Port Sudan: When a member of the Rapid Support Forces stormed Aisha’s home in Khartoum, he gave her two bitter options: either marry him or he would kill her father. She did not take long to decide, trading her freedom for her father’s life.
The young woman told AFP, “I was afraid for my father, so I agreed to the marriage.”
Aisha, 22, who requested a pseudonym, was married and held for an entire year in a house not far from her family’s home, where she was repeatedly raped and beaten until she eventually miscarried.
Before the war broke out in 2023, Aisha was a student at the College of Information Technology. But after the conflict and her forced marriage, she became, in her words to AFP, “psychologically shattered,” her voice trembling.
According to estimates by governmental and non-governmental organizations, thousands of Sudanese women have fallen victim to sexual violence since the war began in April 2023 between the army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The Sudanese government’s Unit for Combating Violence Against Women documented 1,138 cases of sexual violence since the start of the war, but this number represents “no more than 10 percent of the real figure,” according to its director, Salima Ishaq Al-Khalifa.
International organizations accuse the Rapid Support Forces of using systematic sexual violence-including rape, sexual slavery, and forced marriage-as a weapon in their war against the regular army.
A New Beginning
In Port Sudan, in eastern Sudan-a city that until recently had been spared from violence-some survivors have found refuge at the Aman Foundation.
Since its establishment in August 2024, Aman has assisted more than 1,600 women fleeing sexual violence. The foundation provides them with psychological counseling, health and legal services, and even vocational training in baking, sewing, and embroidery.
In a modest house in a quiet neighborhood of Port Sudan, survivors at Aman share bedrooms and a kitchen with a small table for meals. On the other side, there is a living room with a television.
Despite its simplicity, the house offers a comfort denied to hundreds of thousands of Sudanese women.
In her office at Aman, psychological counselor Lubna Ali reviews the files of women who have contacted the center, which supports women from Darfur, Gezira, Khartoum, and other states.
She told AFP, “Most of the cases we receive have been raped by more than one person.” She added, “We had a case of a girl who was raped by ten militiamen,” referring to the Rapid Support Forces.
According to Ali, one-third of sexual violence survivors at the center are minors-“33.5 percent”-and many arrive pregnant.
Aman helps survivors leave the states where they experienced violence and supports them in resuming their education after their stay at the center, which lasts between three and four months, or until a pregnant woman gives birth.
Aman also provides counseling for girls who choose to give up children born of rape for adoption, warning that the number of victims is likely to rise in the coming period.
Ali stresses that the center is committed to survivors’ privacy: “The first thing we tell them is that what matters to us is your psychological and physical health.”
The conflict in Sudan, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million people, and caused what the United Nations describes as the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history.
“I Couldn’t Get Over It”
At Aman, Salma sits in the small living room, reading a book and drinking tea.
The 23-year-old fled from Al-Hasahisa in Gezira State (central Sudan), where she experienced violence at the hands of RSF fighters.
Salma, who also requested a pseudonym, said she and three others were sexually harassed by fighters who stormed the house where they were hiding.
“There were eight of them… We were beaten and harassed, some of us were raped, and others were beaten with weapons, myself included,” she said, adding, “I went into shock… because I saw something I could not get over.”
By December 2023, hundreds of thousands of women had been displaced from Gezira State, which was overrun by RSF fighters who besieged several villages.
At the start of this year, the army regained control of Gezira and expelled the RSF, but Salma, who fled to Port Sudan, cannot “get over what happened.”
She told AFP, “I want to finish my studies and focus on my future, but many times I find myself drowning in thoughts of what happened to me.”
Amina, 23, now provides psychological counseling to Aman residents after she herself was detained in Khartoum for 11 days because of her brother’s association with the government.
Amina was held with dozens of girls who endured “the worst kinds of treatment,” with some forcibly married and others taken “as hostages for negotiation.”
She now helps survivors at Aman while continuing her own recovery journey.
In Egypt, where one and a half million Sudanese have fled since the war began, psychotherapist Sara Montaser meets with at least five rape survivors daily at a support center in Cairo.
Montaser told AFP that survivors must actively engage in their treatment plans, explaining that due to the trauma they have experienced, “they are no longer able to sleep or live a normal life.”
Amina asks, “We are victims of something we had no hand or part in. Why did all this happen to us?”
(AFP)
