October 29, Nairobi — A new report released by a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan on Tuesday detailed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) responsibility for “large scale” sexual violence in areas under their control.
The UN said that the RSF had committed gang-rapes and abducting and detaining victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery. They found reasonable grounds for the acts committed to amount to violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.
The report, which expands on the mission’s first report that was released in September, highlights the imperatives of protecting civilians in Sudan. It found that while there are also documented cases involving the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its allied groups, the majority of rape and sexual and gender-based violence was committed by the RSF, in particular in Khartoum, Darfur and Gezira states.
In Darfur, acts of sexual violence were committed with “particular cruelty with firearms, knives and whips to intimidate or coerce the victims while using derogatory, racist or sexist slurs and death threats.”
The targeting “was part of a pattern aimed at terrorizing and punishing civilians for perceived links with opponents and suppressing any opposition to their advances,” the UN mission said.
The mission also detailed numerous other human rights violations and noted that a quarter of Sudan’s population is displaced or has fled to neighboring countries.
On Monday, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the people of Sudan are trapped in a “nightmare of violence, hunger, disease and displacement.” However, he said that the conditions “do not exist for the deployment of a United Nations force to protect civilians in Sudan.”
The UN Fact-Finding Mission said on Tuesday that the high levels of violence underscores the need for the urgent protection of civilians. “Ways must be found to create conditions for the immediate deployment of an independent protection force,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the mission. “There is no safe place in Sudan now.”