The MSF report is based on testimonies from 3,396 victims who sought treatment in MSF-supported facilities across North and South Darfur between January 2024 and November 2025. According to MSF, rape and sexual violence remain part of everyday life in areas of Sudan even when fighting in the civil war has moved elsewhere. The organization describes rape as persisting as an insidious part of life for communities in Darfur that are no longer on the front line.
Both Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are accused of sexual violence. Darfur is the stronghold of the RSF, and the vast majority of perpetrators identified by survivors were their fighters. Sexual assault is overwhelmingly carried out by armed men and is often accompanied by acts of brutality and humiliation. The report reinforces numerous accounts of an ethnic dimension to the attacks, saying non-Arab communities were systematically targeted in these atrocities. The attacks often involved multiple rapists and included other forms of extreme violence and intimidation such as beatings or the murder of relatives.
Many cases in the report took place in the conflict hotspot of North Darfur last year, following RSF takeovers of displaced persons camps and the city of el-Fasher. More than 90% of victims treated by MSF were assaulted while travelling from conflict areas to safety in the town of Tawila. One unnamed woman described being taken to an open area where four men raped her multiple times throughout the night while beating her with sticks and pointing guns at her head. Another survivor recounted witnessing two women in their group being raped by RSF militia, with one 22-year-old girl dying during the assault.
Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA representative for Sudan, said she has never seen conflict-related sexual violence on such a large scale. According to Euronews, Falcione described sexual violence being clearly utilized as a form of warfare itself, with women paying the price. She explained that parties to the conflict commit sexual violence and rape women and girls to disintegrate or somehow make a long lasting wound on communities. Falcione has met hundreds of women and girls who escaped violence from Darfur and Kordofan, two Sudanese regions which have been the scene of heavy fighting.
The RSF leadership has admitted individual violations were committed during the takeover of el-Fasher but says these are being investigated and the scale of atrocities was exaggerated. It remains unclear what specific actions are being taken by the RSF to investigate these admitted violations and hold perpetrators accountable, nor how many perpetrators have been identified or prosecuted for sexual violence crimes in Darfur since the conflict began.
Sexual violence survivors face trauma, injuries, risk of sexually-transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and stigma. More than 1,000 days into the war, approximately 9.3 million people remain internally displaced across Sudan, most of them women and children. The current availability and accessibility of sexual and reproductive health services for survivors in displacement camps across Sudan remains uncertain.
UNFPA works with communities to overcome stigma and runs mobile health units and safe spaces for women and girls. The exact numbers of sexual violence cases reported and treated by all humanitarian organizations in Sudan since April 2023 have not been confirmed, nor have the specific measures being implemented by the Sudanese government and international community to protect women and girls from ongoing sexual violence in conflict zones.