Why Sudan’s civil war is being ‘fought on the bodies of women’
Women led the country’s revolution in 2019 and have been central to peace efforts. Now rape, sexual slavery and murder have become part of the conflict.
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In 2019, the streets of Sudan’s major cities pulsated with the beat of a revolution – Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year dictatorship was ending. The efforts of young people and women had been central to the regime change; images like that of 22-year-old student-turned-activist Alaa Salah standing atop a car and chanting in front of demonstrators made headlines around the world, a hopeful symbol of resistance and of a possible future where people had risen against the autocracy against all the odds and won.
It was not to last. Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a war that has devastated the entire country, caused widespread famine and extreme poverty, and where women’s bodies have become the targets as sexual violence is routinely used as a weapon of war. It is an indictment of what can go wrong when power is left in the wrong hands and interference from surrounding countries with vested interests is allowed to wreak havoc.
Sudan’s civil war
All of Sudan’s 18 states are currently immersed in civil war. The conflict is mostly centered on violence between Sudan’s Armed Forces, or SAF, the official military and main force that supported Bashir’s regime, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, originally created as a counter-insurgency...
