Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militia groups are using sexual violence as a 'weapon of war' in Darfur to control civilians, according to medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in a major report.
The report, titled “There is something I want to tell you…”: Surviving the sexual violence crisis in Darfur, provides the most comprehensive documented accounts of sexual violence in Sudan’s war, said Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – also known as Doctors Without Borders.
Victims and survivors testified for the report, with MSF medical programmes gathering data that have highlighted clear patterns of widespread and systematic abuse.
Women in Darfur are demanding protection, care and justice as sexual violence continues across the region, both in active conflict areas and far beyond frontlines, MSF said in a statement after releasing the new report this Tuesday.
At least 3,396 victims and survivors of sexual violence sought treatment in MSF-supported facilities across North and South Darfur between January 2024 and November 2025, MSF said, though the NGO warned that this represents only a fraction of the true scale.
Many victims and survivors cannot safely reach care, it added.
Women and girls accounted for 97 per cent of victims and survivors treated in MSF programmes.
War in Sudan leaves 13 million people displaced and more than half the population malnourished
Three years of war and suffering
The Sudanese army and RSF have been fighting in a brutal war for almost three years, since April 2023. The conflit has already killed tens of thousands, and displaced at least 13 million people.
It has been also marked by widespread sexual violence.
"Sexual violence has become a pervasive and defining feature of the conflict while also persisting beyond active front lines," the report states.
"This war has, in many ways, been fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls."
Displacement, the collapse of community support networks, lack of access to healthcare, and entrenched systemic gender inequalities also enable such abuse to proliferate across Sudan.
Testimonies from 150 survivors of the RSF's April attack on Zamzam camp, which sheltered nearly 500,000 people, indicate they targeted ethnic groups, particularly the non-Arab Zaghawa community.
One 28-year-old woman said: "They were four and each raped me, while some held my arms and others my legs".
Other survivors were in the city of El-Fasher, the army's last stronghold in the sprawling western region that fell in October 2025 and where a UN fact-finding mission reported "acts of genocide".
Sudan's El-Fasher 'an epicentre of human suffering', UN says
No way to stop the rapes
Many women described being assaulted away from the frontlines while simply going about their daily activities: on roads, in farms, markets and displacement camps.
"There is no way to stop the rapes," a 40-year-old woman in Jebel Marra said. "The only way is to try to stay home, and to not go out as much."
MSF also identified 732 survivors of sexual violence in displacement camps in the month between December 2025 and January this year, some assaulted while fleeing or within the camps.
"This war is being fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls," said Ruth Kauffman, MSF's emergency health manager describing the assaults as a "defining feature" of the conflict entering its fourth year in April.
MSF has called on all parties to the conflict to cease and prevent sexual violence and hold perpetrators accountable, including the RSF and their supporters.
"We also call on the United Nations, donors and humanitarian actors to urgently scale up health and protection services in Darfur and all of Sudan," the NGO concluded.
(with newswires)
