Press pack

Sudan: the war on women and girls.

DAR Talks is the platform of Dar al-Salam Wadaah, who writes as DAR — a Sudanese woman exiled in France who documents what this war has done to women, and asks governments to act on a record that already exists.

[email protected] · English, French, Arabic · Paris, CET

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This page is the press pack. There is no embargo. Everything on it is cleared for publication, and nothing on it identifies a survivor.

How to use this page

You are probably three stories deep already and four days from a Security Council deadline. So this is a menu, not a briefing.

What you can publish this month lists six pieces you can commission today, and says exactly what we hand over and what you do yourself. Everything after that is drop-in: a diary, the sourced record with a fact box written to be lifted whole, quotes already cleared, two finished essays free to republish, three stories we do not believe anyone has reported, bios at four lengths, and the assets.

If you have two minutes: read the menu, then the fact box.

What you can publish this month

Pick a row. Everything in the We give you column exists now and is on this page or one email away.

A. Profile or interview with DAR

The pitch, in fifty words. In April 2023 she was a postgraduate student in Al-Gezira, preparing a master's in animal nutrition. Her family's roots are in Darfur, which was reason enough to be called Janjaweed and hunted. She spent more than a year in flight. She now runs a trilingual archive of what this war has done to Sudanese women, from France.

Why now. She is speaking under her own name, in three languages, in the six weeks that contain the Human Rights Council session, the Security Council's sanctions deadline and the first anniversary of the fall of El Fasher. The institutions are in one place. So is she.

Suggested angles, yours to change: the student activist who became an archivist; what a Sudanese woman in exile owes the women who could not leave; who counts the women — the gap between the casualty figures and the missing; the desk, not the checkpoint, as the place where a war decides who lives.

Formats. Sit-down interview in English, French or Arabic. Remote video or in person in Paris. Written Q&A within one working day if that is what your slot needs. Everything on the record unless you ask for background first.

B. News: the sanctions measures lapse on 12 September

Resolution 2791 (2025) renewed the 1591 arms embargo, asset freezes and travel bans only until 12 September 2026. The Panel of Experts mandate runs a month longer, to 12 October 2026. If the Council does not act, the measures expire — in the same year a UN Fact-Finding Mission found the takeover of El Fasher bore the hallmarks of genocide, and the UN Human Rights Office published its first full report on sexual violence in this war.

This is a dated, checkable news peg with a deadline attached, and it is under-covered. DAR will give you comment the same day, in three languages, and a line on either outcome — renewal or lapse — before the vote if that helps you file early.

Source: Resolution 2791 (2025), UN Security Council.

C. Op-ed signed by DAR

800 words, written to your brief, exclusive in your market, delivered within 72 hours of commission, in English, French or Arabic. Tell us the angle and the slot date. If you would rather see a draft first, say so and we will send one on spec.

Standing subjects she can carry: the sanctions decision; what documentation is for when nobody acts on it; the women who are never counted because they disappeared rather than died; exile as a debt rather than a qualification.

D. Republish an essay, free

Two finished essays by DAR are cleared for republication in full, at no cost, in English and in Arabic. They are hers, they are already published, and they need nothing from you but a credit line. Full text, word counts and terms are under Free to republish.

E. Your own investigation

Three stories nobody has reported sets out three patterns that recur across the accounts DAR holds and that we cannot find reported anywhere in the international record: civilians sorted by ethnicity at checkpoints, displacement registration used as a filter, and aid released in exchange for sex. For each one we give you the pattern, why it matters legally, what we can hand over, and — this is the part that matters — how to stand it up independently of us.

F. Explainer, fact box, or social package

If the story is not yours to write this week but you want something on the page or the feed: the fact box below is written to be lifted whole, the quote-card copy is written to be set, and the alt text is already drafted.

The diary to 31 October

Four dated moments, and what we will be doing on each. Plan against it.

What we are asking governments for

Three asks. Each is measurable, each is available to bodies that already exist, and none requires a new institution or a new law. If you are writing a news piece, this is the what should happen paragraph.

1. Renew the 1591 sanctions regime, and add designations for named commanders on both sides, applying the sexual violence criterion already written into it.
2. Fund independent documentation, including the UN Fact-Finding Mission, so that the evidence outlives the war.
3. Guarantee safe passage and humanitarian access, and make non-discriminatory displacement registration a condition of donor support.

