Sexual violence against women and girls has become a weapon of war by armed men, particularly soldiers, in the Sudan war. At least 3,396 survivors of sexual violence were treated in centers supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Sudan, between January 2024 and November 2025. The data points directly to the armed men.
The vast majority of victims were women and girlswhich represented the 97% of the cases treated by the organization. More than 95% of them identified their attacker as a non-civilian combatant in North Darfur, a somewhat lower percentage in the south (68%). For MSF, these are not isolated events, but violence widespread and systematic.
“The testimonies of the survivors and our medical data show that the soldiers of the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias have carried out a widespread and systematic sexual violence against women,” explains Esperanza Santoshead of MSF’s emergency unit in Sudan. “Women in the region of Darfurin Sudan, are demanding protection, care and justice while sexual violence continues throughout the region,” he says.
MSF warns that these data barely reflect the part of the problem that is visible, since many women and girls cannot even reach medical attention in this war situation. The insecurityhe stigma and the lack of protection services continue to block their way. Therefore, the real dimension of these abuses could be even greater.
Beyond combat
The rape has established itself as a weapon of warmaintains this report that is, so far, the most complete on the sexual violence in the Sudanese war, according to MSF. However, these crimes are not limited to the places where fighting takes place. Attacks also appear on escape routes, in crop fieldsin the marketsat the points where families collect water, firewood or food and within their own displaced persons camps. The war, MSF summarizes, is being waged on the bodies of women and girls.
After taking The Fashercapital of North Darfur, by the FAR on October 26, 2025MSF teams attended to Tawila to more than 140 survivors who had fled the city in November. He 94% She claimed to have been attacked by armed men during the journey. Many described assaults committed by several men, often in front of their families, and in a context of deliberate humiliation and terror against non-Arab communities.
Between December 2025 and January 2026, MSF identified other 732 surviving people in the displaced persons camps around Tawila. There, the women reported attacks suffered both during the displacement and within the camps themselves, where the overcrowdingthe lack of surveillance and the precariousness of infrastructure increase the risk of new attacks.
MSF denounces sexual violence against women and girls in the Sudan war / Cindy González/ MSF
The daily threat
In Darfur Surhundreds of kilometers from the land front, the data shows that sexual violence is part of daily life. He 34% of the survivors was attacked while working in or on her way to the field, and the 22% while collecting firewood, water or food. The threat, therefore, does not appear only in military offensives: it also accompanies the most basic gestures of survival.
“Every day when people go to the market, there are cases of rape. When we go to the farmlands, the same thing happens,” said a 40-year-old woman in South Darfur. Another survivor explained what happened during her escape: “They took us to a vacant lot. The first man raped me twice, the second once and the third four times. In addition to the rapes, they beat us with sticks and pointed guns at my head.”
MSF data also reflects the special vulnerability of minors. In Darfur Sur, one in five survivors was under 18 years of age, including 41 children under five years old. In Tawila, the 27% of the survivors treated between September and October 2025 were also minors.
A systematic pattern
The organization detected other indicators that reinforce the idea of violence carried out methodically. Furthermore, in South Darfur 149 women reported torture or other forms of mistreatment and 188 They said they had been kidnapped or kidnapped.
MSF maintains that these patterns coincide with the main military escalations and with the forced displacements that followed episodes such as the attack and dismantling of the camp Zamzam. In early 2025, during the escalation of violence in North Darfur, the number of cases seen skyrocketed: from 9 survivors between January and March it went to 121 between April and mid-June, 339 in July and August, already 379 in September and October.
Faced with this situation, community leaders, midwives, activists and survivors who participated in focus groups organized by MSF demand the immediate cessation of the sexual violence throughout Sudan, as well as protectionaccess to medical attention, dignity, justice y accountability. The organization calls on all parties to the conflict, including the FAR and its allies, to stop these abuses, and calls on United Nationsdonors and humanitarian actors an urgent expansion of health and protection services in Darfur and in the rest of the country.
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