Women in war-torn Sudanese city forced to have sex with soldiers for food, victims say

Women struggling to survive in the war-torn Sudanese city of Omdurman say soldiers are forcing them to have sex in exchange for food.

- Zeinab Mohammed Salih

More than two dozen women who have been unable to flee fighting in Omdurman said that sexual intercourse with men from the Sudanese army was the only way they could access food or goods they could sell toraise money to feed their families.

The women said that most of the assaults had taken place in the "factories area" of the city, where the most food is available.

One victim said she had no choice but to have sex with soldiers to get food for her elderly parents and her 18-year-old daughter. "My parents are too old and sick and I never let my daughter go out to look for food. I went to the soldiers and that was the only way to get food they were everywhere in the factories area."

The woman said she was forced to have sex with soldiers at a meat-processing factory in May last year, not long after Sudan's devastating civil war broke out between the country's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), then again in January at a warehouse.