Trending 
Women are the main victims of abuses committed during Sudan’s ongoing war, according to a government minister, who warned that sexual violence has become widespread and is being carried out with little accountability.
Sulaima Ishaq al-Khalifa, Sudan’s social affairs minister and a long-time women’s rights activist, said women and girls have faced rape, sexual slavery, trafficking, and forced marriages since fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023.
Tens of thousands of people have died, and approximately 11 million have been displaced as a result of the conflict.
Al-Khalifa told AFP that abuses against women often take place during attacks and looting.
“There is no age limit. A woman of 85 could be raped; a child of one year could be raped,” Al-Khalifa said.
She said women have been subjected to rape in front of family members, sexual slavery, trafficking to neighbouring countries, and forced marriages arranged to avoid social shame.
Al-Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides of the conflict but described it as “systematic” among the RSF, accusing the group of using rape “as a weapon of war” and for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing.”
Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rape cases between April 2023 and October 2025, a figure she said does not include later atrocities reported in parts of Darfur and the Kordofan region.
“It’s about… humiliating people, forcing them to leave their houses and places and cities. And also breaking… the social fabrics,” Al-Khalifa said.
“When you are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, that means you want to extend… the war forever,” because it feeds a “sense of revenge.”
A report by the SIHA Network, which tracks abuses against women in the Horn of Africa, found that more than three-quarters of documented cases involved rape, with 87 percent allegedly linked to the RSF.
The United Nations has warned of targeted attacks on non-Arab communities in Darfur, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an investigation into possible war crimes by both sides.
Briefing the UN Security Council in January, ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said investigators had found evidence of an organised campaign in El-Fasher involving mass rapes and executions, sometimes filmed by perpetrators.
Al-Khalifa said current abuses are worse than those seen during Darfur’s earlier conflicts.
“What’s happening now is much more ugly. Because the mass rape thing is happening and documented,” said Al-Khalifa.
Survivors in Darfur and Khartoum have also reported attacks involving foreign “mercenaries from West Africa, speaking French, including from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Chad, as well as Colombia and Libya.”
Some victims were abducted and held as sexual slaves, while others were trafficked across Sudan’s borders, Al-Khalifa said.
Many cases remain undocumented due to the collapse of state institutions and strong social stigma.
In some communities, families force victims, including girls under 18, into marriage to conceal the abuse, particularly when pregnancies result from rape.
“We call it a torture operation,” Al-Khalifa said, describing “frightening” cases in which children and adolescent girls under 18 are forced into marriage.
