ADF STAFF
Sexual violence against women and girls of all ages is rampant in war-torn Sudan, including rape, gang rape, forced marriages and sexual slavery.
A new United Nations report found that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia is using sexual violence as a deliberate tactic “intending to terrorize civilians.”
“The majority of rape and sexual and gender-based violence was committed by the RSF,” the report, published on October 29 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, stated. “[It’s] part of a pattern aimed at terrorizing and punishing civilians for perceived links with opponents and suppressing any opposition to their advances.”
Mission Chair Mohamed Chande Othman said women and girls in territories under RSF control are victims of what amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” the Tanzanian lawyer said in a statement. “The situation faced by vulnerable civilians, in particular women and girls of all ages, is deeply alarming and needs urgent address.”
Since fighting began in April 2023, Sudan’s brutal civil war between the army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 14 million people to flee their homes in the world’s largest displacement crisis. The U.N. report revealed a pattern of gender-based violence by the RSF as its fighters have advanced in several Sudanese states, particularly in Khartoum, Darfur and El Gezira.
Several women have taken their lives in central El Gezira state after being raped by RSF fighters, according to rights groups and activists.
“The RSF started a revenge campaign in areas under the control of [former RSF general] Abu Kayka,” Hala al-Karib, head of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (Siha), told the BBC. “They looted, killed civilians who were resisting and raped women and little girls.”
While documenting gender-based violence in Sudan over the course of one week in late October, Siha confirmed three cases of suicide by female victims of sexual violence in El Gezira state, Karib said.
According to the U.N. report, sexual violence also has taken place during attacks on shelters for internally displaced people and on civilians fleeing the fighting.The report said that the RSF committed sexual crimes “with particular cruelty” in western Darfur, including the use of “firearms, knives and whips to intimidate or coerce the victims while using derogatory, racist or sexist slurs and death threats.”
“First-hand sources informed of rape of girls as young as 8 years and women as old as 75,” the report stated.
Although the Sudanese Armed Forces also has been accused of sexually abusing civilians, the U.N. report said that the RSF was responsible for “sexual violence on a large scale.” It also said the RSF and allied Arab militias have carried out “abduction, recruitment and use of children in hostilities.”
Nigerian scholar and advocate Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, one of the U.N. fact-finding mission’s three experts, said the RSF is destroying lives with impunity and must be held accountable. “These women, girls, boys and men in Sudan who are increasingly exposed to sexual and gender-based violence need protection,” she said in a statement. “Without accountability the cycle of hatred and violence will carry on.”
Othman said the situation continues to deteriorate and underscores the need for urgent protection of civilians.
“Ways must be found to create conditions for the immediate deployment of an independent protection force,” he said. “There is no safe place in Sudan now.”