‘If they had killed me, it would have been better’

This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual violence, including against minors. Some readers may find this disturbing.

Adre, Chad – Islam’s* life was changed forever by an air strike in November 2023.

The young woman from el-Geneina, Sudan, had been preparing for her exams when a strike landed directly on her family’s home.

Now, sitting in one of the countless straw structures in a sprawling refugee camp in Adre just over the border in eastern Chad, Islam, 22, sobs as she recalls what happened to her.

After she and her family survived the air strike, she was kidnapped by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that has been fighting Sudan’s army for two years. They threatened to kill her family if she did not submit to their demands.

“If they had killed me, it would have been better than what they did to me,” she says, tears staining her pink hijab.

The fighters took Islam to a remote village, confined her and raped her repeatedly over two days.

“One would stay for two or three hours. … Then his other friend would come,” she says.

“I couldn’t breathe,” she adds, explaining how the trauma triggered chronic asthma, something she didn't have before the attack.

“When I tried to protect myself, they started beating me.”

After two days, the men took her back, but by then, her home had been looted, and everyone and everything was gone. She missed her brothers and sisters.

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.

According to officials from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), more than 4,000 cases of GBV were recorded in Chad in 2024, a number that includes attacks on both Sudanese refugees and local populations.

Security forces say there are four policemen stationed at each gate along the Adre camp perimeter, and Dillo Borgo, Assoungha Department prefect in charge of security for Adre, claims that sexual violence is not a problem there. He tells Al Jazeera that security agents had never heard of soldiers or police sexually assaulting or raping women in the area.

“At the moment, the town is safe and stable,” he says.

One local community leader says she knows of at least a dozen cases of women and girls being raped by Chadian police forces in and outside the camp. Shame and fear of retribution and collective punishment keep many from speaking out.

Aid workers say it’s not uncommon for women and girls who have fled Sudan to be subjected to violence a second or even third time after they’ve reached the presumed safety of Chad.

“The psychological impact is enormous, … especially if you’ve arrived and you are hoping for stability. … Then you are in constant fear,” says Stephanie Loiseau, a mental health delegate working in Adre for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“It’s not just about the violence itself. It’s about losing hope again,” she says, noting that losing hope in finding stability is a trauma in itself.

Roua*, 18, misses her home in el-Geneina, where luscious mangoes grew in her small garden.

The RSF burned down her home in June 2023.

“They burned our whole village,” she says. Two of her brothers, an uncle and three neighbours were killed in the attack.

Roua tried to escape on foot, but she and eight of her school friends were kidnapped by RSF fighters. All of them were raped.

“They held us for two days. Two of them even died in that place from the rapes,” she says, her eyes watering as she remembers her lost friends.

“I felt helpless. I wished I would die at that moment.”

Two years on, the horror still lingers.

“I still can’t sit still for a long time,” she says.

Roua's face is unanimated as she speaks, her hand resting on the baby she is breastfeeding. The child’s father is a Chadian police officer she met at the market in Adre after fleeing across the border with most of her family.

They dated a few times, and at first, she believed he cared for her.

“He told me: ‘I like you. I want you,’” she says, trailing off as footsteps approach. Even within the privacy of a small tent, such testimonies are shared with trepidation.

“He wanted to have sex with me, … and I refused,” she says, recalling her second interaction with him in his home.

“He grabbed me and slammed me down on the floor,” she says, explaining how she was then raped.

Roua is no longer in contact with her rapist.

Sexual abuse during humanitarian crises and in refugee camps is not uncommon.

“For some young girls, it is sex for survival,” Loiseau says. At the Maison d’étoile, the Red Cross’s House of Stars in Adre, she and her team offer discreet psychological support.

“They tell us people invite them to do laundry or other work, … but at the end, they don’t get paid - they get raped. They get violated. There is nothing they can do about it,” she says, referring to refugees who often go to work for locals in Adre.

Aid workers and community leaders have raised concerns about the number of pregnancies in the camp, especially given the absence of many women’s husbands.

“When you dig, … you find out it wasn’t consensual,” Loiseau says.

Staring into the distance, Roua monotonously rocks little nine-month-old Awa. She describes how the rape angered her father and humiliated her, rupturing her family. She says another friend - also pregnant after being raped by a Chadian police officer - returned to Sudan out of shame.

“Inside, I’m broken. Sometimes, I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I don’t have the desire to talk to people. … I feel like I’ve changed.”

Despite Borgo’s claims that things are under control, refugees say violence is on the rise in the camp. One gang called The Colombians has become infamous for causing trouble, so much so that women say they try not to leave their homes after dusk and make sure they are out of the market by 6pm.

According to Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, incidents of sexual violence have been reported in and near the camp.

“When women leave the camp to collect firewood or water, they may be targeted,” says Dr Assoumana Halarou, MSF’s medical coordinator in Chad.

