An Economy of Abduction: Ransom, Enslavement and Trafficking

The RSF has built a systematic practice of abducting civilians for ransom — including sexual violence during captivity — with such incidents rising nearly 195% since the war began. Investigators and rights groups describe abduction sites as operating under 'slave-like conditions,' with women and girls sold at brothels for as little as $10.

A 38-year-old woman fleeing El Fasher in September 2025, weeks before its capture, was ambushed with her family by RSF fighters, stripped, bound, and driven to an abandoned desert village where she and four other women and teenage girls were held naked and raped repeatedly by different men over two days.

Her captors demanded $1,500 via a phone they gave her. After she transferred her $200 in savings, they tortured her -- pressing a metal object on her fingernails -- during a call with her cousin to extract more money. She was eventually released for about $700.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded a nearly 195% increase in ransom incidents, including a smaller number involving sexual assault, from the start of the war to May, with the majority of perpetrators identified as RSF fighters. Analysts expect ransoms to increase further as the RSF fragments following high-level defections.

Widespread kidnapping and enforced disappearance have been reported across Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan states; the conditions of RSF-controlled abduction sites are described by the UN as "inhuman, degrading, slave-like." A Sudanese victims' group documented 800 civilian disappearances, though the true number is considered far higher and widely reported only via social media.

In Darfur specifically, the UN expressed alarm in November 2023 over women and girls held in "slave-like conditions" under RSF control: victims were abducted, held for days, repeatedly raped during detention, and in some cases sold at brothels for as little as $10 to be held as sex slaves. Further reports describe militia fighters forcing Masalit individuals into domestic servitude.

RSF fighters have been documented using explicit racial slurs -- "nuba" (non-Arabs) and "nawab" (slave) -- while committing sexual violence, at times asking victims if they are Masalit before subjecting them to torture and rape. Masalit human rights defenders reporting on the RSF on social media were specifically targeted for rape as retaliation.

Cases such as "Hassan" and "Sadya," documented in the account of the Zamzam camp assault, meet the Palermo Protocol's definitional elements of human trafficking: action (abduction or transport), means (force, coercion, abuse of power), and purpose (exploitation, including slavery-like practices) -- with the means element not required for victims under 18.

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