Women held as sex slaves in Sudan's South Kordofan, Human Rights Watch says

CAIRO - Women from Sudan's South Kordofan state have been repeatedly raped and some held as sex slaves by fighters from the warring Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Monday.

The RSF did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It has regularly denied accusations of systematic abuses during a 20-month-old war with Sudan's army that has devastated the country and displaced more than 12 million people.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had documented 79 cases of rape of women and girls as young as seven. It said it had interviewed seven survivors, including one who said she was held with 50 other women and raped repeatedly over three months.

The report said fighters had targeted women from the Nuba group in the remote area that borders South Sudan, and that the attacks amounted to war crimes.

"Survivors described being gang raped, in front of their families or over prolonged periods of time, including while being held as sex slaves by RSF fighters," Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Women described being chained together after attempting to escape and kept in "a pen-like setup with wires and tree branches", the report said.

ACCUSATIONS

Most of the attacks had been reported since the RSF launched assaults on the town of Habila and other settlements on Dec. 31, 2023, the report added.

The army and the SPLM-N, a rebel group largely comprised of people from the Nuba ethnicity, control the rest of the state, which they have fought over for years.

Human Rights Watch quoted one Nuba woman describing how attackers referred to her ethnicity. "As they raped us, they said to each other, 'These Nuba are our slaves, we can do anything we want,'" she was quoted as saying.

The RSF was accused last year of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing by the United States for a campaign of attacks against members of the Massalit group in West Darfur state. The RSF has denied widespread abuses, but said it would investigate individual soldiers.

Sudan's army is also accused of war crimes by the United States and UN experts, who have said it has carried out indiscriminate airstrikes in RSF territory and blocked aid - charges dismissed by the army.

The war between the two forces broke out in April 2023 over disagreements on the integration of the two forces during a transition to democracy. The RSF swiftly seized about half of the country, but the army has made recent gains in the capital Khartoum and areas to the south.

(Reporting by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Andrew Heavens)