Women are the main victims of abuse in Sudan’s war, facing “the world’s worst” sexual violence and other crimes committed with impunity, a rights activist turned social affairs minister for the army-backed government said.The Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a brutal conflict since April 2023 that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced around 11 million and been marked by widespread sexual violence.

Sulaima Ishaq al-Khalifa said abuses against women routinely accompanied looting and attacks, with reports of rape often perpetrated as “the family witnessed” the crime.

“There is no age limit. A woman of 85 could be raped, a child of one year could be raped,” the trained psychologist said at her home in Port Sudan.

The longtime women’s rights activist, recently appointed to the government, said that women were also being subjected to sexual slavery and trafficked to neighbouring countries, alongside forced marriages arranged to avoid shame.

Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides, but she insisted it is “systematic” among the RSF, who she says use it “as a weapon of war” and for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing”.

Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rapes between April 2023 and October 2025 – a figure that does not include atrocities documented in western Darfur and the neighbouring Kordofan region from late October onwards.

“It’s about… humiliating people, forcing them to leave their houses and places and cities. And also breaking… the social fabrics,” Khalifa said.

“When you are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, that means you want to extend… the war forever”, because it feeds a “sense of revenge”, she added.

The longtime women’s rights activist, recently appointed to the government, said that women were also being subjected to sexual slavery and trafficked to neighbouring countries, alongside forced marriages arranged to avoid shame.

Khalifa said sexual violence has been reported on both sides, but she insisted it is “systematic” among the RSF, who she says use it “as a weapon of war” and for the purposes of “ethnic cleansing”.

Her ministry has documented more than 1,800 rapes between April 2023 and October 2025 – a figure that does not include atrocities documented in western Darfur and the neighbouring Kordofan region from late October onwards.

“It’s about… humiliating people, forcing them to leave their houses and places and cities. And also breaking… the social fabrics,” Khalifa said.

“When you are using sexual violence as a weapon of war, that means you want to extend… the war forever”, because it feeds a “sense of revenge”, she added.

‘War crimes’
A report by the SIHA Network, an activist group that documents abuses against women in the Horn of Africa, found that more than three-quarters of recorded cases involved rape, with 87 percent attributed to the RSF.

The United Nations has repeatedly raised alarm over what it describes as targeted attacks on non-Arab communities in Darfur, while the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened a formal investigation into “war crimes” by both sides.

Briefing the UN Security Council in mid-January, ICC deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said investigators had uncovered evidence of an “organised, calculated campaign” in El Fasher – the army’s last stronghold in Darfur captured by the RSF in late October.

The campaign, Khan added, involved mass rapes and executions “on a massive scale”, sometimes “filmed and celebrated” by the perpetrators and “fuelled by a sense of complete impunity”.

Darfur endured a brutal wave of atrocities in the early 2000s, and a former Janjaweed commander – from the militia structure that later evolved into the RSF – was recently found guilty by the International Criminal Court of multiple war crimes, including rape.

“What’s happening now is much more ugly. Because the mass rape thing is happening and documented,” said Khalifa.

RSF fighters carrying out the assaults “have been very proud about doing this and they don’t see it as a crime”, she added.

“You feel that they have a green light to do whatever they want.”

France24 report