A report by a Sudanese rights group has accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias of committing war crimes and systematic ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan region, using sexual violence and starvation as weapons of war.
The report, compiled by the Adala Project, documents atrocities between April 2023 and January 2025, a period that saw the country’s wider conflict exacerbate a long-running humanitarian crisis in the region. The findings are based on survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and open-source investigations.
“What is occurring in the Nuba Mountains/ South Kordofan constitutes systematic ethnic cleansing, where the bodies of women and girls are being weaponized as instruments of this eradication campaign,” stated the local group, which is supported by the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network.
The conflict has displaced thousands, triggering a collapse of healthcare and education systems and leading to famine-like conditions, according to the report.
Sexual violence and abduction
The report alleges that rape has been systematically used as a weapon to terrorize civilian populations. Between May 2023 and January 2025, the Adala Project documented approximately 23 cases of sexual violence, noting many incidents likely remain unreported due to stigma and lack of access.
The documented cases include eleven women who were abducted and raped—eight from Tanaqal village and three from the city of Dilling. In another incident on July 14, 2024, eight RSF members sexually assaulted three women, aged 25, 28, and 74, on a farm outside Dilling. The report also said that from September 2023, RSF fighters and allied militias raped 79 women and girls, subjecting them to ongoing sexual slavery. Most of these documented crimes occurred in and around the town of Habila after December 31, 2023.
Abductions were also used as a tactic, according to the report. An RSF attack on villages in the Tanaql and Al-Zaltaya areas on Feb. 9, 2024, resulted in the killing of seven young men and the abduction of 13 girls aged between 17 and 30. Separately, on Dec. 29, 2024, a group of 15 armed RSF members abducted more than 18 women, including some who were elderly, near Dilling. The women were accused of espionage and threatened with being burned alive before they were released the following day, the report stated.
Ethnic targeting and starvation
The report states that women and girls from Nuba communities have been specifically targeted as part of a campaign of ethnic violence designed to intimidate and subjugate them. All documented rape cases involved women and girls from Nuba groups.
The RSF is accused of deliberately attacking farming communities to starve the population, which the report calls “using hunger as a weapon to subjugate non-Arab agricultural communities”.
While the report focuses heavily on the RSF, it also documents violence by other parties. Clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in Kadugli on Feb. 3, 2025, killed 41 civilians, including 29 women and girls, the report said.
Shrinking humanitarian space
Aid delivery has been severely obstructed, with authorities and armed groups blocking access. On April 21, 2025, the Humanitarian Aid Commissioner ordered the suspension of 20 national and international aid organizations operating in South Kordofan. The report also notes the arrests of volunteer members of local emergency response rooms in Dilling and Kadugli.
The blockades have put more than two million civilians at risk of losing access to shelter, food, clean water, and medicine.
The Adala Project called for urgent international intervention, the establishment of a permanent ceasefire, and the creation of an international tribunal to hold perpetrators accountable.