Sudan: Women Pay the Price of War – and Hold the Keys to Peace

Sudan’s civil war was triggered by a power struggle between two men, but it has taken its greatest toll on women and girls. They’re being targeted by warring parties who deliberately use sexual violence as a weapon of war. There have been recent reports of women committing suicide after being raped by militiamen in front of their families, or doing so to escape this fate as paramilitary forces approach.

Since April 2023, conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, have forced over 11 million people to flee their homes. Sudan has the largest internally displaced population in the world, estimated at eight million, while three million more have become refugees in neighbouring countries, particularly Chad, where they live in dire conditions.

Military and paramilitary forces are killing civilians and committing crimes against humanity and war crimes, including against women and girls. Both use control of food supplies as a weapon of war, blocking humanitarian deliveries, looting warehouses and destroying food stocks, crops and livestock. But with the RSF committing a disproportionate share of abuses, it’s the rebel troops that civilians, particularly women, fear the most.

The RSF appears close to defeating the SAF in North Darfur and capturing its capital, El Fasher. A massacre is expected: the RSF grew out of militias that committed genocide in Darfur two decades ago, and since mid-October, it has destroyed many villages inhabited by the Zaghawa ethnic group. The SAF meanwhile have razed farming settlements of non-Arab communities in Gezira state, with local pro-SAF militias burning homes, injuring and killing civilians and looting livestock.

An estimated 755,000 people risk starvation. According to the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, almost 25 million are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, particularly food. A cholera outbreak has further strained a health system on the brink of collapse, and climate change is playing its part, with recent floods displacing thousands more.

The Sudanese state has virtually collapsed, with basic services non-existent and infrastructure such as communications largely destroyed. Humanitarian aid is desperately needed, but the fighting and lack of infrastructure make delivering it a huge challenge.

Gendered impacts

Conflict is taking its heaviest toll on women and girls. Many are forced to leave their homes, separated from male family members who stay behind to protect property or fight. Women are often left as the sole caregivers and providers for their families – but trying to earn money exposes them to grave danger, so they often struggle to feed their children.

Food insecurity disproportionately affects women, because they’re usually the last to eat. Pregnant and nursing mothers are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition, which affects their health and that of their young children.

As families experience economic hardship, women and girls face the prospect of early and forced marriage. In contexts of extreme stress and trauma, they’re exposed to rising domestic violence. When displaced, they face increased danger of sexual assault and rape, becoming increasingly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Three months into the ongoing conflict, the UN estimated that the number of women and girls at risk of gender-based violence in Sudan had risen from 3 million to 4.2 million. At the one-year mark, its new estimate was 6.7 million .

Many schools have been damaged or destroyed, affecting girls most, with many leaving school due to early marriage and others unable to attend because when resources are scarce families prioritise education for boys, or because there aren’t educational facilities for displaced girls.

With many hospitals damaged or destroyed, access to reproductive and maternal healthcare is extremely limited. Mental health support, crucial for trauma survivors, is largely unavailable.

Sexual violence as a weapon of war

Combatants have unleashed a wave of systematic sexual violence against women and girls, prompting the UN’s humanitarian chief to describe the situation as ‘not just a humanitarian crisis’ but ‘a crisis of humanity’.

Between April 2023 and February 2024 alone, health workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported treating 262 survivors of sexual violence, aged from nine to 60. These figures represent a small fraction of cases, as many survivors are unable or unwilling to seek help due to fear of reprisals, shame, stigma and lack of access to functioning health facilities.

Sexual violence is coming from all sides, but UN reports show that the RSF are the worst offenders. There’s an established pattern: RSF fighters systematically raid homes, gang-rape victims in front of family members, abduct women and girls, hold them in conditions amounting to sexual slavery and force them into marriage. While no woman can feel safe, violence against women also has a punitive dimension: women who played an active role in the 2019 revolution that toppled long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir are targeted, along with those who belong to particular ethnic groups.

The physical and psychological toll on survivors is devastating. Health workers report treating debilitating physical injuries, with some women dying from their wounds. Many survivors become pregnant through rape and struggle to get abortions.

Both warring parties severely hamper survivors’ access to critical care. The SAF has imposed a de facto blockade on medical supplies entering RSF-controlled areas of Khartoum since October 2023, while the RSF have looted medical supplies and occupied health facilities. Local health workers trying to help survivors have become targets themselves, facing intimidation, arbitrary arrest and sexual violence.

Because of the stigma associated with sexual violence, it’s common for survivors to be rejected by their families and communities. Survivors typically experience severe trauma symptoms, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, chronic fear, depression, sleep deprivation and suicidal thoughts. With mental health resources extremely limited some see no way out, with rising suicide rates among rape victims.

Even when they overcome the barriers of fear and shame, survivors find it extremely difficult to seek justice and challenge impunity due to the breakdown of law enforcement and judicial systems.

Civil society’s response

Several UN agencies have joined forces to support survivors of sexual violence. But they face many difficulties in delivering aid, so much of the work has fallen to local women’s organisations, whose deeper understanding of the local context and established community networks enable them to better circumvent restrictions and reach people in need.

Despite the dire security situation, limited resources and the near closure of civic space, women’s groups have responded by organising community watches, running safe houses, setting up clinics in refugee camps, creating informal education programmes for displaced girls and providing psychosocial support to rape survivors.

At the same time, they’re documenting and exposing human rights abuses and atrocities, researching the conflict’s impacts on women and girls, leading international advocacy campaigns and demanding accountability.

They’re calling for international support for local responders, unimpeded access to healthcare for survivors, independent targeted sanctions against those responsible for systematic sexual violence, investigations into atrocities and accountability for perpetrators. Forty-nine women-led organisations are pushing for the inclusion of women in peace negotiations.

The way forward

Sudan’s humanitarian and human rights crisis isn’t going to go away. It only threatens to worsen, and the targeting of women and girls is bound to create long-term challenges for recovery.

Effective humanitarian access is the first and most urgent need, and it requires a ceasefire. A lot of funding is also needed to enable a response on the right scale. The international community must support women-led organisations and initiatives and prioritise gender-sensitive humanitarian assistance, including gender-based violence services and targeted support to female-headed households facing acute food insecurity.

The international community must also work towards a peace agreement. Peace will only be sustainable if it results from genuine dialogue between all relevant groups, including Sudanese civil society in all its diversity – with women’s groups to the fore.

Evidence shows that when women are involved, peace agreements last longer and are better implemented. However, as the latest UN annual report on Women, Peace and Security points out, women currently make up only 9.6 per cent of negotiators in peace processes around the world.

Just as there are gender dimensions to conflict, there are gender dimensions to peace. The needs of Sudanese women and girls won’t be taken seriously unless women are empowered to play an effective role in peace negotiations and peacebuilding processes.

*CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report .
A longer version of this article is available here .
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