A new United Nations report has detailed horrific accounts of sexual violence in Sudan's Darfur region, where militia fighters allegedly threatened victims with ethnic cleansing. The report, from the UN fact-finding mission, quotes survivors who say their attackers vowed to make them give birth to 'Arab children' and used racial slurs during assaults.
The report focuses on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias, which have been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023. Victims ranged from eight to 75 years old. In Darfur, attacks specifically targeted the Masalit ethnic group. One survivor from El Geneina recounted her attacker saying: 'We will make you, the Masalit girls, give birth to Arab children.'
Caroline Buisman, coordinator for the fact-finding mission, stated: 'We found that rape and other forms of sexual violence committed by the RSF and its allied militias formed part of large-scale attacks which targeted, in particular, the Masalit community, on the basis of their ethnicity.' The report details how fighters went door-to-door in Masalit neighbourhoods, killing men and assaulting women before forcing them to flee to Chad.
Activists have accused the RSF of using sexual violence as a tool for ethnic cleansing. Hala Al-Karib, regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, said: 'The RSF has used sexual violence as a tool for ethnic cleansing and there are definitely footprints of genocide, particularly in western Darfur.'
The conflict has displaced around 14 million people, with at least 19,000 killed. The RSF has seized most of Darfur and parts of Khartoum, forcing the government to relocate. A separate Human Rights Watch report in May also found evidence of racially motivated sexual violence, with fighters using ethnic slurs and targeting women based on ethnicity.