The record

Every figure below is attributed and linked. You can check all of it without us. Where sources disagree, we say so and say why.

Drop-in fact box

SUDAN: THE WAR ON WOMEN AND GIRLS — verified figures, as of August 2026

Sources: UN Human Rights Office, 23 June 2026; UN and ACHPR-AU Fact-Finding Missions joint statement, 13 April 2026; UNICEF Humanitarian Action for Children 2026 and UN OCHA Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026; UN News, May 2026; UN Security Council resolution 2791 (2025). Compiled by DAR Talks — dar-talks.com

Every figure, with its primary source

Conflict-related sexual violence

• The UN Human Rights Office verified 546 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence in 16 of Sudan's 18 states, from 15 April 2023 to mid-April 2026.
• At least 838 victims: 539 women, 284 girls, 8 men and 7 boys.
• Close to a quarter of the verified incidents involved gang rape.
• The documented forms include rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, forced prostitution, sexual torture, and trafficking for the purpose of sexual violence.
• Most verified incidents were attributed to men in Rapid Support Forces uniforms, affiliated fighters and allied militias. Incidents were also attributed to the Sudanese Armed Forces, affiliated security actors, the Joint Forces and other armed groups.
• In Darfur, the report finds reasonable grounds to believe some acts may amount to crimes against humanity.
• The Office itself describes the verified figures as the tip of the iceberg, because under-reporting is constant.

Sources: OHCHR, UN report documents widespread and brutal use of sexual violence in Sudan, 23 June 2026; OHCHR feature, Sexual violence as a weapon of war in Sudan's three-year conflict, June 2026.

Displacement

• More than 8.6 million people internally displaced and more than 4 million refugees, as of early March 2026.

Source: UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan and ACHPR-AU Joint Fact-Finding Mission, joint statement on the third anniversary of the conflict, 13 April 2026.

Which number to use. You will see higher figures elsewhere, including around 11 million internally displaced for April 2026. The methods and the cut-off dates differ. If you need one number, use the joint Fact-Finding Mission figure and date it. What is not in dispute is that this is the largest displacement crisis in the world.

Hunger

• Around 21 million people, close to half the population, face high levels of acute food insecurity in 2026.
• More than 20 areas are in famine or at risk of famine.
• Acute malnutrition exceeds 30 per cent in parts of Darfur and Kordofan — above the IPC Phase 5 famine threshold.

Sources: UNICEF, Humanitarian Action for Children — Sudan 2026; UN OCHA, Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026, April 2026.

The gap between the need and the response

• Sudan's 2026 humanitarian plan was about 20 per cent funded as of April 2026.
• Drone attacks caused more than 80 per cent of civilian deaths in the first four months of 2026, killing at least 880 people, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Source: UN News, Armed drones leading cause of civilian death in Sudan war: UN rights chief, May 2026.

El Fasher

The RSF assault on El Fasher on 26 and 27 October 2025 was found by the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan to bear the hallmarks of genocide against the Zaghawa and Fur communities. The Mission's report, A/HRC/61/77, was issued in February 2026; in July 2026 the Mission stated that acts carried out in El Fasher constitute distinct markers of genocide.

This finding concerns the RSF. Both the RSF and the SAF have been documented by the Human Rights Office, the Fact-Finding Mission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as responsible for war crimes against civilians, including attacks on populated areas and sexual violence.

Sources: OHCHR, A/HRC/61/77 — Sudan: Hallmarks of Genocide in El-Fasher; OHCHR, El Fasher findings and the urgent inquiry into El Obeid, 9 July 2026.

The sanctions timetable

Resolution 2791 (2025) renewed the 1591 measures — arms embargo, asset freezes, travel bans — until 12 September 2026, and extended the Panel of Experts mandate until 12 October 2026.

Source: UN Security Council, S/RES/2791 (2025).

Incident-level data

For incident-level claims — what happened, where, on what date, with what confidence — the canonical open-source database is The Sudan Record, a collaborator. It is confidence-scored, mapped, and each incident carries its own citations, so you can walk the chain to the primary source. Cite it as a peer organisation, not as a primary source, and prefer the deepest citation available.

