The Sudanese civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the army’s former paramilitary allies, erupted on April 15, 2023. The nearly two-year conflict has left a trail of dead bodies, immense numbers of internally displaced peoples and manufactured one of the world’s largest ongoing humanitarian crises. Amid the displacement, famine, loss, and extensive human rights violations, Sudanese people have become pawns of revenge between the two factions who have turned their hatred towards one another onto the average Sudanese citizen.

 

On Oct. 21, 2024, news outlets began reporting that commander Abu Agla Kayka had swapped sides from the RSF to the SAF, triggering the onslaught of over 1,000 people across villages from Gezira to Sinnar State, where the commander hails from. Shortly thereafter, reports began to surface online from a women’s rights organization that the RSF was undergoing a massive crusade of sexual and gender-based violence, raping and murdering women in droves.  

 

Reports went on to tell the harrowing tales of women being gang raped in front of their infants and families, driving some to suicide as a result. The United Nations (UN) Fact-Finding Report issued on Oct. 23 stated that women and girls between 17 and 35 years-old constituted the majority of the victims, with first-hand sources informing of the rape of girls as young as eight and women as old as 75. Men and boys were not spared, although the number of reported cases was substantially lower. Witnesses also began reporting to various X accounts that any men who intervened to protect victims of sexual violence were shot at indiscriminately.

 

With the war becoming a protracted civil war and factions obtaining support from various nations now waging a proxy war in Sudan for its ample natural resources, the Gezira State massacres highlight the extreme brutality deployed upon ordinary Sudanese citizens, particularly women. Hala Al-Karib, regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network, told BBC: “The RSF started a revenge campaign in the areas under the control of Abu Agla Kayka. They looted, killed civilians who were resisting and raped women and little girls.”

 

Social media accounts from the region began reporting that over 130 women and young girls committed mass suicide on Oct. 25 as a way to avoid rape, torture, abduction, and sexual slavery at the hands of the RSF. This devastating incident highlights the gravity of the humanitarian crisis. It shows the desperation and terror that people are suffering through, taking matters into their own hands, as their cries for help continue to go unnoticed by most of the world.

 

As of Nov. 3, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 8.16 million people have been displaced since April 15, 2023, with 24.8 million people currently in need of assistance. Engulfed in those figures are many women, girls, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and LGBTQIA+ people who have been consumed whole by such large numbers, going unrepresented. The Gezira State mass suicide brought to the forefront, and to the lips of many, the harrowing acts that women have been enduring in Sudan.

 

Sexual and gender-based violence is a tactic of war that has previously been used in Sudan as a mechanism to incite fear, terrorize, and control communities during the Darfur war in 2005, and again in 2019, to quash pro-democracy protests reported by both the UN and Human Rights Watch at the time. The SAF and RSF have both explicitly been listed as parties who are “credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in a situation,” according to a press statement by the UN in 2023.

 

The tactical deployment of sexual and gender-based violence as part of a larger strategy of inciting hatred and division further reinforces that shame and fear are powerful methods of psychological warfare used to break the most vulnerable members of society. Sudanese women continue to be the foundational bedrock of Sudanese society and resistance, but they need to know that they are not alone. SIHA’s press release from Oct. 29 urged the UN Security Council to establish a gender-sensitive civilian protection mechanism, restore peace and security, establish prompt accountability measures, provide resources for sexual and reproductive health, and halt the flow of arms into Sudan.

 

 

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