Since April 2023, the war between the RSF and Sudanese armed forces has displaced nearly 13 million people, left millions in need of aid and torn thousands of families apart.
An Amnesty International report released in April documented widespread sexual violence by the RSF across towns and villages in Sudan.
It reported that rape, gang rape and sexual slavery were used to humiliate, assert control and forcibly displace communities.
A United Nations Women report from the same month says more than 12 million people in Sudan – roughly a quarter of the population – are at risk of gender-based violence (GBV).
As of mid-2025, data from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that 1.2 million Sudanese – most of them women and girls – have fled the violence and sought refuge in Chad.
But for many, the trauma doesn’t end there.
Islam eventually reunited with her mother, three sisters and two brothers in Adre.
She had gone there to look for them, never intending to stay, but now their makeshift shelter – made from scavenged cloth, straw and plastic – serves as home. Her father and another brother, who were taken by the RSF, remain in Sudan.
“We built our house just from things we took from the street,” Islam says.
Adre was never meant to be a permanent home for refugees. The modest border town of just 40,000 people is now hosting an estimated 235,000 refugees, the UNHCR says.
As more people have arrived and settled, a sprawling city emerged on the arid land with little water or shelter and limited humanitarian aid.
The arrival of the refugees has sent prices for essential goods soaring, fuelling tensions and contributing to rising crime.
“The place is not secure. It has a lot of problems,” Islam says. “You can’t even send a young girl to the market. She can be robbed or beaten.”
To support her family, Islam sells tea in one of the town’s busiest roundabouts. She says there’s no dignity in it. “I’m harassed all the time by the men,” she says.
During Ramadan after working late to serve customers breaking their fast, she took a tuk-tuk home with her sister after dark.
The vehicle broke down, and a group of Chadian security forces in eight vehicles intercepted them, demanding their phones and money as the driver fled.
She recalls the shouts of the Chadian men.
“You are bad people, you Sudanese. You spoiled your country, and you’ve come to spoil ours. We will chase you out. … You don’t have a place here,” she remembers the men dressed in fatigues saying in heavily accented Arabic.
The men dragged her into one vehicle and her sister into another. “One shouted: ‘Just shoot her!’ and another said: ‘Don’t kill her,’” she says.
Although Islam couldn’t understand when the men switched to French, there was no mistaking their meaning. One soldier pinned her down while the other began unbuckling his trousers.
“He started touching me. … Then he raped me.”
Islam’s breath grows shallow as she recalls the attack, her asthma flaring.
“I never used to be asthmatic,” she says, noting how the sexual attacks brought on the condition.
The men dumped her at a hospital, claiming they’d found her sick on the street.
“All my clothes were covered in blood.”
Islam was treated for a leg injury sustained in the tuk-tuk accident, but because she was ashamed, she chose not to tell the doctor she had been raped.
In the bed next to her, however, was another sexual assault survivor who understood what had happened.
“They always do that,” the girl next to her said, trying to reassure her of their shared experience.