Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias of widespread sexual violence in the south of the ravaged East African country for more than a year. and a half by a war between two rival generals. In a report published Monday, December 16, the human rights organization claims to have documented dozens of cases involving women and girls, aged 7 to 50, victims of sexual violence, including gang rape and slavery. sexual violence in conflict-torn South Kordofan.
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This region is largely controlled by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), an armed rebel group that controls the Nuba Mountains and parts of Blue Nile State. The RSF, which has been fighting the regular army of General Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane since April 2023, is also facing the SPLM-N for control of the region. According to HRW, many victims were gang raped in their homes or neighbors' homes, often in front of their families, while some were kidnapped and held as slaves.
A 35-year-old survivor from the Nouba tribe said she was raped by six RSF fighters who stormed her family property and killed her husband and son when they tried to intervene. “They kept raping me, all six of them”she said. Another survivor, aged 18, described being taken in February with 17 others to a military base, where they joined 33 other detained women and girls. The prisoners were allegedly chained and raped daily for three months.
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HRW described this violence as “serious violation of humanitarian law”urging the UN and the African Union to “act urgently to help survivors, protect other women and girls, and ensure justice for these heinous crimes”. “These sexual violence, which constitute war crimes, highlight the urgent need for significant international action to protect civilians and deliver justice”declared the NGO in its report.
At the end of November, the British Tom Fletcher, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), had already sounded the alarm and warned against what he described as a real “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in this country plunged into a terrible humanitarian crisis. An independent UN international fact-finding mission to Sudan also documented an escalation of sexual violence in October, “rape, sexual exploitation and kidnapping for sexual purposes, as well as allegations of forced marriage and human trafficking”.
