In war-torn Sudan, women are being forced to have sex with soldiers to get food to feed their families, a report by The Guardian said. Over two dozen women who fled the Sudanese city of Omdurman said that having sex with soldiers was the only way they could access food or goods that they could sell to raise money to feed their families.

One woman who spoke to the Guardian said the assaults took place in factories across the the city where the food is stockpiled. “Both of my parents are too old and sick and I never let my daughter go out to look for food. I went to the soldiers and that was the only way to get food – they were everywhere in the factories area,” said a woman, who was forced to have sex with soldiers at a meat-processing factory in May last year.

The assaults reportedly began soon after a civil war broke out in the country which has seen the country’s army face off against paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Reports of rape by armed men emerged within days of the conflict starting on 15 April last year. 

The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimates placing the death count as high as 150,000. The war has created the world’s worst displacement crisis — with more than 11 million uprooted and brought the country to the brink of famine.

Several women have come forward sharing harrowing tales of RSF fighters sexually abusing them in a systematic manner in areas under their control. The soldiers have also demanded sex in exchange for access to abandoned houses where it is still possible to loot items to sell in local markets, the women told the Guardian.

One woman said that she was allowed to take food, kitchen equipment and perfumes from empty houses after she had sex with soldiers. “What I went through is indescribable, I would not wish it on an enemy … I only did it because I wanted to feed my children,” she said.

Residents of the city claimed they see soldiers bringing women to abandoned houses where they were made to queue up as soldier picked the ones “they liked the look of”. “A lot of women come and queue outside our neighbourhood. I sometimes hear screaming but what can you do? Nothing,” one resident said.

Another woman told the Guardian that once she refused to have sex with the solider they tortured her and burned her legs. The 21-year-old said she had had sex with soldiers in exchange for being allowed to loot houses for food and goods, but went she refused to do so again the soldiers held her down and burned her legs.

A soldier, who denied ever assaulting a woman himself, said he had witnessed his colleagues. “It’s awful. The amount of the sins in this city can never been be forgiven,” he said.
 

People line up to register for a potential food aid delivery at a camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Agari, North Kordofan, on June 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

More than half of Sudan’s population is facing high levels of “acute food insecurity”, a situation exacerbated by the country’s devastating war, said a report cited by the United Nations on June 27.

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict in the northeast African country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

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“Fourteen months into the conflict, Sudan is facing the worst levels of acute food insecurity” that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, has recorded, the report said.

The crisis would impact “approximately 25.6 million people,” it said, including 755,000 in famine conditions and an additional 8.5 million facing “emergency” situations.

It pointed to “a stark and rapid deterioration of the food security situation” compared with the previous figures published in December, with a 45 percent increase in people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

“The conflict has not only triggered mass displacement and disruption of supply routes… it has also severely limited access to essential humanitarian assistance, exacerbating an already dire situation,” the IPC said.

It further cited “highly dysfunctional health services, water contamination and poor sanitation and hygiene conditions”.

Starvation as weapon

The IPC report comes a day after United Nations (U.N.) experts accused Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces and Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces of using starvation as a weapon of war.

“Both the SAF and the RSF are using food as a weapon and starving civilians,” said the experts, including the special rapporteur on the right to food.

They also said foreign governments providing military support to both the army and the RSF were “complicit” in war crimes.

Both sides have been accused of attacking activists and aid workers, looting or obstructing aid and targeting infrastructure.

On Thursday, the IPC reported that 14 areas of the country, home to millions of people, were “at risk of famine”, that could take hold between June and September 2024.

The regions – including besieged El-Fasher in North Darfur, parts of the capital Khartoum and key displacement centres in Darfur and South Kordofan – are also those most affected by direct fighting.

Some, including Tuti Island in the centre of Khartoum, have been under an effective siege by both forces for over a year.

Aid agencies and the U.N. have repeatedly warned that the already dire humanitarian crisis could become much worse as the fighting spreads, displacing even more people.

Just this week, thousands were forced to flee the southeastern town of Sennar after an RSF attack on nearby Jebel Moya, eyewitnesses told AFP, raising fears the front line is once again shifting south and east.

Sennar, a key state hosting over half a million displaced people already, connects central Sudan to the army-controlled south and east, where hundreds of thousands more are sheltering.

Stick-thin arms

The IPC report “confirms what humanitarian actors and civilians on the ground already know: famine is at the door”, said Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps.

“History has shown that by the time a famine is officially declared, people are already dying at a horrifying pace,” she added.

Aid workers have long warned the difficulty of accessing data has prevented the declaration of an all-out famine, but starvation is already claiming lives across the country.

Even in Port Sudan, the country’s new de facto capital under army control, displacement centres are packed with “infants with stick-thin arms” showing “dangerously high malnutrition levels”, the World Food Programme said Thursday.

According to WFP country director Eddie Rowe, it is still possible “to avert an outright famine”, if agencies are granted “unfettered access” and adequate funding.

By June, the U.N.’s humanitarian response plan for Sudan – totalling $2.7 billion – was only 17.3% funded.