‘They Come for Us First’: The Women Bearing Witness to Sudan’s Genocide
In Sudan’s Al Jazeera State, a young doctor named Shaza sits in a dimly lit room, speaking on the phone over an unstable internet connection about atrocities most of the world has ignored.
“They come for us first,” she said, her voice breaking. “Doctors, women — anyone who might bear witness.”
Shaza’s words are a window into Sudan’s reality: a war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted in April 2023 and has killed over 60,000 people — potentially as many as 150,000 — and displaced more than 11 million.
The war has not only resulted in mass killing and starvation, but also widespread violence against women and girls. Last month, the United States officially declared the war a genocide — a rare designation done only seven times in U.S. history. Yet, for many survivors, the acknowledgment feels hollow.
A Doctor’s Nightmare
Before the war, Shaza was completing her residency in northern Khartoum. Her life was defined by long hospital hours and dreams of helping her community. Then the RSF arrived, armed with weapons and lists bearing the names of medical personnel.
“They came knocking on doors, demanding to know who the doctors were,” Shaza told More to Her Story. Some medical professionals were abducted and coerced into treating injured RSF soldiers. Many disappeared. Fearing for her life, Shaza fled to Al Jazeera State, a region between the White and Blue Nile rivers, but the violence followed.
She shared stories of the women she treated, each one seared into her memory. The first was Rita, a newlywed planning to join her husband in Abu Dhabi. RSF soldiers gang-raped her, mutilated her face, and dumped her body in a river. “We found her shoes by the water,” Shaza said.
Another woman, 30 years old and a mother of three, was gang-raped in front of her children. Unable to bear the trauma, she locked herself in a bathroom, slit her wrists, and bled out to death. “She was gone; her little boy was just four years old,”
Then there was the young woman hiding under a bed as RSF soldiers ransacked her home for gold and money. They found her, raped her, and left her unconscious. Days later, overwhelmed by trauma, she ran out of her house and threw herself into the Nile.
The violence wasn’t confined to homes. Women seeking refuge in Sufi shrines — a sacred space for Sudan’s Al Jazeera community — were also targeted. At one shrine, Shaza described mass gang rapes by RSF forces so brutal that many women didn’t survive. “They thought they’d be safe there,” Shaza said, shaking her head.
“At the beginning, the [RSF] came with lists, going door to door asking for anyone connected to the medical profession,” Hala Al-Karib, the Regional Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, told More to Her Story. “They target doctors and physicians because they don’t want any witnesses. They were very intentional about not leaving behind any credible witnesses.”
Shaza believes the RSF is targeting doctors not just for their skills but to eliminate anyone who may have the potential to criminalize their actions. “They don’t want anyone left to tell the story,” she said. Shaza herself conceals her identity, fearing the repercussions of speaking out. Her greatest pain, however, is treating women who feel stripped of their humanity.
“They don’t think they deserve clean clothes or even dignity,” she said, recounting how she uses her own money to buy survivors basic necessities. “They keep saying, ‘What’s ours has been taken.’”
The scale of violence in Sudan is staggering. In Al Jazeera State alone, where RSF fighters held control until the Sudanese army retook it in January, Shaza estimates that hundreds of women have been raped—but she’s certain the real number is far higher. Displacement, shame, and fear prevent many from seeking help. Across Sudan, there’s been a 288 percent rise in demand for gender-based violence services in just the last 12 months.
Between September 2023 and February 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 frontline workers—doctors, social workers, counselors, lawyers, and volunteers—who have been responding to Sudan’s crisis. Of them, 18 healthcare providers had directly treated survivors of sexual violence. Together, they assisted 262 survivors between April 2023 and February 2024.
The women and girls, ranging in age from 9 to 60, endured rape, gang rape, and sexual slavery at the hands of RSF fighters. The violence left deep physical and psychological scars, yet most had nowhere to turn. In a country where emergency post-rape care is nearly nonexistent, and trauma counseling is scarce, survival too often means suffering in silence.
“I’ve never seen rape happening at this level in any conflict I’ve worked on,” Belkis Wille, associate director in the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division of Human Rights Watch, told More to Her Story. “Rape has become so normalized that the idea of accountability feels ludicrous to survivors.”
The Global Response
Former U.S. National Security Council Africa Director Nicole Widdersheim emphasized the importance of targeted sanctions to financially weaken the RSF and begin a domino effect of legal processes that may bring a semblance of justice.
