Sudan: HRW accuses paramilitaries of widespread sexual violence

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and militias allied to Sudan of committing widespread sexual violence in the south of the East African country ravaged by more than one year and a half of war between two rival generals.

In a report published Monday, 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 sexual slavery in conflict-torn South Kordofan.

South Kordofan is largely controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a rebel armed group that controls Sudan’s Nuba Mountains and parts of Blue Nile State.

Some victims were kidnapped and held as slaves

The RSF, which has been fighting the regular army of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane 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 described being 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.

“Serious violation of humanitarian law”

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 group of prisoners were allegedly chained and raped daily for three months.

HRW called the violence “a serious violation of humanitarian law,” urging the United Nations and the African Union to “act urgently to help survivors, protect other women and girls, and ensure justice for these heinous crimes.”

An “epidemic of sexual violence”

“This sexual violence, which constitutes war crimes, highlights the urgent need for significant international action to protect civilians and deliver justice,” the NGO said in its report.

At the end of November, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Briton Tom Fletcher, had already sounded the alarm and warned against what he describes as a real “epidemic of violence sexual assault” against women in this African country, plunged into the worst humanitarian crisis.

An independent UN international fact-finding mission to Sudan in October also documented an escalation of sexual violence, “rape, sexual exploitation and kidnapping for sexual purposes as well as allegations of forced marriage and human trafficking”.

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