No Safe Place, Not Even the Camps

Women and girls across war-torn Sudan face relentless danger—whether fleeing active combat or sheltering in displacement camps. A large-scale assessment by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), drawing on 95 focus group discussions across 16 of Sudan's 18 states, found that 76 percent of women aged 25 to 49 feel unsafe both inside and outside displacement sites.

Fabrizia Falcione, UNFPA Country Representative in Sudan, briefed journalists in New York on April 17, stating: "No matter where they are, they feel unsafe—and this is not about a few incidents or a few locations." Markets, water points, firewood collection areas, roads, and streets have all become danger zones in daily life.

Darkness as a Weapon

Falcione singled out the lack of lighting in camps as a critical risk factor. Women—including pregnant women—are forced to walk through completely unlit camps in the middle of the night to reach latrines, making them acutely vulnerable to assault. During field visits across northern states, Khartoum, and the White and Blue Nile regions, she found that most women had "lived under shelling and active conflict for many months" and had been displaced multiple times.

Reporting gender-based violence (GBV) remains exceedingly difficult due to stigma, fear of retaliation, financial barriers, and distance from service providers. "The road to safety is actually not safe at all," she said.

What Women Want: Opportunity, Not Handouts

Three quarters of respondents identified economic empowerment and livelihoods as their top priority. Field missions confirmed that women want to return home. "They ask for three things," Falcione said: "access to basic health services, access to schools for their children, and livelihood opportunities." She was emphatic: "They don't want to be fed. They want opportunities to feed their own families."

Yet funding remains catastrophically short. The protection sector is funded at just 14 percent of identified needs; health at 11 percent. UNFPA currently operates 88 safe spaces for women and girls across Sudan, but chronic underfunding threatens their sustainability.

A Crisis Built Over Decades

Sudan's current catastrophe is the product of decades of structural fragility. After long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted in 2019, the country attempted a civilian-military transitional arrangement. That ended with a coup in October 2021 by SAF commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

The full-scale war erupted in April 2023, when the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—descended from the Janjaweed militias notorious for mass atrocities in Darfur—turned on each other in a struggle for power. Three years on, the front lines remain largely frozen, with the RSF controlling much of Khartoum and western Sudan.

The UN classifies this as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises: roughly 12 million people have been displaced, many fleeing to Egypt, Chad, and Ethiopia. South Korea evacuated its diplomatic staff and nationals from Khartoum in 2023 and continues to contribute to multilateral humanitarian response funds.

Outlook [Expert Analysis]

Analysts assess that near-term conflict resolution is unlikely, as neither the SAF nor the RSF has sufficient incentive to negotiate seriously. Regional mediation efforts—including the African Union process and the Saudi-led Jeddah talks—have yet to yield meaningful results.

Humanitarian funding is likely to remain constrained as donor attention and resources continue to be divided across simultaneous crises in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere. The severe underfunding UNFPA has identified in the protection and health sectors could further erode the capacity to respond to GBV.

Long-term conflict studies from the DRC and Syria suggest that as wars drag on, sexual violence tends to become more systematic and organized—a pattern that may intensify in Sudan. South Korea, drawing on its own history of post-conflict reconstruction, faces growing calls to play a more active role in multilateral conflict mediation and development assistance for Sudan.