neglect and the structural marginalization of Darfur within Sudan’s power map.
After the political upheavals of 2019, Hassan left the legislature and returned to El Fashir. That decision to remain embedded with her community instead of seeking safety elsewhere defined the second act of her public life. With government institutions collapsing and aid convoys blocked, she transitioned from lawmaker to grassroots humanitarian organizer.
Humanitarian Leadership Amid Siege
As El Fashir descended into siege conditions, crippled markets, contaminated water, dysfunctional hospitals, Hassan became a central node in the city’s survival network. She helped coordinate and operate community kitchens (takaya), rallying volunteers and rationing scarce staples to feed families cut off from relief convoys.
Those kitchens were not just food stations; they became islands of community order, spaces where people could share information, map safe routes, and sustain hope. In a conflict where starvation was weaponized, every shared meal was an act of resistance.
Her visibility, however, carried risk. Paramilitary forces routinely targeted community organizers who mobilized resources outside their control. In June 2024, Hassan was detained by RSF aligned intelligence units for nine days, reportedly subjected to harsh interrogations and mistreatment, a public warning that no form of local organization would go unmonitored.
Women activists in Darfur face layered threats: their visibility makes them indispensable to community care and simultaneously exposes them to gender-based violence and political retaliation. Hassan’s persistence in her refusal to flee and her insistence on keeping kitchens open made her both a lifeline and a target.
The Fall of El Fashir and Reported Executions
On 26 October 2025, RSF units overran the last Sudanese army positions in El Fashir. Witnesses and civil society monitors described waves of executions, detentions, and house-to house killings. Among those reported dead was Siham Hassan, executed alongside other civilians in a targeted spree.
International human rights organizations swiftly condemned the killings and called for independent investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity. Diaspora networks framed Hassan’s death as emblematic of the broader targeting of women leaders and humanitarian workers under RSF rule.
Why Siham Hassan’s Story Matters
Hassan’s life and death illuminate three core realities of Sudan’s crisis:
- Civic service becomes resistance when state protection collapses; feeding the hungry becomes a political act.
- Women’s leadership carries heightened peril, as gender-based violence and intimidation are wielded to silence public voices.
- Paramilitary occupations turn siege zones into repression zones, where local networks are dismantled to extinguish autonomy.
Her killing sent a deliberate message that grassroots organization would be punished. Yet, in death, she became a rallying symbol for Darfur’s civil-society resilience. For exiled Sudanese communities, Hassan’s legacy reinforces the call for accountability and global attention to summary executions, enforced disappearances, and civilian targeting.
Memory, Mobilization and Demands for Justice
Across Darfur and within Sudan’s diaspora, tributes portray Siham Hassan as both humanitarian and martyr. Online vigils, petitions, and memorial fundraisers have followed, alongside demands for the UN, AU, and ICC to open urgent inquiries into RSF abuses in El Fashir.
Her name now anchors campaigns for protection of local humanitarian workers — particularly women in Sudan’s conflict zones. As rights groups collect testimonies, satellite imagery, and witness accounts, her story underscores the need for evidence of preservation to support future prosecutions.
As one El Fashir resident said in a widely shared tribute:
“When food ran out, she fed us. When fear spread, she stayed. Siham Hassan taught us that courage can be quiet and that even in hunger, dignity must eat first.”
A Call for Accountability and Protection
Siham Hassan’s story is both a eulogy and summons. It challenges journalists, investigators, and policymakers to prioritize the safety of local humanitarian actors in the invisible infrastructure of survival. It demands swift, independent investigations into atrocities in El Fashir and renewed support for women defenders working in peril.
She did not flee when she could. She stayed to feed, to organize, and to bear witness. Her death blurs the line between humanitarian labor and political courage a reminder that in Sudan’s conflict, every act of care is an act of resistance.
To honor Siham Hassan is to insist that her killers, and the system that enabled them, be named and held to account.
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