In the three years since the Sudanese Civil War erupted, armed parties to the conflict have committed heinous violations against millions of civilians, particularly women and girls.

Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have capitalized on the collapse of political and economic order in the country—and crises elsewhere in the region—to continue their unfettered campaigns to seize power and territory at any cost.

In just three years, millions of civilians have been forcibly displaced or have fled to refugee camps and sought asylum under extremely difficult conditions. In the meantime, human rights organizations have documented 1,294 cases of sexual violence in 14 Sudanese states, as well the detention of more than 840 women in areas under SAF and RSF control. 

While the lack of legal recourse is not unique to the Sudanese conflict per se, it remains that civilians are paying the price with no accountability or justice being served.

To bring this into contextual focus, consider that those wanted by the  International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and genocide committed in the Darfur region between 2003–2005 have to this day not been brought to account and are walking free under the protection of the authorities currently ruling Sudan. 

The same crimes perpetrated more than 20 years ago are now being repeated by the RSF, which has carried out campaigns of genocide and forced displacement against the people of El Fasher and El Geneina. 

But unlike the Sudanese conflicts of the past, fighting was restricted to states far from major urban and government centres like the capital Khartoum. Between 1956–when the country became independent—and 2023, women had always been exposed to human rights violations and killing, but since most lived in rural areas and did not have modern digital communication, their suffering went unnoticed, both by the world and by other Sudanese people who lived far from the fighting.  

The current war, however, is different because its epicenter was at the seat of government in Khartoum and has been carried out in major cities, affecting communities, particularly urban women, that have never experienced such fighting. Despite this new reality brought to urban centres, the international community continues to ignore the voices of millions of Sudanese women as regional media is preoccupied in the Persian Gulf, Palestine and the Ukraine.

There now is an urgent imperative to end the war, which has most negatively impacted Sudan’s women across all social and ethnic backgrounds, and to chart a path for building real and meaningful spaces for women’s political participation in the peace process. 

Building Hope During the Pre-War Period

Before the most recent outbreak of  violence in Sudan, women and girls fought long battles against the authoritarian and Islamist government of the ousted President Omar al-Bashir. They were at the forefront of  protests that resulted in the outbreak of the revolution and its victory in 2019.

During the transitional period from 2019 to 2021, which centered around a partnership Transitional Council between civilian rule and the military remnants of the al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (Inqaz) regime, women’s rights defenders continued to press for amendments to laws restricting women’s advancement in work and personal status (including marriage, divorce, and presence in public life). Despite some shortcomings, the transitional period was a golden era for creating positive change in the status of women in Sudan.

But on October 25, 2021, the head of the Transitional Council and commander of the Sudanese army Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in alliance with the commander of the RSF Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti”, carried out a coup against the civilian government, putting an end to the journey of democratic civilian transition. 

This allowed the SAF’s ruling clique—traditionally associated with the Muslim Brotherhood—to regain some of its control of the government, and state-sanctioned violations against women began to rise again.

Throughout this period of renewed authoritarian rule in Sudan from 2021 to the outbreak of war between RSF and SAF in 2023, women were among the most targeted groups by the regime. Religious laws were used to impose further restrictions on women’s freedom in public and private spaces, institute new personal status laws that favored men, increase wage disparities, and limit women’s presence in public spheres like politics or economics. 

These restrictions had significant consequences. Since women were forced out of public and political spaces, they were unable to pass legislation that would improve protections for women during times of conflict, specifically regarding UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which called for increasing women’s presence in the peace-making process. While Sudan did adopt the resolution and soon implemented a National Action Plan (2020-2022) to increase women’s political participation, the initiative failed to achieve real change before the civil war erupted. The perpetual sidelining of women from political participation has, therefore, paved the way for the extreme level violence against women and children we have seen in the past three years of conflict.

Crimes Against Women Surge

Since 2023, both the RSF and SAF have disregarded humanitarian law; despite human rights organizations documenting thousands of cases of violations against women, they still operate with impunity. United Nations reports indicate that cases of sexual violence are systematic and widespread, and that sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war. These violations leave deep psychological and physical wounds that are difficult to treat, which is made worse by social stigmas against survivors in Sudan’s very conservative society. In some cases, survivors cannot reintegrate into society and some decide to end their own lives.

