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TRANSCRIPT
WARNING: This story contains distressing content.
"Before the war, I was a first-year secondary school student. Now I want to go back to school"
18-year-old Mariam, whose name has been changed for privacy reasons, has had her life forever changed by Sudan's nearly three-year-old civil war.
Up until recently, she had lived in the city of Al-Fashir, which had withstood an 18-month-long starvation siege by one of the warring parties: the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group .
But last October, the militants stormed and captured the city, leading to widespread bloodshed and further displacement for thousands of families who had already had to flee neighbouring towns and villages in the western North Darfur region.
"We were living in Al-Fashir, which was difficult. There was shelling and fighting. We girls went to the well in large numbers. Some people met us on our way to fetch water. There were many of them. They threatened us with weapons, insulted us and beat us. About five men came to me, and one of them raped me. The other girls faced the same thing."
Her story of sexual violence is unfortunately far from unique.In a December report, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa [[SIHA]] Network meticulously documented 1,294 confirmed cases of sexual and gender-based violence across 14 Sudanese states between 2023 and 2025.
It comes amid one of the most destructive conflicts in recent history, with the former U-S envoy for Sudan suggesting as many as 400,000 people may have been killed since the war began in April 2023, and the U-N saying about 14 million people have been displaced from their homes.
As the violence in Al-Fashir intensified, Mariam and her mother were forced to flee their home, walking for five days to reach safety.
"We had to walk long distances because there was no fuel for the cars. We had no food or water and arrived weak and hungry."
Starvation has swept the North Darfur region with a formal declaration of famine in Al-Fashir by the U-N-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification group last September and two additional famine alerts issued for neighbouring areas last week.
Mariam and her mother are now staying in a displacement camp and are just two of the women and girls supported by humanitarian organisation, Plan International.
The group provides lifesaving food and dignity kits, as well as support for survivors of gender-based violence. C-E-O of humanitarian organisation, Reena Ghelani, says stories like Mariam's are part of a broad pattern of targeted attacks.
"The story unfortunately is way too common. Sudan is a crisis of hunger, but it's also a crisis of violence against women. It is a war on women's bodies. It's a targeted attack. When you attack and rape girls and elderly women, any woman, you're attacking a whole society in a culture like Sudan and you're shredding the essence of that society. So it's actually a deliberate war strategy many of us are saying now."
Mariam's mother Fatima, whose name has also been changed, says her daughter only told her of her assault after she had become sick on their long trek to safety.
"The child became sick on the way. We decided to take her to hospital. The child then told me: ‘Mother, those people raped me before.’ I asked her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, my daughter?’ She replied, ‘I was afraid."
Ms Ghelani says this fear is common and means the full-extent of the assault on women may never be known.
"Women do under-report it. They try to hide it out of shame, out of fear of being exiled from their communities. Fear that they are then considered vulnerable for more attacks. And so we do believe that the cases are severely under-reported."
After being examined by a doctor, Mariam was told she was pregnant.
"The doctor said her blood was fine and that she was healthy. She said that if we wanted the baby, we could have it. This is our fate. We have nothing; we arrived wearing only the clothes we are wearing now. Thankfully, my mother and I are here to guide her. We need maternity care, mats and clothes for the baby. She also needs nutritional support before giving birth."
]Mariam says the camp is so crowded that her and her family are forced to sleep out in the open with no shelter.
"We haven’t been given any tents and have to sleep out in the open. Water and medicine are scarce and we need doctors."
Reena Ghelani says organisations like Plan International are struggling to address the needs of the thousands of sexual assault survivors around Sudan, partially due to the threat of violence.
"The sad part about it is yes, it happens, but then the services they need to recover, healthcare, even the basics of having safe shelter are very, very limited at the moment. It's highly dangerous for aid workers right now in Sudan. 200 aid workers have lost their lives in trying to reach people. Plan international is actually still present in the locations where famine is hit or people have fled to. That doesn't mean it's easy. And in some locations we're the only NGO."
The U-N says the level of need in Sudan has only grown dramatically with 33.7 million people – around two thirds of the population – expected to need urgent humanitarian assistance in 2026, an increase of 3.3 million from the year prior.
Meanwhile, a global drawback of aid funding has further limited humanitarian support.
The United Nations Population Fund, the U-N's sexual and reproductive health agency, says cuts to aid funding has forced the agency to withdraw from more than half of the 93 health facilities it was supporting.
Plan International is running its own appeal calling for donations to help their work that specifically supports vulnerable women and girls throughout Sudan.
But Ms Ghelani says they're also calling on the Australian government to continue to help make a difference.
"Sudan is producing one of the largest refugee flows and that creates problems throughout the region and beyond. So it's not only an international solidarity thing of the right thing to do, it's also the smart thing to do right now. And the Australian government, as it's looking at its federal budget, we would call on them to look at an additional $50 million. It's really needed. It's not just what you can see next door in your neighbourhood, it's what's coming."
