The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an independent military force, and allied militias in Sudan raped several dozen women and girls in West Darfur’s capital, El Geneina, and those fleeing to Chad between late April and late June 2023, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
It said that the assailants appear to have targeted people because of their Massalit ethnicity and, in some cases, because they were known activists.
Since the start of armed conflict in Sudan between the Sudan Armed Forces and the RSF on April 15, the RSF and predominantly Arab allied militias have carried out repeated attacks on towns and villages in the West Darfur state. These attacks have mainly targeted areas inhabited by one of the main non-Arab communities, the Massalit.
Attacks in the city of El Geneina began on April 24 and continued through late June, causing numerous civilian deaths and injuries, and forcing over 366,000 people to flee to nearby Chad. The United Nations Security Council should urgently hold a briefing by the special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict.
“The Rapid Support Forces and allied militias appear responsible for a staggering number of rapes and other war crimes during their attack on El Geneina,” said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Security Council should show those responsible for abuses that the world is watching by taking urgent steps to bring an end to these atrocities.”
In late July, Human Rights Watch interviewed in person in Chad nine women and a 15-year-old girl from El Geneina who are survivors of rape and other forms of sexual violence. Four, including the girl, were raped by multiple men. Human Rights Watch also interviewed four women who witnessed sexual violence or the immediate aftermath, along with five service providers, including medical workers who had supported sexual violence victims in El Geneina. Based on survivors’ personal experiences and incidents they also witnessed, as well as information shared with service providers, including locations where the incidents occurred, Human Rights Watch documented 78 victims, or survivors, of rape between April 24 and June 26.
Survivors who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that between one and six armed assailants carried out the sexual violence. Most groups of assailants included men wearing full or partial RSF uniforms and some in civilian clothes. In many instances, they arrived in RSF-marked vehicles. One woman recognized her assailant as an Arab resident of El Geneina.
In almost all instances reported to Human Rights Watch, those responsible for the rapes also committed other grave abuses including beatings, killings, looting, or burning homes, businesses or government buildings.
The survivors all said that the attackers explicitly mentioned their ethnic identity and used ethnic slurs about the Massalit or non-Arabs more generally.
Since 2019, the RSF and allied militias have recurrently fought Massalit armed groups in West Darfur. Historical grievances based on ethnicity, including the Sudanese government’s failure to address land access and ownership, have also fueled tensions. A lack of justice for past violations of rights and the proliferation of weapons, along with the absence of any security sector reform, have added to the strained climate. During then-president Omar al-Bashir’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur that began in 2003, government forces and so-called Janjaweed militias, the precursor to the Rapid Support Forces, frequently attacked non-Arab communities, including the Massalit.
On the first day of attacks in El Geneina on April 24, five armed Arab men in civilian attire entered the home of a 20-year-old university student and four other women in the Jabal neighborhood. They demanded to know the women’s tribe. “We lied and said Bargu,” she said. “But they said, ‘No, you are Massalit, you are Nuba [a term used in Sudan to mean either “rebels” or non-Arabs].’… One raped me while the others waited outside. Then another came in and raped me.”
She said that over two months later, she remained haunted by the attack: “I cry often, and when I cry, my throat hurts. I can’t sleep, I can’t feel normal. When I am walking outside, I keep getting lost. I can’t find my way when I try to go anywhere.”
In four cases the assailants explicitly mentioned the women’s human rights work and in one case the work of her husband, suggesting they knew who they were assaulting.
Only one of the survivors interviewed received some emergency post-rape care in El Geneina. During the peak of the violence, the RSF and allied militias looted and burned medical facilities and offices of nongovernmental organizations that provided emotional and psychological care to sexual violence survivors.
The Women’s Future Organisation, a Darfuri organization, reported that only 24 of 103 victims in incidents of rape that it had recorded had received subsequent medical services. Seventy-three of the incidents had occurred in West Darfur.
International humanitarian law, called the laws of war, prohibits parties to an armed conflict from deliberately harming civilians. Common article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and customary international humanitarian law, both of which apply to all warring parties in Sudan, prohibit rape and other forms of sexual violence. Rape committed by combatants can constitute a form of torture. Rape and other sexual violence committed in the context of an armed conflict is a war crime, and if part of a widespread or systematic attack by a government or armed group on a civilian population, can amount to crimes against humanity.
International standards call for the government to provide risk mitigation for gender-based violence from the onset of crisis response, including clinical management of rape and other comprehensive services for survivors of violence.
Human Rights Watch on August 11 emailed a summary of findings for comment to Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF commander, but at the time of publication has not received a response.
Following an August 1 call from the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten to prevent and address sexual violence, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Rahim Dagalo, the RSF deputy commander, acknowledged the gravity of sexual violence in the context of the armed conflict. The RSF issued a statement following the meeting that “assured the RSF’s full cooperation with the UN in investigating any allegations of human rights violations.”
At the UN Human Rights Council in September, all countries should support the establishment of an international inquiry to independently investigate and preserve evidence of serious abuses in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan that will help ensure that those responsible will be held to account.
“Concerned governments need to be committing more resources for sexual violence survivors in Darfur,” Wille said. “Brutal accounts of rape and the terrible consequences of those crimes should mobilize donors to meet survivors’ needs, and to back steps to facilitate the delivery of justice.”
