Sudan is a country of 45 million people. For Sudan to be destroyed by thugs and monsters is shocking and perplexing. My country is facing one of the worst humanitarian and human rights issues in the world, yet it remains one of the most neglected.

The world hasn’t even tried to understand what’s happening. We don’t have a civil war in Sudan—what we are experiencing is a proxy war. We have actors who are using our bodies to serve their own interests. It’s terrifying that this can happen so easily, that civilians can be killed and brutalized without consequence.

This campaign of violence in Sudan did not happen in a vacuum. It’s years and years of impunity, where perpetrators have been allowed to get away with this violence. For nearly two decades, Darfur has been the epicenter of genocidal violence, where the government-backed Janjaweed militia terrorized communities, particularly targeting non-Arab populations with mass killings, sexual violence, and displacement. Women in Darfur were at the forefront of resistance, standing up against the systemic oppression of the regime. We, Sudanese women and men, managed to bring Bashir, the former dictator, down, but the risks were immense.

The international community’s support for our transition was virtually nil, leaving us to face the aftermath alone. Despite a longstanding record of impunity, the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide—particularly the Janjaweed, whom Bashir rebranded as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—have taken a front-row seat in Sudan’s transitional government. Meanwhile, the violence did not stop in Darfur and many parts of Sudan throughout the transition.

As women, we have warned time and time again about the volatility of the situation, about the fact that the very leaders who have committed ethnic cleansing, who have raped and enslaved women in Darfur, are the same forces that have now expanded the conflict in Darfur to cover the entire country.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are four million Sudanese women at risk of sexual violence. My colleagues and I are living through a nightmare. You would not believe the stories we’ve documented: children as young as seven months old have been violated. Women in their seventies have been sexually assaulted. It is unimaginable how women’s bodies are being used in this war—not just as a strategy but as a deliberate tool to break down communities, to displace people from their homes, to instill terror. This is not just a byproduct of war; it is an intentional method of control.

Our bodies are being used as tools.

The situation is so desperate that families with no access to food are being forced to give away their little girls just to survive. The bombardment, the terror—it never ends. Right now, there are about 12 million displaced people forced from their homes. And yet, Sudan remains the least supported crisis in the world.

One of the most shocking elements of this crisis is the complete lack of support for reproductive health. We were told that the UNFPA, the UN agency for sexual and reproductive health, is short 70% of the funding it needs for Sudan. That means there is virtually nothing for us. We have to seek donations from our own communities just to buy antibiotics for survivors of sexual violence. My colleagues on the ground tell me, “We have nothing to give to survivors.”

The challenge of protecting civilians is overwhelming. With 7 million internally displaced people, most are being hosted by local communities. People are taking shelter in schools, in public spaces. A colleague recently shared that 70% of the survivors of sexual violence she’s treating have syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases. This is the scale of the nightmare we are living through. And yet, the crisis in Sudan is not being taken seriously. It’s not being communicated to the world with the urgency it requires.

Since October 21st, to date, a new cycle of atrocities has occurred in Gezira State, central Sudan. Female nurses were taken by RSF to unknown locations; the RSF slaughtered more than 1000 civilians, among them children and women, people with disabilities, and elders. In several cases, women who had been exposed to terrible brutality reportedly committed suicide after being tortured or gang raped. Furthermore, there have been accounts of young women committing suicide because they were afraid of being raped by armed militia members. 

There are steps the U.S. government has taken, including sanctions, and we appreciate those. But it is not enough. We need much more if this bloodbath is to end. It is unbelievable that this level of brutality and suffering is allowed to continue, ignored by the world, with barely a mention in global headlines.

Sudan is a country where women’s bodies have become the battlefield. This crisis is a reminder of the impunity with which perpetrators of sexual violence operate, and the silence that surrounds the suffering of millions of women. We cannot afford to let this go unnoticed any longer. The world must act—not with words, but with real action.