Sexual Violence Has Become the ‘Defining Feature’ of the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis

Three years ago, Sudan’s civil war began, which has since escalated into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The bloody power struggle between the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has left more than 40,000 dead, more than 12 million displaced, and more than 20 million facing acute hunger. The United Nations has continued to report on “large-scale” war crimes, including the targeting of civilians and violence and sexual assault against women—the full, harrowing scope of which has only begun to emerge. 

“The first man raped me twice, the second once, the third four times and the fourth once,” one woman recounted to Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “Apart from the rapes, they beat us with sticks and pointed guns at my head. Another girl who was 15…was raped by three men. We were raped throughout the night.” 

This week, MSF published a collection of 3,396 victim testimonies and medical data, all of whom sought treatment in their facilities in North and South Darfur between January 2024 and November 2025. It adds more context to the research conducted by the SIHA (Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa) Network in July 2024, which released a research report on how the RSF was systematically employing sexual violence against women as an “instrument of war,” emphasizing that the group would seize control of towns and areas, raid residences, assault women, and instill terror to chase people out of their homes. In April 2025, UN Women reported that there was a 288% jump in the number of people in Sudan needing lifesaving support following incidents of rape and sexual violence—as a direct consequence of the conflict.

The MSF report says sexual violence has become the conflict’s “pervasive and defining feature.”

Another woman told MSF her village was targeted because women there openly supported the SAF, and recalled, “they [the RSF] wanted to humiliate the women who lived there. My father told me that I had to leave, to take my children, particularly my daughter. My sister, also, we were afraid she would be raped.” 

Women further recounted instances of gang rape, coercion, and armed attacks, and one woman said she saw both her pregnant sister and a group of girls get raped on their way to the local market. Many of the testimonies came from around October, during which RSF forces seized various regions and refugee camps in North Darfur—such as the city of el-Fasher, and in November, several survivors told Amnesty International that the RSF committed deliberate killings and acts of sexual violence. RSF leadership told the BBC that the atrocities were being exaggerated, and that there were only some “individual violations” that happened during that time. 

The extent of Sudan’s war is still not fully known, as many aid groups consider the 40,000-death toll an undercount. (The MSF report also only offers a glimpse into two of Sudan’s 18 states.) In mid-March, more than 500 civilians were reportedly killed during drone strikes. 

Then, of course, there’s the matter of Trump. Thanks to his cruel cuts to foreign aid, about 1.1 million pregnant women in Sudan were blocked from access to life-saving reproductive healthcare, with many doctors and healthcare workers telling the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency that they were seeing a rise in displaced pregnant women arriving in facilities after months without care, per a report in June. (These funding cuts also forced about 80% of emergency food kitchens in Sudan to close.) The strain was particularly bad in areas like the Darfurs and in Khartoum, which were most affected by the fighting, and where 80% of health facilities were by then barely functioning, if not completely shuttered. 

Leave it up to the president of the U.S. to make the world’s worst humanitarian crisis even worse. 

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