Conflict condemns Sudan to huge displacement, rampant sexual violence: UN

War in Sudan has displaced more than 14 million people and sexual violence is being seen on a “staggering” scale, United Nations agencies report.

The civil conflict has created the world’s largest displacement crisis this year, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan said in a new report that paramilitaries are preying on the female population.

IOM Director-General Amy Pope described the situation in the war-torn African country as “catastrophic” in remarks to the press.

Outlining how women and girls are being abducted for sexual slavery, the fact-finding mission’s chair Mohamed Chande Othman said: “There is no safe place in Sudan now.”

Sudan’s vicious civil war erupted in April 2023 following a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the army’s former paramilitary allies, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which previously collaborated to remove former President Omar al-Bashir in a 2019 military coup.

Living nightmare

Since then, about 30 percent of the country’s total population have fled their homes, said Pope.

Of those, 11 million are internally displaced and 3.1 million have fled to neighbouring countries, and the numbers continue to increase.

“This is an underreported conflict situation, and we must pay it more attention. Millions are suffering, and there is now the serious possibility of the conflict igniting regional instability from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa to the Red Sea,” Pope warned.

More than half of the people displaced are women and over a quarter are children under five years old.

Diseases are also spreading fast and 50 percent of Sudanese people are struggling to get the minimal amount of food to survive, Pope noted, adding that in North Darfur, famine conditions have already taken hold.

“There is simply no other way to put it. Hunger, disease and sexual violence are rampant. For the people of Sudan, this is a living nightmare,” she said.

War crimes

Both Sudan’s military and the RSF and allied militias “have committed large-scale human rights and international humanitarian law violations, many of which may amount to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity”, the fact-finding mission concluded.

The report accused both sides of sexual violence, but said the RSF was behind the “large majority” of documented cases and was responsible for “sexual violence on a large scale”, including “gang rapes and abducting and detaining victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery”.

The report also said the RSF and its allies had indulged in “abduction, and recruitment and use of children in hostilities”, amid systematic looting and pillaging.

Last week, dozens of civilians were killed in fighting, displacing thousands more civilians in the east-central Gezira State.

On Saturday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) described the situation as “one of the most acute crises in living memory”.

The UN has also warned that about 25 million people – more than half of Sudan’s population – are likely to face acute hunger by the end of the year.

The war has been marked by atrocities such as mass rape and “ethnic cleansing”, which the UN said amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly in the western region of Darfur. More than 24,000 people have died since violence reignited.

Recent flooding in Sudan’s eastern Red Sea State has also caused displacement.

Pope appealed for the humanitarian response to be “scaled up”, saying that only half of the aid for the country has been funded.

“We will not allow Sudan to be forgotten,” she said. “Its people need peace, now.”