600 victims of sexual violence treated in Sudan’s North Darfur
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) revealed that it has given medical care to over 600 victims of sexual violence in Sudan’s western state of North Darfur over the past four months, according to Middle East Monitor on September 25th.
Most of the sexual violence was allegedly carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who have besieged North Darfur’s Famine-Stricken capital city of El-Fasher since May 2024 as part of a campaign to seize control from the Sudanese military.
The RSF and the military have been at war since April 2023 after a power struggle turned violent. The war has plunged Sudan into what the UN has labelled as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
In a series of posts on X published on September 24th, MSF revealed that it had treated over 600 victims of sexual violence in North Darfur between April and August 2025. It also said that 302 of those cases occurred in May and June alone.
MSF stated that the majority of the attacks occurred in the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps close to El-Fasher, which have all been targeted in brutal, large-scale assaults by the RSF. It also said that “most survivors were women and girls, including children”, with 30% of survivors being under the age of 18.
In August alone, 112 victims were treated, with 85% of them coming either from El-Fasher or the Zamzam displacement camp.
It emphasised that 97% of the perpetrators were not civilians, which implies that the violence was committed by combatants.
On September 20th, the UN Human Rights Office accused RSF fighters of systematically raping women and girls during an assault on the Zamzam camp. One particularly horrific case involved 12 fighters raping five women in front of their children.
Claire San Filippo, MSF emergency coordinator said that “women and girls do not feel safe anywhere. They are attacked in their own homes, when fleeing violence, getting food, collecting firewood, working in the fields. They tell us they feel trapped”, according to The Guardian on May 31st.
Middle East Monitor, Maghrebi.org, The Guardian
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