“Sanctions signal that the international community is watching and willing to act,” she told More to Her Story.
Under Widdersheim’s guidance as the Africa Sudan director in the National Security Council, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in 2017 upheld Darfur sanctions initiated under U.S. President Barack Obama, aiming to strike a balance between effectiveness and necessity. Yet Widdersheim stresses that sanctions alone aren’t enough. The U.S. must push its Gulf allies — especially the United Arab Emirates, which has provided ongoing arms supply to the RSF — to enforce restrictions targeting the RSF and its financial backers.
Financial sanctions can effectively isolate and pressure actors engaged in violations or corruption, potentially leading to behavior change and political consequences, explained Widdersheim. But the impact of these sanctions depends on the comprehensiveness of U.S. enforcement efforts, particularly in pushing countries like the UAE to implement them rigorously.
But the challenge remains daunting. “For all the money the U.S. has poured into Sudan, one of the hardest battles has been getting the U.S. to pressure its Gulf allies,” Widdersheim noted. Without their cooperation, sanctions risk becoming little more than symbolic gestures.
Michelle Gavin of the Council on Foreign Relations echoes these sentiments, claiming, “the recent flurry of congressional and executive attention on Sudan needs to be married to a long-term strategy toward the Horn of Africa.”
In an exclusive interview with More to Her Story during her final week in office, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta, described the crisis in Sudan as “the most horrific” she had witnessed during her tenure. She condemned both the RSF and SAF for disregarding international humanitarian law and conventions.
What struck her most, Gupta said, were the demands of the women she spoke with—not just for an end to the violence, but for an end to what that violence meant for them.
“Their definition of ‘cessation of hostilities’ wasn’t just about putting down arms,” Gupta said. “It was about stopping rape and gender-based violence.”
As Sudan’s health infrastructure collapses under the weight of a protracted war and targeted attacks, the window for meaningful action narrows. Nearly 80 percent of the country’s medical facilities are inoperable, according to Ahmed Abbas of the Sudan Doctors’ Union. Preventable and treatable diseases like malaria, dengue, and measles are spreading quickly.
Shaza’s frustration is palpable. “The world doesn’t care,” she said. “There’s no interest in understanding what women are going through.”
Her anger is echoed by activists like Entisar Abdelsadig, who has spent months sounding the alarm on the RSF’s epidemic of gender-based violence. While documenting atrocities is essential, she says, it’s not enough. “We have to provide psychosocial support for victims, understand their trauma, and tackle the stigma that silences them,” Abdelsadig said.
The fear is so pervasive that some families take drastic measures — marrying off young daughters to older men or subjecting them to female genital mutilation in hopes of protecting them from RSF violence. “These are gross violations of human rights,” she added.
Abdelsadig, a senior adviser at the peacebuilding organization Search for Common Ground, led the effort to bring 14 Sudanese women from various civil society sectors to U.N. peace talks in Geneva in August 2024. Their contributions were essential in formulating the 2024 code of conduct adopted by the RSF during the talks, which secured crucial commitments against violence towards women, sexual slavery, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
“If I have the opportunity to speak with President Donald Trump, I would emphasize the importance of leveraging the United States’ relationship with regional powers to mediate and resolve the conflict in Sudan,” Dr. Abeer Dirar, a Sudanese medical doctor and community activist based in Khartoum, told More to Her Story. “I would also stress the need to maintain and increase humanitarian aid, particularly in the health sector. By implementing these strategies, we can work toward a safer environment for female medical professionals and ensure that women in conflict zones receive the essential health care services they need.”
Sudan’s conflict has become the largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded, yet aid delivery faces unprecedented risks. Advocates warn that Trump’s 90-day suspension of U.S. foreign assistance—along with the dismantling and merging of USAID into the State Department—could have devastating consequences. Aid workers say such moves would be catastrophic.
For Abdelsadig, the U.S. genocide determination is a necessary first step—but not enough. “We need to see the U.S. flex its diplomatic muscles to pressure all parties,” she said, emphasizing the need for coordinated action from European nations and the African Union to end the violence for good.
Shaza believes that ending the war must also mean acknowledging the depth of human suffering—especially the suffering of women.
“I want the whole world to know what happened to the women of Al Jazeera,” she said. “No woman came out of Al Jazeera safe from what the RSF did.”