Who are the women working on the frontlines of Sudan war’s sexual violence epidemic?

In Sudan, the United Nations verified more than 500 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2025, 98 per cent of victims were women and girls. The majority were targeted on the basis of ethnicity, as well as for their real or perceived affiliation with rival forces.

As in most conflicts, the number of verified cases in Sudan is widely known to be just the tip of the iceberg due to insecurity. UN Women’s latest data shows that the number of women and girls requiring support for gender-based violence has quadrupled since the start of the war more than three years ago – reaching an estimated 12.4 million people in 2026 – the vast majority of whom are women and girls.

In response to the sexual violence epidemic in Sudan, women across the country are working on the front lines, providing survivors with life-saving psychological support. Many of these women have been forced to flee their homes and are living in displacement camps themselves, facing extreme hardship and daily threat of violence.

One of these women is Amana Suleiman, a psychologist who lives with her daughter in Port Sudan.

“For a woman, it’s as if the rug has been pulled out from under her feet”, explains Amana. “She was stable, she was calm, she was living in her home, putting her children first. Now [they…] look for a place to live, a shelter, and the necessities – food, drink, shelter, and so on. The woman faced all these challenges, and on top of that, she was subjected to a different kind of struggle. She was violated, and her belongings were taken from her. This entails extreme suffering – forced displacement, forced marriage, sexual enslavement, sexual exploitation, and all forms of exploitation in every shape and form. This is what Sudanese women and girls have been subjected to.”

Originally from White Nile State, Amana is displaced. She lives in Port Sudan. Many of the women she supports fled El Fasher, a city in North Darfur where a UN Fact-Finding Mission found that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out ethnically targeted killings and widespread sexual violence during their takeover of the city.

Amana unpacks what this means for women and girls. “Women were collectively raped while on their way home – raped in front of their families, relatives, elders, and respected men. People were in shock. They couldn’t speak or say anything because the information had not registered in their minds yet. These people fell silent.”

Amana helps women begin to process the trauma, setting a path for recovery.

“Through therapy sessions, psychological support sessions, emotional release, and all those specialized techniques designed to help someone feel safe enough to open up to you,[first] they started writing with pen and paper. After some time, they began to speak, expressing themselves. They began to open up, talk about themselves, and explain their problems.”

Amana believes that with the right support, there is a road to recovery.

“There must be ongoing support […] in the form of rehabilitation – meaning we need to establish rehabilitation centres for women, because the psychological trauma and emotional scars they have suffered must be healed. As for Sudanese women, based on my experience, they’ve been through a lot – they are incredibly resilient. They are people with strong roots, who hold onto their values, principles and traditions”, says Amana.

Amana is not alone in her work, her daughter Fatima Ahmed, a doctor, is right by her side, providing much needed medical care to survivors, and support to her mother.

“We, as general practitioners, help by referring [women and girls…] to specialists depending on the needs at the time, such as meeting a gynecologist, an obstetrician, or an internist”, explains Fatima.

After survivors complete their medical treatment and tests, Amana continues to offer them psychological support and helps them integrate into society.

Also working on the front lines of the response is Al-Tatouma Juma, a psychosocial support officer in Tawila, North Darfur. Tawila is home to hundreds of thousands of displace people, including women and girls who fled El-Fasher. Al-Tatouma Juma is one of them.

“I know well the abuses they endured while caught in the crossfires”, says Al-Tatouma. Gisma (not her real name), one of the women receiving support from Al-Tatouma, describes what happened to her: “After fleeing El-Fasher we encountered rape, harassment and beatings.”

Al-Tatouma works for a local organization providing psychosocial support and services to women and girls, but she says, “it is simply not enough.” Like many women-led organizations across Sudan, her organization is operating under immense pressure while trying to meet growing needs with limited resources.

Flexible funding, including allocating at least 15 per cent of humanitarian funding to women-led organizations, is desperately needed to increase access to support. Equally and urgently needed is an immediate end to the violence, protecting civilians from the conflict, and the full, safe and meaningful inclusion of women in the humanitarian response.

UN Women is on the ground in Sudan, partnering with over 45 women-led and women’s rights organizations across 15 states. We facilitate women’s leadership in peace and security, and humanitarian action - supporting the delivery of essential supplies, safety and mental health services for women and girls. This work has been made possible through the support of the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) and with generous contributions from donors, including the Government of Japan and the Government of the Netherlands.