In a new report, Doctors Without Borders says sexual violence is a ‘defining feature’ of the conflict in Sudan.
Hanan was 18 years old when she was raped by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused of committing large-scale “war crimes” during a nearly three-year war against the Sudanese army.
She was driving with a female friend to her temporary home in a displaced people camp in South Darfur when four men on motorcycles stopped them and asked where they were going.
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“Each girl was taken by two men, and they raped us,” she told Doctors Without Borders, an international medical NGO known by its French initials MSF.
She said, “I feel discomfort, heaviness in my body. I don’t feel pain, except my back – because they beat me, they hit my back with their guns.”
Hanan – not her real name – shared her testimony as part of a report released by MSF on Tuesday detailing the widespread use of sexual violence as a weapon in Sudan’s ongoing brutal civil war.
The NGO said that between January 2024 and November 2025, 3,396 survivors of sexual violence sought treatment in MSF-supported health facilities in North and South Darfur.
The data presented in the report, titled There’s something I want to tell you…, was taken from MSF programs in only two of Sudan’s 18 states and represents only a fraction of the crisis, while the true scale of the phenomenon remains unknown.
97 percent of survivors treated in MSF programs were women and girls. The RSF and affiliated militias were found to be primarily responsible for systematic abuses.
Survivors include children
“Sexual violence is a defining feature of this conflict – not limited to the front lines, but widespread throughout communities,” MSF emergency health manager Ruth Kaufman said in a statement.
“This war is being fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls. Displacement, crumbling community support systems, lack of access to health care and deeply entrenched gender inequalities are allowing these abuses to continue throughout Sudan.”
Following the RSF capture of El-Fashar, the capital of North Darfur, on October 26, 2025, MSF treated more than 140 survivors fleeing towards Tawila. Of those, 94 percent were attacked by armed men, many of whom reported attacks while on their way to escape.
“The attacks deliberately targeted non-Arab communities as a means of humiliation and terror, echoing previous RSF atrocities such as the destruction of the Zamzam camp,” the report said. In April 2025, the RSF took control of the famine-stricken Zamzam camp in the West Darfur region after two days of heavy shelling and firing.
Survivors described attacks not only during combat, but also in everyday situations such as farms, markets, and displacement camps.
Children were also included among the survivors. In South Darfur, one in five survivors was under the age of 18, including 41 children under the age of five, the organization said.
MSF called on the United Nations, donors and humanitarian workers to urgently scale up health and protection services in Darfur and across Sudan, and for all parties to the conflict to stop sexual violence and hold perpetrators accountable.
