Bayan B Abubakr

Bayan Abubakr
Tadamon–The Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council 
Cairo, Egypt

The past few weeks at Tadamon have been busy with human rights training; translations of more documents, pamphlets, and flyers to be distributed in Tadamon’s centers; and facilitating and organizing “Coffee Hours” at Tadamon’s Maadi Center. 

Two weeks ago, Tadamon’s staff (including myself) went through a week-long human rights training session. It was facilitated by Egyptian therapists, lawyers, social workers, and activists who worked with refugee and migrant communities. The training focused on explaining and exploring the different resources that could be utilized to better the lives of migrants and refugees in Egypt, and how staff members, as individuals, could themselves serve as a resource for the communities we serve. It was interesting watching my more seasoned colleagues engage with the training and understand it through the context of the work they do on a daily basis and to witness the translation of human rights into praxis, in practice. This translation is something that I’ve felt has become the underlying theme of my time with Tadamon.  

The “Coffee Hour” at the Maadi Center has been the most enjoyable part of my summer. The Maadi Center is mainly frequented by Sudanese refugees and migrants (mostly from Darfur and the Nuba Mountains/Kordofan regions), as there is a large Sudanese diaspora in Maadi. The Coffee Hours are designed to provide a safe space for these women, where they are able to discuss their various experiences with one another. It is a space of healing and of community-building. These sessions are run weekly.

Every other week, the Maadi Center’s on-staff lawyer, doctor, or social worker join a session and contribute to the discussion. They offer their perspectives and offer legal, medical, and any other relevant advice to help address the women’s particular situations. I assisted by providing the logistical aspects of their advice and making sure that the women’s individual needs were addressed. I also made coffee sometimes, too.

All in all, interning at Tadamon has given me a lot of insight into the capacity of grassroots activism in the context of an authoritarian state: its limitations, its capabilities, and its challenges. It has helped me imagine previously unexplored ways to serve migrant and refugee communities in this political context and to create the means to execute them. 

I can’t put into words how meaningful this summer has been for me and for my personal growth. I think I’ll need another three months to process it all. Nonetheless, I’m eternally grateful to Tadamon, to my bosses, Fatima and Elenora, to the communities Tadamon serves, and to those willing to invest their time, energy, and hearts into organizations like Tadamon under incredibly difficult circumstances.

Bayan Abubakr
Tadamon–The Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council 
Cairo, Egypt

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy translating a series of human-rights-related documents (pamphlets, brochures, and flyers, usually from the UNHCR and/or other civil-society/grassroots networks in Cairo) from English to Arabic and vice versa. These documents are distributed to the community members in Tadamon’s various centers.

One poster I am particularly proud of, shown here, was translated from Spanish to Arabic and provides details on the various levels of violence migrant and refugee women can face. We’re working on translating it to French as well, and it will hang in each of Tadamon’s community centers by the end of next week.

This poster literally translates Spanish to Arabic, but in a sense, it also translates the language of human rights into one that can be understood by refugee women in Cairo, whose day-to-day lived reality may include violence. It gives the women who come to Tadamon’s centers the power to name that violence. Not to say they were incapable of this before, but the violence against them is often considered negligible compared to everything else they face. The poster also validates their experiences and shows the psychological services Tadamon provides.   

The point has been to make these documents more accessible; yet, the politics of Arabic translation are messy and felt exclusionary, especially in this case. Arabic, though spoken all over the Arab world, has many different dialects. Moroccan Arabic (darija) is usually unintelligible to Arabic speakers from the Levant, the Gulf, and East Africa. Hejazi Arabic, spoken in western Saudi Arabia, is usually unintelligible to  Arabic-speaking North Africans. Therefore, Modern Standard Arabic (fus’ha) is used by media outlets, government documents, books, and widely transmittable media, save for movies, TV shows, and music. 

Modern Standard Arabic, however, is not spoken in informal contexts. It is usually only written and read. Furthermore, those who can read and write in Modern Standard Arabic have usually received a formal education at the elementary-plus level. Some of the women Tadamon serves cannot understand written Modern Standard Arabic but can understand a written dialect. Therefore, if I were to translate the documents into a specific dialect, I would alienate some. Ultimately, my supervisor and I decided that it would be best to use Modern Standard Arabic. 

On another level,  I too am being lost in translation. The other day, I was on the metro, going from Downtown Cairo (Tadamon’s HQ) to where I live, Maadi, a neighborhood that has a mix of Arab and black African migrants/refugees on one side and Western migrants (or expatriates, as they are often called) on the other. I asked a woman sitting next to me if we had arrived at a certain stop. She said no, but that we were a stop away. She asked if I lived in Maadi, and I told her I did. She said, “Ahh, into kolakom 7inak!” (all of you are there).

I wasn’t sure if she was talking about black African migrants or Americans/Europeans. I’m Sudanese with dual citizenship from Sudan and the US; however, I don’t look Sudanese in the “traditional” sense. I think it’s my hair that throws people off. Usually, Sudanese women have their hair slicked back, in braids, or permed. I’m wearing my hair naturally, in an afro, and I think this gives the impression that I’m not from “here.”

I am able to step out of the “Western” category, however, once I start speaking Arabic. And since my accent is quickly discerned as Sudanese, I automatically become “Sudanese.” This all means that I am able to access spaces Westerners and Sudanese cannot at various different times, because I can literally switch to being either/or. It’s a unique and off-putting wielding of privilege.

