Since the outbreak of civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, Sudan has descended into one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, marked by mass displacement, urban warfare, and the collapse of basic protection systems for civilians. A new Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report documents how conflict-related sexual violence has been a central and devastating feature of this war. Over the three-year period, OHCHR verified 546 incidents affecting at least 838 victims, including 539 women, 284 girls, eight men, and seven boys, across 16 of Sudan’s 18 states, with hundreds more reports still being verified. Given severe underreporting driven by stigma, insecurity, and collapsed health and justice systems, the true scale is believed to be far larger.
The report traces how sexual violence spread geographically in sync with the spread of the war, beginning in Khartoum and West Darfur in 2023 before extending into South and North Darfur, Al Jazirah, and other states. OHCHR found that sexual violence has been used in a coordinated, recurrent, and systematic way as a weapon of war, often deployed to terrorize civilian populations, control their movement, and force displaced people back into dangerous areas. The violence has also been sharply retaliatory: women and girls perceived to belong to specific ethnicities or to be affiliated with opposing armed groups have been deliberately targeted, frequently accompanied by derogatory and dehumanizing language. The report documents recurring patterns of gang rape, abduction, sexual slavery, and sexual violence committed in detention, along with severe long-term health, psychological, and social consequences for survivors and their families.
These patterns indicate that conflict-related sexual violence in Sudan functions as a deliberate feature of the war, with consequences that extend across generations and inflict lasting psychological, social, and physical harm on survivors, families, and communities. Given the severity and scale of these impacts, sustained attention and concrete action from the international community, both in amplifying survivor voices and in advancing accountability, are urgently needed to prevent this violence from continuing unchecked.
Read the full OHCHR report at the following link: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/sudan/2026-devastating-impacts-conflict-related-sexual-violence-ohchr-report-sudan-en.pdf