Warring parties in Sudan are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, and gender-based violence has more than doubled since the conflict erupted in April 2023, UN Women, a United Nations agency focused on women's rights and social progress, said in its new report. The emergency in Sudan is one of the worst protection crises in recent history, with alarming levels of sexual and gender-based violence continuing to terrorize civilians, especially women and girls.
“Sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war throughout this conflict,” Hodan Addou, UN Women’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, told journalists in Geneva at the launch of the report Friday.
“The ongoing violent conflict has exacerbated the risks faced by women and girls in Sudan, with rising reports of conflict-related sexual violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly in Khartoum, Al Jazeera, Darfur and Kordofan states,” she said, speaking via video link from South Sudan.
The authors of the report have issued what they call a "Gender Alert" to highlight the devastating impact of the conflict in Sudan on women and girls. They note that nearly 5.8 million internally displaced women are particularly vulnerable, with many cases of sexual violence going unreported "due to fear of stigma, retribution and lack of adequate support."
Addou observed that rape and sexual violence is used as “a way of breaking communities and tarnishing the social fabric of a community by targeting the most vulnerable.”
“It is a despicable and human rights violation,” she said. “The impact this conflict has had on the lives of women and children is horrendous.
“Many of them are seeing their loved ones killed in front of their eyes. They have seen brutal sexual violence against children, against women used as a way of putting more trauma, more fear on communities.”
The report finds more than 6.7 million people needed services related to gender-based violence by December 2023, underscoring that “this figure is estimated to be much higher today.”
“While men and boys also are victims of gender-based violence, most of these cases involve women and girls,” it says.
The United Nations calls Sudan one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Since rival generals of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) plunged the country into war more than 17 months ago, an estimated 20,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured.
More than 10.8 million people - half of them children - have fled their homes since April 2023, including more than 2.4 million who have sought safety in neighboring states and other countries, making Sudan one of the two largest displacement crises in the world - the other being the civil war in Syria.
Sudan is now the world's largest hunger crisis, with more than half of the country's population - nearly 26 million people - facing high levels of acute hunger. Famine has been confirmed in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur, with many other areas at risk. Nearly 5 million children under the age of 5 and pregnant and lactating women are already acutely malnourished.
Addou said women and children are suffering the most from the looming famine that is gripping the country.
“With 64 percent of female-headed households experiencing food insecurity compared to 48 percent of male-headed households in 10 states, women and girls are eating least and last,” she said, adding that they also are disproportionately affected by the lack of safe and easily accessible water, sanitation and hygiene.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that people lack access to health services due to insecurity, attacks on medical facilities, and shortages of medicines and medical supplies. People are dying because of the lack of access to basic health care and medicines. Cholera, measles, meningitis, dengue and other diseases are on the rise.
The United Nations health agency says critical services, including maternal and child health care, treatment of severe acute malnutrition, and treatment of patients with chronic diseases, have been disrupted in many areas because 70 to 80 percent of hospitals are not functioning.
“Across Sudan, women are dying from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications, whether or not those pregnancies are a result of gender-based violence, or whatever,” Margaret Harris, WHO spokesperson, said.
“Women are not getting the standard care that saves your life and saves the life of your child during childbirth or before childbirth.”
She added that childhood vaccinations have been disrupted, as have disease surveillance and vector control, and this “has created the perfect conditions for the spread of disease outbreaks.”
UN Women is calling for a cessation of hostilities, a return to the negotiating table for peace dialogues, and for urgent action to protect women and girls and to provide them with access to food, safe water, and sexual and reproductive health services.
“We are calling for protection for all women and girls, in particular the retributions that they need to address. We are calling for accountability and the provision of justice to all of the victims,” Addou said.
“The high-level sexual violence and exploitation being used as a weapon of war is preventing women from accessing much-needed resources … and the psychosocial support they need because of the chaotic nature of this conflict.”
“All those engaged in this violent conflict must be held to account,” she said. “We cannot let Sudan become a forgotten crisis.”
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: Gender alert: Women and girls of Sudan: Fortitude amid the flame of war, UN Women, report, released September 27, 2024
https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/gender-alert-women-and-girls-of-sudan-fortitude-amid-the-flame-of-war-en.pdf