At Tadamon’s Maadi Center–usually frequented by Sudanese migrants and refugees–I am welcomed into conversations with community members when they hear my Arabic. However, upon informing them of my American background, it’s almost like a wall gets built up around me. It’s as if my Americanness negates my Sudaneseness, and the space becomes slightly closed off to me. Growing up in Sudan and being in the opposite situation (having Western foreigners come into my safe spaces), I learned to build a wall up, as their presence could feel invasive and surveillance-like, so I can’t say I don’t understand where they’re coming from. It’s really my job to learn how to negotiate the spaces I enter and how my identity, being both Sudanese and American, affect said spaces and the people around me.

Bayan Abubakr
Tadamon–The Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council   
Cairo, Egypt

A few days after I arrived in Cairo, the Egyptian police arrested Wael Abbas, a prominent human rights activist and blogger. I had already been feeling apprehensive about spending three months in an incredibly fascist and authoritarian country (although I have lived in the U.S. for a while, so I should be used to it…) while working with refugees and migrants (or, as the Egyptian government sees them, a nuisance to the state).

Upon starting my internship at Tadamon, I have come to learn that it, as an organization, has become used to the tyrannical nature of the state it operates in, that being the only way it could function in Egypt. At the moment, Tadamon’s biggest projects  is Malazy. Malazy  works to provide safe spaces in the form of centers in Maadi (Cairo) and Mari Girgis (Old Cairo) to migrant and refugee women in need of legal, psychological, and medical support.

My first tasks required me to create a database for both centers to track the livelihood, ethnicity, age, sexuality, and religion of the women Tadamon serves, and to train the staff at both centers to use and implement the database. This database would be used by Tadamon to not only be of better service to these communities, but to apply to grants as well.

Tadamon runs entirely on grants and donors. They have been pretty successful in securing grants from the European Union and the UN, and Malazy is entirely funded by a grant from the EU. However, the Egyptian government has refused to grant Tadamon the money the EU sent to them for Malazy, on the basis that one of our co-partners (another NGO in downtown Cairo) does not really work with refugees (they’re focused on the empowerment of women in Egypt), and therefore, this project could not exist and Tadamon doesn’t need the money. Nonetheless, Tadamon’s staff has taken the blow and has continued with the project while finding ways to legally acquire the funds .

Over the past five months, over 600+ women have used the facilities and resources on hand in both centers. There are plans to expand the project across Egypt, and I am tasked with expanding the database to cover more centers. I am also working on writing a memo (in the form of an interim report) briefing the EU on the situation with the Egyptian government. Other than that, I work between Tadamon’s main center in Downtown Cairo, where I do logistical work, and the community center in Maadi, where I work one-on-one with the refugees who come to attend holding programs, one-on-one sessions with the lawyer, doctor, and psychologist in the center, and development trainings.

Bayan Abubakr
Tadamon–The Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council 
Cairo, Egypt

I am currently a junior majoring in history and politics with a minor in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. The focus of my degrees and my research thus far has been the effects that ethno-nationalism, institutionalized anti-blackness, and pan-Arabism have had on state formations in the Arab world. My primary focus has been on Sudan and Egypt, and the ways in which the Arabization project in Sudan has contributed to the conflicts in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Nuba Mountains (South Kordofan). This project and these conflicts have led to the one of largest and most neglected refugee crises in the world. As of 2015, there were an estimated 40.2 million displaced Sudanese peoples. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights estimates that there are between two to five million Sudanese refugees and migrants in Egypt. 

The Egyptian and Sudanese security states have a fairly strong relationship. This relationship has given the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) of Sudan a strong base in Cairo, one that they use to intimidate and threaten Sudanese refugees and migrants. Oftentimes, the NISS accuses refugees of being spies or enemies of the Sudanese state, and have demanded that the Egyptian state extradite them to Sudan. Furthermore, these refugees and migrants are not protected by the Egyptian state, and the UNHCR does not legally recognize the majority of them as “refugees,” so only a minority are subject to protections under international refugee law. Sudanese refugees in Egypt have found it incredibly difficult to escape the viciousness of the Sudanese government and the realities of being a neglected refugee in Egypt.

The Sudanese refugee crisis, particularly as it relates to Egypt, is one of the most understudied and forgotten crises. It is a critical issue that needs to be addressed, as it is a microcosm of the larger refugee crisis in the Middle East, and it speaks to the experiences of black refugees and migrants in Arab countries. There are systemic issues and flagrant miscarriages of justice that need to be addressed in Egypt’s dealing of its Sudanese refugees.  

Tadamon is an independent non-political network of civil society organizations working to promote the welfare of refugees and their mutual co-existence with Egyptian communities. Tadamon was formed to address the conflicts and tensions between refugee and Egyptian communities.  Tadamon has spearheaded a number of initiatives in Cairo to actively work to diffuse these tensions and foster community between refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, and Egyptians in Cairo. Tadamon recognizes that Egyptian and migrant communities in certain neighborhoods in Cairo compete for the same scarce resources, and that many nonprofits and community organizations exclusively target the refugee or Egyptian population, an approach which Tadamon recognizes only exacerbates existing problems and strife. Tadamon counteracts this approach by curating programs, workshops, development practices, and trainings to encourage and promote coexistence and solidarity among and within these communities while also working to alleviate poverty among them.

I will assist Tadamon in executing these goals and I will work directly with several IGOs, NGOs, and academic institutions to provide them with the research that informs their work on the livelihood and challenges of Sudanese refugees in Cairo.