Women of sorrow of our day

Monica is a Sudanese mother of two teenage girls who came face to face with her worst nightmares when the very violent conflict in Sudan reached their area.

“They kidnapped the girls and kept them in captivity away from me. I tried with all my might to find my daughters, crying until I became seriously ill from the grief. But, despite all that, I couldn’t find my daughters.

“Months later, one of my neighbours told me that my daughters were alive, but armed men were raping them. Not one person, not two people, and the girls were suffering greatly, I was told. My little daughter tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists. They beat my older daughter so badly that she vomited blood. They wouldn’t feed them, and they would force them to work 24 hours a day, cleaning, ironing, and more.”

When the daughters managed to escape from their male armed captors, they reached their mother and the three fled to another place. The eldest daughter was found to be suffering from internal injuries and required hospitalisation. It was further found that both sisters were pregnant.

“What happened is not her fault,” said the eldest daughter about her baby after giving birth. “I have no reason to feel angry or resentful toward her. I didn’t plan for my baby’s future, how I would educate her, or whether she would be able to go to school... until now. I do not know what to do. I hope no girl in Sudan will have to endure what I went through.”

Similar stories are not infrequent.

Tania, a 16-year-old, recounts the ordeal she went through when she was forced into a big car. “They took me to a place next to a railway, and three people raped me. I found it very difficult to face my family about what happened to me. I sat in the street until I got myself together, then I went inside. Now I’m nine months pregnant. I was about to commit suicide, that’s what happened to me.”

The young girl added that procedures were in place for the child to be taken care of immediately after birth and to hand over to another family. “I don’t want them to take the baby from me, but it would be difficult to keep him with me. My father does not know that I got pregnant.”

These are just two examples of what has been happening amid the nationwide, brutal civil conflict that spread across Sudan where, according to UNICEF, armed men were “raping and sexually assaulting children, including infants as young as one”. Data compiled by gender-based violence service providers in Sudan shows the agonising evidence of at least 221 rape cases against children since the beginning of 2024.

Meanwhile, frontline workers believe there are survivors who are afraid of the negative ramifications of reporting rape cases to service providers for fear of the aggressors or of being accused of being ‘wives’ or ‘collaborators’ of an armed group and being detained.

Indeed, women and girls who become pregnant due to rape face exceptional challenges. The social isolation they experience can have long term consequences for the well-being of themselves and their child, including affecting their employment prospects, their acceptance by family and the community or the child’s access to services.

In Sudan, armed men were raping and sexually assaulting children, including infants as young as one- Charles Buttigieg

In some cases, these challenges result in babies being placed in foster family care or ‘kafala’ families, given up for adoption, or abandoned. One centre that provides temporary care for infants until foster families are arranged reported a record 77 children in their care in 2024, up from 64 children in 2023 and 29 in 2022. They said this was largely as a consequence of children being born out of rape.

As in many situations, survivors, not perpetrators, carry the cultural blame of sexual violence in Sudan’s patriarchal society. This can develop in a tremendous stigma, shame and ostracisation from society for both male and female survivors, and their families.

Survivors voice their fear about being disowned by their husbands or fathers, and unmarried women and adolescent girls about never being able to marry or return to their family homes because of social stigma. Others speak of not telling their families about what happened to them and leaving their communities to hide pregnancies. Several girls open up about wishing they had been killed instead of being raped because of the heavy burden of shame they carried.

Displaced women and girls are increasingly exposed to sexual violence due to crowded living conditions in sites for internally displaced persons (IDPs), being housed by strangers. Many of the women and adolescent girls living in these difficult circumstances end up there after being forced to flee alone, making them more socially and economically at risk, with the consequence of an increased vulnerability to exploitation or violence.

Meanwhile, the power struggle between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RFS) is estimated to have claimed at least 150,000 lives.

Sudan, of course, is not the only place where horrors happen. For instance, Mariosa, from Mozambique, was 27 when non-state armed groups abducted her and other women from her village and took them to a military camp where they were forced to become “wives”.

Mariosa was subjected to sexual violence and brutal beatings and made to carry out domestic chores for months until her insurgent “husband” grew tired of her and sold her to another fighter for 50 meticals (less than $1). “I was later sold a second time to another man,” she said to an international protection officer. “Even girls as young as 10 years old were forced into marriage.” 

The terrible accounts of what continues to happen to women and children in certain wars remind me of certain horrible similar stories I came face to face with in the many years I have worked in the area of international protection for asylum seekers and refugees.

(Victims’ names have been changed to protect identity.)

Charles Buttigieg is a former Refugee Commissioner.