There are reports indicating that the RSF committed heinous violations against women during their occupation of Khartoum and various cities in central Sudan from April 2023 to October 2024. RSF units have been accused of raping hundreds of women at gunpoint and taking some as captives. There are also reports from the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies which indicate that the RSF established markets for selling girls.

During the same period of RSF control over areas of the capital Khartoum and Al-Jazira State, the rate of forced marriage of women increased. Families were forced to marry their daughters to RSF soldiers, and in case of refusal, families were threatened with force. Some of these marriages involve underage girls, some of whom were taken from their families in Khartoum and Al-Jazira and sent to RSF-controlled areas in Darfur. Such tragedies deeply affect families, both from the shock of this deep loss and the social stigma attached to such violations.

The SAF also committed multiple crimes against women, including violence, rape, and killing, and legally prosecuted some women on charges related to cooperation with the RSF, especially against those who remained in Khartoum and Al-Jazira after the RSF invasion, some of whom may be subjected to penalties as extreme as execution. 

Despite the documentation of these violations, the absence of fair local judiciary and legal institutions increases the difficulty of bringing perpetrators to trial for crimes committed against women. Internationally, the UN Human Rights Council established an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan in 2023 to review alleged violations, but these have not yet translated into consequences for perpetrators or justice for victims. In the event that the war stops, it is important that perpetrators from all sides of the war be held accountable for crimes against women and girls.

In addition to suffering violence at the hands of both armed groups, large numbers of women and girls are internally displaced or seeking asylum in neighboring countries. Millions of them live in difficult conditions in refugee camps and lack the means to build a dignified life. Even amid this suffering, women have not been spared from sexual assaults and extortion by service providers in those camps. These conditions limit women’s access to jobs and increase economic vulnerability, which further limits their participation in the public sphere and increases their isolation. 

The lack of healthcare and social and psychological support also presents a challenge for women as they attempt to rebuild their lives. This point is exacerbated by the fact that educational processes have been suspended and hundreds of thousands of girls have withdrawn from schools and universities. Women’s education was already a problem before the war, and this situation has further deprived a large number of Sudanese women from obtaining meaningful employment and building safe and independent lives. This is particularly important because as the men fight, women have increasingly had to step into the role of head of the household, becoming responsible for maintaining family cohesion and financial stability.

Political Exclusion

One way in which women have attempted to retain some political influence in this war has been by becoming soldiers themselves. While it is known that increased military activity negatively impacts women and increases violations against them, it has also led some women to participate in military training camps run by the SAF. This practice became apparent when female fighters appeared in the city of El Fasher in the Darfur region in western Sudan in combat operations to defend their city from the RSF. While there have been smaller scale examples of women in combat prior to 2023, this new conflict is considered a new manifestation of women’s participation in combat because it is happening on a broader scale. 

In fact, there is currently a debate within feminist circles on the usefulness of women’s armed engagement and whether this could contribute to ensuring women’s political participation in the future, especially in negotiations or post-war arrangements. However, similar situations in other countries have shown that women’s participation as soldiers, especially in revolutionary movements, has not been a decisive factor in obtaining a better status for women in the long-term. A clear example is the participation of women during the Eritrean liberation war (1961–1991) or in Kurdish resistance against ISIS (2013-2019), where the proportion of women as military leaders was large, but when the time came to reap victory and political gains, men shared political power and women were completely marginalized.

Beyond picking up weapons, Sudanese women have historically played central roles in conflict prevention and resolution, humanitarian efforts, and social change, often at the risk of their lives. However, they have yet to receive a fair share of representation in political power. Therefore, it is important that peace-making initiatives in Sudan acknowledge women’s roles and contributions during the conflict; any future peace processes must anchor their role in shaping Sudan’s future beyond symbolic overtures. 

