The War on Women's Bodies: How Sexual Violence Became a Defining Feature of Sudan's Conflict

Nearly three years after the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces plunged the country into civil war, sexual violence has become what multiple UN officials and aid organizations now describe as part of "everyday life" across large parts of the country. The documented scale — at least 521 victims across 368 verified incidents as of mid-2025 — represents, by every credible estimate, a small fraction of the actual toll [1][2].

The war, which began on April 15, 2023, has produced the world's largest displacement crisis: 9.5 million people internally displaced and nearly 4.5 million forced across borders into Chad, Egypt, South Sudan, and beyond [3][4]. It has also destroyed the health, legal, and civil society infrastructure that survivors would need to report abuse, receive treatment, or pursue accountability. The result is a crisis within a crisis — one that international mechanisms have so far proven unable to address.

The Scale of What Is Known — and What Is Not

As of May 31, 2025, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had documented 368 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence involving at least 521 victims. More than half involved rape or gang rape, frequently targeting internally displaced women and girls from specific ethnic communities, particularly the Zaghawa and Fur [1][2]. UNICEF has separately documented hundreds of children subjected to rape and sexual assault by armed men [5].

These numbers are acknowledged to be severe undercounts. Radhouane Nouicer, the UN's designated expert on Sudan, stated that documented figures "only reflect a small fraction of the real picture" given the collapse of reporting systems, widespread stigma, and fear of retaliation [1]. The UN reported an 87% rise in documented conflict-related sexual violence globally between 2022 and 2024, with an estimated 10 to 20 cases going unreported for every one that is recorded [6].

For comparison: during the Bosnian war of the 1990s, more than 20,000 people were subjected to sexual violence, yet only a fraction of survivors came forward even decades later [6]. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 18,795 cases of gender-based violence were reported in a single year (2012), with researchers noting that actual prevalence was many times higher [6]. Sudan's 521 documented cases, emerging from a conflict where 12.1 million people are estimated to be at risk of sexual and gender-based violence, almost certainly reflects the near-total absence of documentation capacity rather than a lesser scale of abuse [7].

Who Is Responsible

Over 70% of documented incidents have been attributed to the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias [1][2]. The patterns described by investigators are consistent across multiple reports: rape committed in front of family members, abductions followed by prolonged sexual violence, trafficking for sexual exploitation, and targeted assaults on women activists documenting abuses [1][8].

A December 2025 UN report on the RSF takeover of Zamzam IDP camp in North Darfur documented at least 104 survivors — 75 women, 26 girls, and 3 boys, most from the Zaghawa ethnic group — subjected to rape, gang rape, and sexual slavery during and after the attack [8]. The ethnic targeting patterns echo the violence documented in Darfur two decades ago.

The Sudanese Armed Forces and allied armed movements are not absent from the record. While the RSF accounts for the majority of documented cases, UN investigators have also attributed incidents to SAF-aligned elements and other armed groups [1][2]. Human Rights Watch's 2026 World Report noted that perpetrators from both sides of the conflict have committed acts constituting war crimes [9].

The ICC prosecutor's office has stated it is prioritizing gender-based crimes in its investigative strategy and is working to establish individual criminal responsibility for crimes committed in El Fasher and El Geneina [10][11]. Whether this translates into charges — let alone arrests — depends on cooperation that has historically not materialized.

Displacement and Secondary Risks

The displacement figures are staggering. Since April 2023, Sudan's internal displacement has grown from zero to 9.5 million, with the total rising steadily through each phase of the conflict [3][4]. An additional 4.5 million people — mostly women and children — have crossed into neighboring countries [12][13].

Source: WHO / Yale SPH

Data as of Sep 1, 2025CSV

Sudan is now the fourth-largest source of refugees globally, with 2.5 million registered by UNHCR, behind Syria (5.5 million), Ukraine (5.3 million), and Afghanistan (4.8 million) [14].

Source: UNHCR / IOM DTM

Data as of Mar 1, 2026CSV

Displacement has not meant safety. In eastern Chad, border refugee sites are overcrowded and some can no longer accept new arrivals [12]. In Egypt, where 1.5 million Sudanese nationals had arrived by January 2026, UN experts documented a pattern of "grave violations" against refugees, including trafficking for sexual exploitation targeting women and girls [15][16]. Along smuggling routes, women and unaccompanied children face elevated risks of sexual violence and exploitation, with trafficking networks expanding as desperation grows and legal border crossings become more difficult [3][17].

UNHCR has reported "heightened risks, violations and sexual violence" among civilians fleeing Sudan, noting that the absence of income forces many women into "cycles of economic dependency and precarious survival strategies, exposing them to exploitation" [12][18].

A Health System in Ruins

The infrastructure needed to treat survivors barely exists. Across conflict-affected areas, 70-80% of health facilities are non-functional [19][20]. In Khartoum — which before the war provided 70% of Sudan's national health services — 41 of 87 hospitals have been destroyed, documented through satellite imagery [21]. Only 14% of the country's hospitals remain operational [19].

WHO has documented over 622 attacks on Sudan's healthcare system by June 2025, including damage to 157 facilities, the deaths of 147 health workers, and injuries to over 100 [20]. In areas under RSF control, hospitals have been repurposed for military use [21].

For sexual violence survivors specifically, the gaps are acute. Sudan has 30.4 million people in need, including 7.3 million women of reproductive age and over 726,000 pregnant women requiring urgent care [22]. UNFPA operates 64 safe spaces across Sudan providing medical attention, shelter, and counseling for survivors of gender-based violence, reaching over 667,000 women and girls between January and September 2025 [22][23]. But the agency's 2025 appeal of $145.7 million for sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services was only 35% funded, leaving a gap of $95.4 million [22].

