Good morning, this is Kasmira. As Sudan’s brutal civil war continues to take on catastrophic proportions, sexual violence has increasingly been weaponised by warring parties, with women and girls suffering the devastating consequences.
I spoke to Esther Dingemans, executive director of the Global Survivors Fund who, recently returned from a visit to Chad's refugee camps, says the crisis should be treated as a mental health emergency. She calls for a collective international response. |
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Esther Dingemans (centre), during a visit to Abutengué camp, in Chad, where she joined MSF and partners in meeting with parents at Abutengué School, in May 2026. (GSF/Ludovic Franchi)
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Esther Dingemans, executive director of the Global Survivors Fund, returned last month after visiting three refugee camps in Chad, where more than 1.3 million Sudanese have fled the civil war, including many women and girls subjected to conflict-related sexual violence.
The scale of the violence, and its use as a weapon of war, is like nothing she’s seen before, Dingemans says. The humanitarian who began her career in her native Holland as a social worker before moving to the field, working for three years in Darfur at the height of the earlier crisis in 2004, warns that these are wounds that will impact generations to come.
It comes as a report by the UN human rights office on Tuesday said it verified 546 incidents affecting at least 838 victims across 16 out of Sudan’s 18 states from the beginning of the conflict to mid-April of this year, although it warned this was just the tip of the iceberg, with cases going unreported.
The Geneva-based organisation, which works with survivors of sexual violence in conflict-affected regions across the world, is supporting women-led community groups in Adré, Aboutenge and Metché refugee camps bordering Sudan. There, the group aims to expand its support, including mental health, and lay the foundations for future reparations. Dingemans spoke to Geneva Solutions about the toll of the war on women and girls, the lack of international response, and why the conflict should be recognised as a mental health emergency.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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