The wider working library, annotated, is at Resources. Ask and we will send the full source list for this page as a one-page PDF.

Quotes cleared for use

All of these are attributable to Dar al-Salam Wadaah, founder of DAR Talks, and cleared for direct quotation without asking us first. If you need one shaped to your angle, write and we will send it the same day, in English, French or Arabic.

The signature line of the whole project, if you want a closing quote:

Free to republish

Two finished essays by DAR are cleared for republication in full, at no cost. They are written, edited and already published. Take one.

Our mother Maryuma… When the question about a woman becomes a question about an entire homeland One elderly woman in Al-Gezira became a story the whole country argued over. The harder question is the one nobody is counting: where are the Sudanese women who have disappeared? Written for the reader who has seen the clip and not the consequence. 1,270 words · English and Arabic, both original · French on request · published 27 August 2026.

When one party to the war calls for dialogue: who will dialogue with Al-Burhan? The question is not whether Sudan needs dialogue. It is who decides who sits at the table, and whether a process designed by one party to the war can return power to the people. A political essay, non-partisan, and unusually direct. 1,385 words · English and Arabic, both original · French on request · published 21 August 2026.

Terms

• Free, worldwide, in print and online. No fee, no licence to sign.
• Republish in full. You may change the headline and the standfirst; please do not cut or edit the body without asking. We answer edit requests the same day.
• Credit line, at the top or the foot: "This essay first appeared on DAR Talks (dar-talks.com) and is republished with permission."
• Byline: Dar al-Salam Wadaah. Online, please link to the original.
• Tell us where it ran, so we can list it.

Three stories nobody has reported

The international reporting is strong on what armed men did. It is thin on what the systems around them did. Three patterns recur across the accounts DAR holds, and we cannot find them documented anywhere else. Everything below has had its identifying detail removed. DAR can brief you on any of them, on the record.

Each one ends with a route to stand the story up independently of us. We would rather you did not have to take our word for it.

One. Civilians sorted by ethnicity at the checkpoint

The pattern. Women from western Sudan are stopped, searched and accused because of what their identity card says about where they are from. They are called Janjaweed. They are robbed of money, phones, and the food they were carrying for their children. This happens across journeys that cross several states and last months, at checkpoints held by more than one armed actor.

Why it matters. This is not opportunistic looting. It is civilians being sorted by ethnicity at the moment they flee — the foundation of a persecution case — and it is being recorded as theft.

What we give you. De-identified case summaries with the pattern intact and the person removed; an on-the-record interview with DAR; help matching accounts against the published UN and NGO reporting; introductions to partner organisations who can speak to their own documentation.

How to verify it without us. Ask the UN Fact-Finding Mission and the Human Rights Office directly whether identity-document-based screening at checkpoints falls within their identity-based-targeting findings, and how they classify it. Cross-check the routes against incident records held by The Sudan Record and ACLED. Ask humanitarian agencies working the flight corridors what arriving families report losing, and how it is logged. The gap you are looking for is between what happens and the category it gets recorded under.

What we cannot give you. Names, photographs, ages, home districts, workplaces, schools or current locations of any survivor.

Two. Registration used as a filter

The pattern. In some states, people displaced from Darfur were refused registration as internally displaced persons because of where they came from, while the same centres registered people displaced from Khartoum. Without that registration, treatment and medicine cost the full price. Families with a seriously ill member paid what they did not have, or went without.

Why it matters. A clerk at a desk, with a form, decided who would be treated. In DAR's words: that decision leaves records. It is provable. And we have not seen it reported once.

What we give you. A briefing on the pattern, on the record, including which states it recurs in; introductions to partner organisations; help matching what you find against the published record.

How to verify it without us. Registration of internally displaced people runs through state authorities and humanitarian partners, and it generates paperwork. Ask the agencies that support registration — UNHCR, IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix, and the humanitarian country team — what the eligibility criteria are on paper, who applies them, and whether registration data is disaggregated by area of origin. Then ask whether refusal rates differ by origin. A discrepancy that shows up in two independent datasets is a story on its own.

What we cannot give you. Case files, and any confirmation or denial that a named person appears in our records. We will not answer that question either way.

