The UN’s gender equality agency has warned that rape is being used as a “weapon of war” in Sudan, where mounting violence by UAE-backed militants has claimed thousands of civilian lives amid rampant hunger and displacement.
Violence in Sudan has escalated significantly over the past month, especially after the so-called Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias seized the city of El Fasher in North Darfur in late October.
They have massacred at least 2,000 people in El Fasher, in what some rights groups describe as a “true genocide.”
The conflict has involved widespread atrocities, including ethnic massacres, sexual violence, summary executions, and mass displacement of nearly 89,000 people.
“Women speaking to us from El Fasher, the heart of Sudan's latest catastrophe, tell us that they've endured starvation…displacement, rape and bombardment,” Anna Mutavati, UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, told reporters in Geneva.
“Pregnant women have given birth in the streets as the last remaining maternity hospitals were looted and destroyed.”
Mutavati spoke of “impossible decisions” having to be made by families “forced to choose between food and medicine and dignity."
“What the women tell us is that on their horrific journey…every step that they've taken to fetch water, to collect firewood or to stand in a food line has carried a high risk of sexual violence,” Mutavati said. “There is mounting evidence that rape is being deliberately and systematically used as a weapon of war.”
She warned that women’s bodies “have become a crime scene in Sudan,” adding, “There are no longer any safe places where women can access protection or basic psychosocial care.”
Mutavati also said that health workers report rising cases of severe acute malnutrition in infants, often linked to their starving mothers’ reduced ability to breastfeed.
“There's a ripple effect of the hunger that women are experiencing,” she warned.
While calling for an end to the violence, the official also urged broader humanitarian access and increased support to aid providers, and underlined that women and girls in Sudan “are the measure of our shared humanity.”
“Every day that the world delays to act on Sudan, another woman gives birth under fire or buries her child in hunger, or disappears without justice,” she concluded.
The RSF has been in war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for more than two years.
Despite denials, the UAE has emerged as a major backer of the RSF, providing weapons and logistics support, in exchange for Sudanese gold.
Israel, the UK, France, Canada, and the US also face international backlash for arms sales and diplomatic cover.
'RSF gang raped me in front of my daughter'
Meanwhile, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned in a Tuesday report published on X about the sexual violence perpetrated by the RSF against women in Sudan.
The Geneva-based rights group said dozens of horrifying testimonies are emerging from women and girls in El Fasher after the RSF’s attack, adding that while some survivors are bravely breaking the silence to seek justice, hundreds of others remain unable to speak about the rape and sexual violence they endured.
“Three members of the Rapid Support Forces gang raped me in front of my 12-year-old daughter and my sister-in-law. It was extremely humiliating. I feel shattered,” said a woman.
“Any woman who resisted the rape was subjected to beatings, torture, or even killed. An 11-year-old boy was beaten to death while trying to help his mother.”
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said around 25 women were gang raped in a displacement camp in El Fasher.
“Four members of the Rapid Support Forces came. One of them grabbed me and said he wanted to rape me. I tried to resist, but he beat me and threatened to rape my young daughter,” another woman was quoted as saying.
“They tied me up and stripped me of my clothes, then three of them raped me in front of my daughter.”
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