Women in Sudan facing a ‘tragedy’ of sexual violence as rape cases rise

Since Sudan’s conflict erupted in April, Sulima Ishaq has been working around the clock. As the head of the country’s Combating Violence against Women and Children unit, it is her job to document sexual violence. It has now become systematic.

Ishaq and her team usually act on tipoffs from doctors and nurses. Sometimes, late at night, she receives calls directly from survivors, who tell her about their ordeals.

In a recent case, a teenage mother was raped by seven fighters while she fetched firewood in the western Darfur region. Another woman was gang-raped at her home in the capital, Khartoum, in front of her siblings.

Ishaq describes the scale of the sexual violence directed at Sudan’s women as a tragedy. “Sometimes the documentation process itself is very painful,” she says. “It is impossible to disconnect.”

The fighting in Sudan has killed at least 4,000 people and forced 4.5 million from their homes. Most of it has centred on Darfur and Khartoum where there have been fierce battles in residential neighbourhoods. So far, Ishaq and her team have verified 124 rapes.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg, with the true number almost certainly running into the thousands, according to Ishaq.

“It is really very hard to get reliable data,” she says, citing poor phone connections, constant power cuts and the difficulty of tracking survivors who have fled to Chad and other neighbouring countries. Fear of reprisals also prevents survivors from speaking out. These factors mean most rape survivors receive little or no assistance from health and social workers.

Nearly all the rapes documented by Ishaq’s unit were committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, which has occupied civilian neighbourhoods in Khartoum and Omdurman, its twin city, as it battles Sudan’s army for control.

“It is brutal, and it is all about humiliation and degrading human dignity,” says Ishaq. “Sometimes it is a part of their strategy. To make people evacuate their houses, they threaten sexual violence against the women.”

More than 4 million women and girls are at risk of sexual violence across Sudan, according to the World Health Organization.

The Darfur Women Action Group and the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), two campaign groups, have both documented cases of women being kidnapped by the RSF for ransom. They are often raped while they are held hostage. Many have been taken to Chad or kept as sex slaves.

Several rapes documented by SIHA in Khartoum happened when women tried to retrieve documents from their abandoned homes, only to find them occupied by the RSF. Other women were seized from the streets.

“The testimonies all point towards the RSF,” says Hala Al-Karib, the regional director at SIHA. “We have testimonies of women who have been raped in front of their families. In Omdurman, a mother and her three daughters were all raped in front of each other.”

A woman recently assisted by Save the Children was raped when a group of armed fighters burst into her family’s Khartoum home and threatened to kill them all unless they gave them a daughter. Two other girls helped by the NGO were raped in front of their father in Khartoum. One of them later died from her injuries, while her father died from suspected shock.

“The number of cases is huge,” says Katharina von Schroeder, a spokesperson for Save the Children.

In Darfur, the pattern of sexual violence reflects the genocidal war of the mid-2000s, says Ishaq. During that conflict, Kalashnikov-wielding Arab militias known as the Janjaweed targeted members of sub-Saharan African groups in the region.

“It is the same way as it happened before,” says Ishaq.

Today’s RSF grew out of the Janjaweed, with most perpetrators never being held accountable for their crimes committed two decades ago. “On the contrary, they were promoted and given access to resources and business, and now they are carrying on as they were before,” says Al-Karib. “This violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.”

Women played a prominent role in the revolution that toppled the former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, and threatened the grip of military actors over Sudan’s politics and economy. Neimat Ahmadi, the president and founder of the Darfur Women Action Group, says: “Because of that, they are targeted.”

Related: Anguish as rape survivors in Sudan unable to access vital medication

Last week, a group of UN human rights experts said the RSF were using rape and other sexual violence “as tools to punish and terrorise communities”, citing reports of hundreds of women being kept as slaves to be raped in degrading conditions.

Save the Children has warned that children as young as 12 are being raped, with some “targeted specifically for their ethnicity as well as their gender”.

Ishaq fears the level of sexual violence will increase if the fighting reaches new areas. She is also worried about the mental health of her staff as they continue their documentation work.

“We are being traumatised,” she says. “In our nightmares, we carry the stories of the agony, the struggle and the pain.”

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html