Based on previous experiences of peace processes in Sudan, there are many challenges facing the move to integrate women in mediation. Traditional platforms such as political parties and tribal leadership do not typically have women representatives and continuing male dominance over political spaces leaves no clear strategy to overcome this dilemma.

Division Within the System

In the meantime, internal divisions and competition among women’s groups have also negatively affected efforts to enhance their political representation.

Symbolic representation, which gives the guise of inclusion with no real power, has also been used as a means to represent women’s agenda. This is a situation widely accepted by Sudanese political entities as well as international NGOs due to their lack of nuanced understanding of how Sudanese society is organized. No formal negotiations to end the current war have included any Sudanese women negotiators. Instead, women are confined to advisory bodies, raising concerns over humanitarian crises but unable to give these concerns weight at the negotiating table. 

Furthermore, conservative traditions and customs hinder the participation of poor, working-class women in public life. This explains the dominance of the often English-speaking urban middle class in women’s groups. These groups often believe their agenda represents all women, but in reality ignore marginalized women whose struggles and desires differ from those of educated women from more privileged backgrounds.

Beyond class issues, the current war has also divided society along new regional and political lines, creating alignments that did not previously exist. This has also affected feminist organizations, some of which have split between the warring parties. Some women have aligned themselves with political groups close to  the SAF, others with the RSF, and still others who remain independent of both parties. This may affect the unity of women’s decision-making in achieving feminist agendas in the future.

At the same time, new grassroots locally-funded feminist groups emerged during the war, helping women mitigate the effects of conflict while monitoring and documenting violations. The “No to Women’s Oppression” organization has been at the forefront of these entities, working to assist women from a humanitarian perspective, in addition to training, capacity building, monitoring crimes, and providing psychological and medical support, especially to victims of sexual violence.

Urgent Interventions

Amid the intensity of war and declining international support, there is a need for urgent interventions for women in Sudan, primarily related to identifying perpetrators of violations against women and bringing them to trial in accordance with international law. It is also important to expand the ICC’s jurisdiction to include all of Sudan, as it is currently limited to only Darfur. The ICC does not have jurisdiction elsewhere because the country never ratified the Rome Statute; the ICC was only given limited jurisdiction over Darfur for crimes committed after 2002 following a resolution from the Security Council in 2005. Expanding its jurisdiction to all of Sudan is key to holding perpetrators accountable and bringing justice for victims. 

In addition, the international community must provide urgent humanitarian assistance to women and children, including food, healthcare, and safe shelter, as well as strengthening international mechanisms to protect women and providing healthcare and psychological services to survivors. 

All internal and external parties must also work to ensure fair participation of women in peace processes and in designing transitional justice mechanisms, and to include robust women’s rights and protections in any future constitutional project. These moves must be more than symbolic—they must operate within a scope of real influence that fairly represents women from all economic and social backgrounds. This requires women’s leadership, despite their potential divides, to unite around this agenda and pressure for it to be placed at the forefront of priorities.

There are several challenges to address, but many solutions as well. 

There is a rich culture of art in Sudan, which can be mobilized toward creating projects which promote national unity and recovery, rather than violence and dehumanizing hate speech, which has been used by the conflicting parties and spread by their supporters. Supporting local artists is a key avenue to address this social problem. This could be achieved through a workshop for community recovery, led by academics from Arab and neighboring countries with shared histories and highlighting the participation of women and artists, such as poets, musicians, playwrights. 

Regarding the role of women in mediation processes, it is recommended to hold a conference on the role of women in transitional justice and national reconciliation, with the participation of Sudanese women’s organizations and drawing on expertise from Africa, especially South Africa, Rwanda, and Morocco. International experts in transitional justice and national reconciliation should also participate. 

In addition to the legal track, a conference and series of workshops for women and spiritual leaders, with the participation of Islamic, Christian, and African religious institutions, Sufi orders, and international religious figures and institutions such as Al-Azhar, could help integrate the legal and cultural processes of conflict mediation. These workshops should also highlight the informal roles of women in conflict situations, particularly their participation in keeping their communities protected and sustainable.