Three. Aid released in exchange for sex

The pattern. At displacement sites where armed actors controlled distribution, women and girls were told that supplies and medicine would come to them if they went upstairs. Some of them were children. When families named the men responsible, the families were threatened.

Why it matters. This falls between two mandates — sexual violence and humanitarian access — and so it falls through. It also means the relief system itself became the instrument.

What we give you. A briefing on the pattern, on the record; de-identified summaries; introductions to partners working on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse.

How to verify it without us. Every humanitarian agency operating in Sudan is required to run a protection-from-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse reporting line and to log allegations. Ask the humanitarian country team, the protection cluster, and individual agencies how many allegations involving distribution at sites under armed control have been logged since 2023, what happened to them, and what the referral pathway is when the alleged perpetrator is an armed actor rather than an aid worker. The answer — including a refusal to answer — is reportable.

What we cannot give you. Contact with women still inside Sudan, or in a first country of asylum where their status is unresolved; and second-hand accounts of violations against identifiable children.

And this

Women who document these things are threatened for documenting them. One woman in DAR's records filed a formal complaint and was told by security officers that she and the girls with her would be killed if she made it public. She was pregnant when they said it.

That is why How we work with testimony reads the way it does. It is not institutional caution. It is the specific thing that was said to a specific woman.

The person: DAR

Everything in this section is already published by her, under her own name, at Who I am. It is yours to use.

Name, and how to render it

Chronology — dated, publishable

What you may publish about her

• Her full name, the name she writes under, and her photograph.
• Everything in the chronology above, including her detentions before the war and her academic background.
• That she is married, a mother, and has buried one of her children. She has published this herself. It is hers to have written; please ask her before you build a paragraph on it.
• That she is in France.

What you may not publish

• The town, department or region of France where she lives. "In France", or "in exile in France", is the limit.
• The names, ages, schools or images of her children or her husband.
• The route she took out of Sudan in geographic detail, the dates of individual crossings, or the names of anyone who helped her.
• Any address, venue or travel plan before the event has happened.

This is not media management. Women who document this war have been told to their faces that they will be killed for it. See How we work with testimony.

Ready sidebar — DAR in her own words, 250 words

Cleared for reproduction as a boxed sidebar with the credit line beneath it.

I am Dar al-Salam Wadaah. I write as DAR. I am a Sudanese woman. I grew up in a rural part of central Sudan and studied there too, at the University of Aljazeera, where I graduated in animal production and, in 2023, was preparing for a master's in animal nutrition. My family's roots are in the west, in Darfur — which, once the war came, was reason enough for us to be called Janjaweed and hunted.

Before the war I was a civil-society activist. As a student I helped lead the movement against the former regime; I served in the student union, and I was detained more than four times for it. I am married and a mother, and I have had to bury one of my children.

The war reached my home on 15 April 2023. The next morning I watched air raids fall beside our neighbourhood, and I helped bury the dead before the fighting forced us out. What followed was more than a year of flight — across Sudan and finally out of it — through checkpoints and detentions, robberies, and losses I still carry.

I am in France now. I speak here because the women still in Sudan often cannot yet speak safely. This site is mine — it carries their witness alongside my own until they can carry it themselves.

In Arabic, dār means house, home, dwelling. The word is also the root of Darfur — the home of the Fur people. Naming this platform DAR Talks is a small claim: that the home I was forced to leave is still mine.

— Dar al-Salam Wadaah writes as DAR and founded DAR Talks (dar-talks.com), a trilingual platform documenting the war's effect on Sudanese women.

Bios, boilerplate and style

Copy and paste. All four lengths are cleared. French and Arabic versions of each are available on request, the same day.

25 words — for a caption or a panel line

Dar al-Salam Wadaah, who writes as DAR, is a Sudanese woman exiled in France. She documents what the war on Sudan has done to women and girls.

50 words — for a byline or contributor note

Dar al-Salam Wadaah writes as DAR. A Sudanese woman exiled in France, she founded DAR Talks, a trilingual platform that gathers first-hand accounts from Sudanese women and checks them against the published international record. She works with the Darfur Women Action Group, the SIHA Network and ACJPS.

