Johannesburg – Sudan Rapid Support Forces, one side in a civil war that has torn the African country apart for over a year and created one of the the worst humanitarian crises on the planetaccused of raping scores of women and girls and using some as sex slaves in a new report by Human Rights Watch. The New York-based rights group says the use of sexual violence by paramilitary forces in the country's South Kordofan state since September 2023 constitutes war crimes and potential crimes of- the face of humanity.
HRW outlines the findings of an investigation based on the cases of nearly 80 women and girls in a report published on Monday, detailing shocking new allegations of abuse in Sudan, where both sides in the there has already been a civil war. accused of war crimes.
Investigators gathered evidence of 79 women and girls aged between 7 and 50 who HRW says were raped, with most of the incidents taking place at the RSF military base in Dibeibat, near the village of Habila in South Kordofan.
Survivors and witnesses told the group that the men who carried out the attacks were all RSF forces in uniform or members of allied militias.
“Survivors said they were raped in front of their families and over long periods of time, including while they were held as sex slaves,” said Belkis Wille, Crisis Associate Director and HRW Conflict, which conducted many of the interviews with survivors.
Ezzaddean Elsafi, senior adviser to the RSF, denied the allegations in the HRW report to CBS News, saying that “people in RSF uniforms” were behind the alleged attacks as spies. , not the actual forces of the RSF.
“RSF is taking this very seriously and we will investigate. We are very aware of sexual violence against women and the perpetrators will be held accountable,” said Elsafi, denying that the group has a large presence even in South Kordofan, although we recognize that she has forces.” in Debibat district,” near the border with North Kordofan state.
“This is gross misinformation,” he said of the HRW report.
HRW said it had shared a summary of the investigation's findings with the RSF's overall commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, but had received no response.
Wille has spent years documenting sexual violence in conflicts around the world, including ISIS militants against Yazidi women in Iraq, but she told CBS News, “It's What really surprises me after meeting these women and girls is the scope and scale of their crimes in Sudan.
CBS News has seen a video of the full interview conducted by HRW with an 18-year-old woman identified by the group as Hania. She said she was pregnant in February when RSF fighters entered her home in Habila and grabbed her, her 17-year-old neighbor and 16 other girls she knew from her neighborhood. She said they were taken in 10 vehicles to the army base in Dibeibat.
Human Rights Watch
When they arrived, Hania said she recognized more than 30 other girls from her village who were already there, with around 100 fighters being held captive.
She said that when she tried to resist being raped, one of the militants “started beating me with a metal whip”. Over the next three months, she said, “the fighters would come in groups of three every morning to take some girls to rape them, and then in the evening another group of three would come and take another set of girls to rape.”
Hania said that the RSF men kept her and the other women and girls in a type of animal pen built with wire and tree branches, where they were tied in groups of ten.
“What was clear from these cases is that in RSF-controlled areas, nowhere is safe – not if you've fled, not even in your home. Women and girls are at risk of rape everywhere,” Wille told CBS News.
Another woman, Hasina, 35, told HRW that six men in RSF uniform killed her husband and stole all their cattle and money. She said the cows were her family's investment so, with them and her money stolen, she felt she had no way to escape like many of her neighbors did, and that she and her six young children, some only infants, had no choice but to go. stay in their home.
The RSF fighters returned three days later, she said, and “the three men forced me and left.
Later that evening, “three more people came back and forced me again and asked me to stay in my house.”
She said she was raped almost every day for the next month before she escaped.
Human Rights Watch
HRW met with Hasina at Al-Hailu Camp, a makeshift facility with few facilities for internally displaced civilians in South Kordofan.
“She is barely able to wake up and carry on because of what she lived through. Her children are now in a camp with very little food and they looked very malnourished when she saw I them. … She is struggling to work as a mother,” Wille said, adding that women living in tents next to Hasina were helping to care for their children.
Wille said there was no psychological support for traumatized women in the camp or throughout much of the country.
“When I raised the issue of justice and accountability to these women, they all looked at me blankly, because justice is a meaningless concept to them,” she said. here meaning it has become standard behavior with the RSF. None of these women have ever heard of a soldier or fighter ever being held accountable.”
Hania and a friend who was also pregnant managed to escape from the captors. They were interviewed by HRW in the Nuba mountains. She said that 49 girls were still being held at the base and that she had heard of girls being held at two other RSF centers as well.
“We have no way to find out more about these women, because access is very difficult and dangerous, and in these areas there is no electricity, no cell phone networks, so information does not come out. There is a real silence about these abuses,” said Wille. “We may never know what happened to these women and girls.”
The International Rescue Committee charity says the humanitarian crisis driven by Sudan's civil war will be at its highest level on record for the second year in a row in 2024, with over 30 million people need humanitarian assistance. It is estimated that around half of the 50 million people in Sudan are suffering from extreme hunger.
Last week, about 20 months into the war, the fighting appeared to be escalating, with both sides accusing the other of committing new atrocities. International efforts to establish a peace agreement have stalled and there is no end to the fighting.
