THE Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has “terrorised” women and girls in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and the adjacent cities of Omdurman and Bahri, committing acts of sexual violence that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch has said in a new report.
Based on interviews with dozens of healthcare providers, social workers, lawyers, and emergency response room volunteers, the report documents widespread cases of rape, gang rape, and the forced marriage of women and girls by RSF fighters.
“I have slept with a knife under my pillow for months in fear from the raids that lead to rape by RSF,” a 20-year-old woman living in an area controlled by the RSF told Human Rights Watch in early 2024. “Since this war started, it is not safe anymore to be a woman living in Khartoum under RSF.”
The RSF began fighting the Sudanese army in April 2023 in a war that has since spread across the country. The group rapidly took over large parts of Khartoum, embedding fighters within residential neighbourhoods, homes, businesses, and key public infrastructure as protection from military airstrikes.
Human Rights Watch said that the RSF has abducted women and girls and confined them to the homes and facilities that they occupy, subjecting them to sexual violence and other kinds of abuse. Some fighters have assaulted women and girls in front of their families.
The report also documents cases of sexual violence committed by members of the Sudanese army (SAF) albeit fewer than the RSF, and accuses both sides of blocking survivors from accessing emergency healthcare.
“SAF has willfully restricted humanitarian supplies, including medical supplies, and aid workers’ access, imposing a de facto blockade on medical supplies entering RSF-controlled areas of Khartoum since at least October 2023. The RSF have pillaged medical supplies and occupied medical facilities,” the report states.
The war has produced the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting more than 10 million people, and the biggest hunger crisis too. One study has predicted 2.5 million starvation deaths by September, while others are warning of the world’s worst famine in 40 years.