The broader humanitarian response plan calls for $63 million specifically for gender-based violence prevention and response, aiming to reach 1.3 million people [7]. In 2026, UNHCR's financial requirements for the Sudan situation amount to $929 million, while 33.7 million people — half of them children — require humanitarian assistance [4][24].

Twenty Years of Failed Accountability

The legal mechanisms that theoretically exist to prosecute perpetrators of sexual violence in Sudan have a record of near-total failure stretching back two decades.

The UN Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in March 2005. Arrest warrants were issued for former President Omar al-Bashir in 2009 and 2010 on charges including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Neither warrant has been executed. Al-Bashir traveled freely to ICC member states, including Jordan in 2017, without arrest [25][26].

In October 2025, the ICC convicted Ali Mohammed Abdul Rahman (known as Ali Kosheib), a former Janjaweed militia leader, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur — the first conviction resulting from the 2005 Security Council referral and the first based on gender-based persecution [10][11]. That a single conviction took twenty years underscores the institutional obstacles.

Those obstacles are substantial. The ICC faces what its own officials describe as "obstruction and hostility" from parties on the ground, critical underfunding, and limited state cooperation in executing warrants [10]. The Security Council, which made the referral, has consistently failed to provide funding for the investigation or take action when member states refused to cooperate with arrest warrants [25][26]. The court's mandate in Sudan remains limited to Darfur, leaving crimes committed in Khartoum, Kordofan, and other states outside its current jurisdiction [9].

The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan, established by the Human Rights Council, has had its mandate renewed for two years to continue documenting violations including sexual violence [27]. But documentation and prosecution are different enterprises, and no mechanism currently exists to bridge the gap between the mission's findings and criminal accountability for perpetrators of the current conflict outside Darfur.

The Critique of Selective Attention

Sudan's crisis has consistently attracted less international media coverage and diplomatic engagement than other conflicts. Amnesty International described the situation in April 2025 as "two years of war and shameful international neglect" [28]. The Security Council has failed to implement a comprehensive arms embargo on Sudan despite extensive documentation of atrocities [28].

Critics of the international response point to a structural pattern: sexual violence in African conflicts receives intensive documentation by UN agencies and NGOs, generates periodic spikes of media attention, but does not produce the sustained political pressure needed for either military protection of civilians or accountability for perpetrators. The Darfur experience is frequently cited — extensive ICC proceedings, Security Council resolutions, and global advocacy campaigns over twenty years yielded one conviction while violence continued [25][26].

Some analysts argue that "atrocity framing" — the concentrated documentation and publicization of sexual violence — has historically served geopolitical agendas more than survivors' interests. The Save Darfur movement of the mid-2000s generated significant Western public engagement but, critics contend, contributed to policy responses that prioritized sanctions and ICC referrals over the kind of sustained diplomatic and economic pressure that might have altered the behavior of armed actors on the ground [28][29].

Others counter that the problem is not too much attention to sexual violence but too little follow-through. The UN's own monitoring body mandate, the Fact-Finding Mission, and the ICC's expanded investigative capacity represent real tools — but ones that require political will and funding that member states have not provided [10][27]. OHCHR has stated that "entrenched impunity" is itself "fuelling gross human rights violations and abuses," describing a cycle where the absence of consequences for past violence incentivizes its continuation [29].

The Destruction of Documentation Capacity

The war has degraded the very systems needed to record, treat, and eventually prosecute sexual violence. Civil registration systems — which record births, marriages, and deaths and provide the identity documentation survivors need to access services or pursue legal claims — have been disrupted across conflict areas [30]. Health facilities that would normally provide clinical management of rape (including forensic evidence collection, post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, emergency contraception, and mental health referral) are overwhelmingly non-functional [19][20].

Female civil society networks that had served as first responders and documenters of gender-based violence before the war have been specifically targeted. UN Human Rights documented assaults on women activists involved in documenting conflict-related sexual violence [1]. Many women's organizations have been displaced along with the populations they served, losing physical infrastructure, records, and community connections [30].

Rebuilding this capacity is not a matter of months. Post-conflict reconstruction of health systems in comparable settings — South Sudan, the DRC, Sierra Leone — has typically required years of sustained investment even under favorable security conditions [19]. In Sudan, where fighting continues across multiple states and humanitarian access remains heavily restricted, no realistic timeline for reconstruction exists. Both warring parties have deliberately obstructed aid delivery; the UN concluded that the RSF "used starvation as a method of warfare" [9], and a June 2025 attack on a World Food Programme convoy killed five staff members [9].

The Fact-Finding Mission's mandate renewal provides a documentation mechanism, but its work depends on access that armed groups have repeatedly denied [27]. The longer the conflict continues, the wider the evidentiary gap grows — making future accountability proceedings more difficult even if political will eventually materializes.

What Remains

The numbers available — 368 documented incidents, 521 identified victims, 12.1 million at risk — describe a crisis whose true dimensions remain unknown. The systems that would reveal those dimensions have been destroyed by the same conflict that created them.

International mechanisms exist on paper: ICC jurisdiction in Darfur, a Fact-Finding Mission mandate, Security Council authority to expand investigations and enforce cooperation. In practice, these have produced one conviction in twenty years while the patterns of violence they were designed to address have intensified and expanded.

For survivors, the immediate reality is more concrete: 80% of health facilities non-functional in the worst-affected areas, a $95 million funding gap for the services specifically designed for them, and a displacement crisis that has pushed millions into settings where secondary violence and exploitation are pervasive. The question is not whether the international community has the tools to respond. It is whether anything will compel their use.

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV