Women struggling to survive in the war-torn Sudanese city of Omdurman say they are being forced to have sex with soldiers in exchange for food.
More than two dozen women who have been unable to flee fighting in Omdurman said that sexual intercourse with men from the Sudanese army was the only way they could access food or goods that they could sell to raise money to feed their families.
The women said that most of the assaults took place in the “factories area” of the city, where the most food in the city is available.
One victim said she had no choice but to have sex with soldiers to get food for her elderly parents and 18-year-old daughter.
“Both of my parents are too old and sick and I never let my daughter go out to look for food,” she said. “I went to the soldiers and that was the only way to get food – they were everywhere in the factories area.”
The woman said she was forced to have sex with soldiers at a meat-processing factory in May last year – not long after Sudan’s devastating civil war broke out between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – then again at a warehouse storing fava beans this January.
Before the war broke out, the 37-year-old, who appeared pale and thin in interviews, said she had worked as a maid for families living in affluent parts of Omdurman but was too poor to have been able to flee the city and take her family to a safer part of the country when the conflict began.
The conflict in Sudan has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 10 million people, according to the United Nations. A recent UN-backed report said nearly 26 million people, or slightly more than half of the population, were facing high levels of “acute food insecurity”.
Reports of rape by armed men emerged within days of the conflict starting on 15 April 2023. Numerous accounts of RSF fighters perpetrating sexual violence in a systematic manner have been documented in the Khartoum area and in Darfur, the vast western region where the RSF now controls all but one major population centre.
Some of the women who spoke to the Guardian said that soldiers are also demanding sex in exchange for access to abandoned houses where it is still possible to loot items to sell in local markets.
One woman said after having sex with soldiers she was permitted to take food, kitchen equipment and perfumes from empty houses. She spoke of her shame at the sexual assault she was forced to endure and being reduced to stealing property to survive.
“I am not a thief,” she said. “What I went through is indescribable, I would not wish it on an enemy … I only did it because I wanted to feed my children.”
Aid organisations have struggled to supply food to people in desperate need around the country and, although the UN’s World Food Programme said recently it had made deliveries to the Khartoum area, the women the Guardian spoke to said they had not seen any international aid coming into their neighbourhoods.
A third woman the Guardian spoke to said she had been tortured by soldiers because she stopped having sex with them. The 21-year-old said she had had sex with soldiers in return for being allowed to loot houses in west Omdurman, but that she stopped after her brothers told her they were opposed to looting. The woman said that when she told the soldiers she would no longer be coming to see them two of them held her down and burned her legs. “I was told by the soldiers that I was full of myself for refusing to go with them,” said the woman, who showed the burn marks on her legs.
Soldiers and residents of Omdurman corroborated reports of women being forced to have sex. One soldier said that though he had never personally taken advantage of women, he had seen his colleagues doing it. He described one incident where a woman had sex with soldiers, who in turn allowed her sisters to loot houses. “It’s awful,” the soldier said. “The amount of the sins in this city can never be forgiven.”
A resident of a neighbourhood in west Omdurman said he had seen soldiers bringing women to houses belonging to people who had fled. “A lot of women come and queue outside our neighbourhood,” he said. “The soldiers let them enter and choose those they like the look of to enter houses. I sometimes hear screaming but what can you do? Nothing.”
