Genocide and Sexual Violence in Darfur: Mapping the Nexus

Now that many of conflicts have moved from traditional battlefields to villages, involving both organised armies and scrambling militias fighting amidst civilians, women and children are more vulnerable to assault by perpetrators from within their own communities and beyond. The Darfur conflict, stretching for over a decade now, is no exception. Once Darfuri women fall prey to a mass campaign of rape and other sexual violence by belligerents they are being ostracised by their families and societies. Also, such gruesome blitzes leave babies born of war in a state of uncertainty and insecurity, as they are, too, abandoned by their mothers fearing social stigma. Based mainly on secondary data and situation analyses, the paper explores how sexual violence during a conflict gnaws away at the fabric of a community and its future generations with a focus on the ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Darfur.