Foreign
THE United Nations says sexual violence is one of the “most defining features” of Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year.
It says sexual assaults have soared since the war began but it did not have data on assaults by combatants.
The UN said many women have been subjected to sexual slavery and forced to pay ransoms for their release, sometimes up to 10,000 dollars.
The UN and rights groups have accused all parties of sexual assault, including allied armed groups, but they said the majority of the violence has been committed by the RSF, particularly in the Khartoum area, Darfur and Gezira state.
According to the UN South Kordofan has also become a hot spot as the war expands there.
The RSF did not respond to questions about abductions or assaults.
The AP reported that they met three women who said they were abducted, held as sex slaves and forced to buy their freedom, adding that they were introduced by aid workers who said they were aware of what had happened.
The AP could not verify the accounts by the women who spoke out in a country where discussing sexual assault remains deeply taboo.
A 38-year-old woman said she fled her home in el-Fasher in September, weeks before the besieged city in Darfur was captured by the RSF, an assault the UN said bore “hallmarks of genocide.
She said her husband, a soldier, had been killed. Her brother had been shot and badly wounded and needed care.
She explained that RSF fighters ambushed them on the road, they separated out the women and children and searched the men for shoulder marks indicating they had carried a gun, a sign they likely were soldiers. Everyone was forced to strip.
She said when the RSF tried to kill her brother, she told them to take her instead.
According to her, she was bound, beaten and thrown into a truck with four other women and teenage girls and driven to an abandoned village in the desert. Naked and hungry, they lay bound in a shelter, urinating on themselves .
For the next two days, she said she and the others were raped multiple times by different men. The captors would enter and choose who they wanted, untie them, assault them and bind them again.
“I was thinking about ending my life,” the woman said, wiping away tears.
On the second day, the men demanded about 1,500 dollars for my freedom, she said.
“They gave me a phone and told me to empty my bank account. I transferred everything, about 200 dollars.
“They made me open Facebook and reach out to contacts. I called my cousin. But once he paid, the fighters called him back and pressed a metal object on my fingernails while I screamed in pain, so they demanded more money.’’
She said the torture, including sexual assault, went on for hours during calls. Her captors finally accepted about 700 dollars for her release.
Hala Alkarib, regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, a grassroots feminist network said the some people may remain captive and eventually disappear.
Adding that ransom cases have risen.
Sudan experts said the RSF has long held men and women for ransom but it has become more prevalent during the war.
Incidents of ransom, including for a small number involving sexual assault, have jumped by nearly 195 per cent from the beginning of the war.
According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S. based nonprofit organisation said the majority of perpetrators are RSF fighters.
Ransoms will increase as the paramilitary force fragments following high-level defections, said Mohamed Younis, a Sudanese conflict analyst.
Another of the three women said that even when ransom money was collected, she wasn’t freed.
After a relative in the United States transferred about 1,250 dollars to the captors, the 30-year-old said she still not released.
In what she described as compassion, one smuggled her out of the compound at night and left her to find her way home.
She said she had been abducted from a market in Khartoum in 2024 when the RSF controlled the city. She was kept in a hut with other women for two weeks and forced to cook and clean, tend to cattle and sometimes bathe the fighters.
Each night she and the others were raped, she said: “They never missed a day. I still have nightmares.”
The third woman said she had been abducted outside Dilling in South Kordofan, held for nine days in a compound, raped once and beaten. Her family paid for her release in September.
Psychologists said the ransoms have financial and emotional impacts on families, plunging them into debt as they sell their gold, cars and houses.
“The situation of these families is fragile,” said Thuria Komi, director of Bait Al Mohaba, a local group supporting women, including those who were sexually assaulted.
She said her organisation lacks the money to provide help the women need, including assistance with medical treatment.
The Trump administration in 2025 stopped funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which provides support for sexual and gender-based violence, cutting more than 370 million dollars in grants for more than 25 countries including Sudan.
The administration cited claims about past coercive abortions in China that UNFPA called unfounded.
Sudan is still receiving over 220 million dollars in 2026 from the U.S. for other humanitarian needs, according to UN data. (AP/NAN)
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Tags: Sexual Violence Sudan’s War