The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network remains appalled by the Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) continuing campaign of genocide, ethnic targeting of indigenous African populations in North Darfur as a whole, and the perpetration of deep, systematic sexual violence against women and girls in El Fasher. Since the fall of El Fasher on October 26, 2025, SIHA has gathered more survivor testimonies and mounting evidence of these atrocities, which continue to mercilessly unfold.
As of November 7, 2025, SIHA has now verified detailed cases of widespread rape perpetrated by the RSF against women and girls fleeing El-Fasher. Survivors describe a consistent pattern of murder, rape, physical assault, abduction, enforced disappearance and looting. Families have been forcibly separated, with men and boys beaten, executed, or taken to nearby detention sites. All the while, women and girls have been deliberately singled out for rape and sexual violence, often in front of their own children and parents. Personal property, including money, phones, clothing, and even religious items such as Qur’ans, have been confiscated or destroyed in enormous numbers. Survivors recounted being forced to sit, kneel, or follow orders under threat of death, enduring profound humiliation, torture, and extreme deprivation, with children suffering from acute hunger, thirst, and illnesses.
One survivor described the depth of this cruelty:
“We kept walking until we reached Kurma, and we found them again. They said to us, ‘You girls, come this way,’ and asked the old man [with us] to go. He said, ‘I cannot leave my daughters.’ They killed the old man. His son was crying, ‘My father, my father,’ [and] they killed the boy too.
They took us aside and said, ‘You girls, come here.’ They took my sister; she is 14 years old. I said, ‘I will go instead of my sister – I will go with you. She is sick.’ … They said: ‘Either we rape you, or we take your daughter.’ I said, ‘Rape me, but leave my daughter.’ So they beat me and raped me.”
One survivor who endured an escape out of the city via the road to Tawilah further testified:
“They shouted, ‘You are Zaghawa, aren’t you?’ We told them, ‘No, we are not.’ They raped me. They degraded us, they tortured us… In front of me, they killed a woman. My daughter screamed and ran.”
These testimonies we continue to receive, reveal a deliberate and dehumanizing campaign of sexual violence, specifically used to terrorize, punish, and annihilate African indigenous communities such as the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa among others, in North Darfur.
The RSF systematically abducted women and young men, transporting them on trucks to detention sites in Turra, Zamzam Camp and the area behind Al-Madfaeia (the artillery storage building) in El Fasher, where they were held under armed guard in overcrowded and suffocating conditions. They are detained under constant surveillance, with some forced to pay ransom amounts ranging between 200,000 (Two Hundred Thousand) – 2,000,000,000 (Two Billion Sudanese Pounds) (between USD$ 100 (One Hundred US Dollars) to USD$8,000 (Eight Thousand US Dollars) to secure their release. In other testimonies we received, survivors detail the RSF sinisterly offering a “deal” in ransoms for 4,500,000,000 (4.5 Billion Sudanese Pounds (USD$ 18,000 (Eighteen Thousand US Dollars)) in exchange for a group of three (3). Such actions illustrate the extent of their cruelty, reducing human life to mere commodities to be traded and sold. Those unable to pay are beaten, subjected to sexual violence, or forcibly disappeared.
One survivor who was abducted and taken to Turra gave accounts of being held with nineteen (19) girls and thirty-five to forty (35- 40) young men. While, according to the accounts of a female doctor who also survived, more than (thirty-eight) 38 men and women were held in a single room without ventilation, in the facility behind Al- Madfaeia (the artillery storage building) in El Fasher. Several died from suffocation, while others were beaten and executed on site.
These first-hand accounts are corroborated by independent satellite imagery analysis, confirming a coordinated effort to exterminate and subjugate African indigenous communities. In its report dated November 6, 2025, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab also provides alarming evidence of the RSF closing down Berm Exit, a critical civilian escape route out of El Fasher, deliberately trapping thousands under siege.
The testimonies we share confirm that these acts are neither random nor isolated. They reflect a coordinated pattern of persecution, ruthlessly driven by the RSF in separating civilians by ethnicity – executing, abducting and terrorizing communities through sexual violence, displacement and death.
This genocide represents a continuation and intensification of the RSF’s two-decade campaign of extermination against indigenous African communities in Darfur.
As SIHA Network, we continue to reiterate that what is happening in El Fasher and its surrounding areas in North Darfur is not new.; it is the outcome of gross impunity, in which mass killings, abductions, sexual violence and ethnic cleansing have rampantly continued without adequate justice and accountability.
While we welcome the various statements that have been issued by the United Nations, the African Union and the International Criminal Court on this deplorable situation, ultimately, the power is in our hands. We urge the international and regional community to go beyond rhetoric and to act now.
As an organization, we vehemently persist in our calls for the immediate cessation of hostilities and intervention in El Fasher and its surroundings by the United Nations and the African Union. We call for the deployment of a peacekeeping force to protect civilians and service providers on the frontline who work tirelessly to ensure the emergency needs of communities on the ground are met. We call for the immediate provision of humanitarian aid, sexual reproductive health services and psychosocial support by the regional and international community and for all external actors to stop supplying arms to the warring parties. Finally, we continue to call for the establishment of an independent, international mechanism to investigate the crimes being committed in Sudan. This will form the foundation for future prosecution to ensure justice and accountability against all perpetrators responsible.
The world must not look away. The lives of thousands of men, women and children in El Fasher and across North Darfur hang in the balance. Every moment of inaction is a choice – one that sides with the perpetrators.