Hanan, a woman sitting in UNICEF’s listening tent, became one of those victims earlier in the day, when she was raped while collecting firewood.

Psychological support is available, but Hanan is desperate for medical care instead.

“I have six children. I am the wife and the husband. … If I have another child, how do I feed him?” she asks while berating herself for her “bad luck”.

“Many women in the camps are single mothers or heads of households living in precarious conditions, which can expose the most vulnerable to abuse,” Halarou says.

For Lacham*, 35, living without her close family has not only brought loneliness but danger too.

She lived peacefully in Nyala in southwestern Sudan with her husband and their children until the RSF came on horses in June 2023 and took her husband away.

She fled to Adre with her five children, walking for seven hours from el-Geneina, but she has returned to Sudan twice to search for her husband.

“I don’t have any relatives here. Nobody from my tribe, nobody from my family.”

Like others in the close quarters of the refugee camp, Lacham tried to foster a sense of community. Her neighbours became friends, sharing meals, childcare and chores - until things took a dark turn.

“If my husband were here - or alive - he would never have let this happen to my daughter,” she says.

She explains how one day in March, she and her children went to their neighbours’ home to spend the afternoon together and have dinner together during Eid al-Fitr.

While dinner preparations were under way, she stepped out of the shelter to rinse out a blanket.

From outside the straw shelter, she heard a sound that froze her blood. “Why, Mama? Why?” screamed her three-year-old daughter, Helwa*.

Lacham ran back in to find her male neighbour raping her daughter.

She describes how she had to pull the man off Helwa.

She immediately fled the camp, carrying her screaming daughter to the hospital. The toddler’s clothes were soaked in blood.

“She was so traumatised. She was limp.”

As her mother tells the story, Helwa begins to cry, muttering: “No, no, no,” in Arabic when she hears the perpetrator’s name. She recoils and hides in her mother’s arms.

“If we ever talk about it, … she remembers,” Lacham says.

“She’s always afraid.”

Lacham says Helwa now hates to ever be without her underwear, even when using the bathroom.

“She screams: ‘He will make me bleed!’” Lacham says.

Mental health workers describe symptoms such as nightmares, insomnia and behavioural changes - signs of regression when trauma occurs in children so young.

The ICRC’s Loiseau explains that she’s had to refer children for treatment after sexual assaults. “We even had to fly a 12-year-old to N'Djamena because her condition was so severe,” she says.

Local community leader Isa Dara Salama, herself a refugee from el-Geneina, says she is concerned by the rising sexual violence.

“We conduct meetings with women to understand their needs. … Rape is what I see most often,” she says, noting that the abuse comes from all sides: earlier refugee arrivals, new arrivals, members of the host community.

In 2024, the UN reported a 288 percent increase in demand for lifesaving support for rape and sexual violence survivors in eastern Chad. UNFPA deployed a specialist team in May to areas with new arrivals to help.

In the camps, refugees have also set up their own safe spaces for women with the support of humanitarian organisations, providing essential services like medical, psychological and legal support.

According to Salama, about a year ago, more women started to come forward.

The raping of children, she says, is a new phenomenon.

Helwa was treated at Adre Hospital, and Lacham, like others, has received some psychosocial and financial support from aid groups, including the Red Cross, the Danish Refugee Council and the local community.

But funding cuts are paralysing the response in eastern Chad. According to UN data, only 20 percent of the money needed to support refugees in Chad this year has been received. In April, the UNHCR and its partners announced they had been forced to close or scale back health, education and other crucial programmes due to funding shortfalls.

Along the border, aid workers describe a bleak picture: fewer organisations on the ground, escalating need and rising strain on already overwhelmed medical and mental health services. The UNHCR has had 30 percent of its funding cut for eastern Chad.

For Lacham, aid is not enough.

She reported her daughter’s attack to the police, and the man who raped her daughter was taken in for questioning by a community leader. But just hours later, she saw him walking freely through the camp.

She believes he is protected by The Colombians, the shadowy Sudanese gang known for drugs, robbery and alcohol.

Local authorities have not responded to Al Jazeera’s questions about the case.

While Borgo denies there’s a problem with sexual assault, other Chadian officials say they are working to crack down on gang-related crimes in the camp.

In May, the International Federation for Human Rights highlighted the urgent need for accountability and justice for the victims of the ongoing conflict in Sudan.

In Adre, as hope wanes amid rising violence and dwindling aid, justice is glaringly absent. Survivors are faced with a lethal combination of inadequate legal pathways, funding cuts to protection services, and a lack of access to local and regional judicial systems.

With no accountability in sight, women like Roua, Islam and Lacham are left to navigate the trauma far from home and still living in fear.

“Money is no help. … I want justice,” Lacham cries as she cradles a crying Helwa.

* Islam, Hanan, Helwa, Lacham and Roua are pseudonyms . They asked that their real names not be used for fear of reprisals.