Sudan Events – Follow-ups
The United Nations fact-finding mission revealed that the Rapid Support Militia forced families to marry their members to children under extreme duress.
On March 4, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it had documented 221 cases of rape against children, including four one-year-old infants, without indicating the perpetrators, while human rights organizations hold the RSF responsible for most of the sexual violence.
The mission said in a statement on Saturday that it had “received very disturbing reports of RSF members forcibly marrying girls as young as 12 years old.”
It indicated that these acts are committed under extreme coercion, as the girls’ parents are detained at gunpoint or forced to marry their daughters to avoid the alternative fate of rape, and emphasized that some of these acts were accompanied by violence that led to deaths.
She added: “These so-called marriages are destroying the lives of women and girls and causing a vicious cycle of poverty, abuse and denial of basic rights such as education and personal autonomy.”
In early October 2023, the UN Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission on the situation in Sudan, with a mandate to investigate and identify those responsible for violations and crimes committed in the context of war.
The mission reported that it documented a huge number of cases of sexual abuse, including children as young as 7 years old, emphasizing that sexual violence is widespread and used as a weapon of war.
The FFM attributed most cases of sexual violence to the RSF and allied militias.
The resilience of victims of sexual violence is diminished by the lack of support, justice, mental health care, safe spaces, and the stigma that accompanies this type of crime
The mission called for an end to the use of sexual violence, including child and forced marriages, the investigation and prosecution of these crimes by soldiers and commanders, as well as protection and support for victims.
The mission reiterated the recommendation to extend the ICC’s mandate to all of Sudan and to establish a separate international judicial mechanism to work with the ICC. Victims of rape and sexual violence take extreme measures to deal with the situation, including running away from their families and committing suicide due to the association of this type of crime with honor, shame and inferiority in local communities.
Economic losses due to the conflict have marginalized women and deprived them of financial independence and livelihoods, she said
She continued: “The destruction of markets, looting of businesses and destruction of agricultural areas have deprived countless women of their main sources of income and pushed them further into poverty, and their limited access to resources and services exposes them to sexual exploitation and abuse.” The RSF deliberately destroyed markets in conflict areas in Khartoum and Darfur and looted shops, businesses and institutions in areas they controlled.