100 words — for a profile standfirst or a programme note

Dar al-Salam Wadaah, who writes as DAR, is a Sudanese woman exiled in France. Before the war she was a student activist in central Sudan, detained more than four times, and was preparing a master's degree when the fighting reached her home on 15 April 2023. After more than a year in flight she founded DAR Talks, a platform in English, French and Arabic that gathers first-hand accounts from Sudanese women and checks them against the published UN and NGO record. She is non-partisan between Sudan's two armies and asks governments to act on evidence that already exists.

300 words — for a press release, a festival programme or an award submission

Dar al-Salam Wadaah — she writes as DAR — is a Sudanese woman living in exile in France, and the founder of DAR Talks, a trilingual documentation and advocacy platform on the war in Sudan.

She grew up in rural central Sudan and studied at the University of Aljazeera, graduating in animal production. As a student she helped lead the movement against the former regime, served in the student union, and was detained more than four times. In early 2023 she was preparing a master's in animal nutrition. Her family's roots are in Darfur, in the west — which, once the war began, was reason enough for them to be accused of being Janjaweed and hunted.

The war reached her home on 15 April 2023. She helped bury the dead in her neighbourhood before the fighting forced her family out, and spent more than a year in flight across Sudan and out of it, through checkpoints, detentions and robberies. She is married, a mother, and has buried one of her children.

DAR Talks does two things. It gathers first-hand accounts from Sudanese women and checks them against the published international record — the UN Human Rights Office, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, MSF. And it asks governments to act on what that record already shows: renew and enforce the 1591 sanctions regime, fund independent documentation so the evidence outlives the war, and guarantee safe passage and non-discriminatory humanitarian access.

DAR Talks is non-partisan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Both have been credibly accused of grave crimes against civilians, and the platform holds them to the same standard. It works in coordination with the Darfur Women Action Group, the SIHA Network and ACJPS. It publishes in English, French and Arabic at dar-talks.com.

Boilerplate — the paragraph at the end of a press release

DAR Talks is a trilingual documentation and advocacy platform on the war in Sudan and its effect on women and girls, founded by Dar al-Salam Wadaah, a Sudanese woman exiled in France. It publishes in English, French and Arabic at dar-talks.com, and is non-partisan between the parties to the conflict. Press: [email protected].

Style

Images and social copy

Alt text is drafted for every image — please use it. Write to [email protected] for print-resolution files and the credit line to run with them.

We do not distribute images of survivors, in any form, to any outlet. If your piece needs imagery beyond the portrait, we can supply the platform's own illustrations.

Quote cards — copy, ready to set

Three cards, 1080 × 1080. The copy is final; set them in your house style, or ask us and we will send them as PNGs.

Suggested social copy, if you post the piece

Yours to change. Written to be posted from an outlet account, not ours.

Short (X / Bluesky). The UN has verified 546 incidents of sexual violence in Sudan's war, affecting at least 838 people. It calls that the tip of the iceberg. Dar al-Salam Wadaah, who fled her home in Sudan in April 2023, is documenting what the record still misses. [link]

Medium (LinkedIn / Facebook). On 12 September, the UN Security Council's sanctions measures on Sudan expire unless they are renewed. Dar al-Salam Wadaah — a Sudanese woman who helped bury the dead in her neighbourhood, then fled for more than a year, and who now documents this war from exile in France — has a question for the governments deciding: what is the evidence for, if not this? [link]

Instagram caption. "I got out. That is the only difference between me and the women in these files. It is not a qualification. It is a debt." — Dar al-Salam Wadaah, founder of DAR Talks, on documenting the war on Sudan from exile. Full interview at the link in bio.

How we work with testimony

We want to help you tell this story. We will be direct about where the limits are, because those limits are what allow the women to keep talking to us at all. They apply to every outlet equally, including the ones we would most like to be in.

If a woman does decide to speak

Some of the women we work with may choose to speak publicly, in their own time. When that happens, these conditions apply, and we will ask you to confirm them in writing beforehand.

• Pseudonym only. No family name. No village, camp or neighbourhood.
• No face. Audio may need altering, and we will tell you if it does.
• She reviews her quotes in Arabic before publication.
• She can withdraw at any point up to publication, without giving a reason, and we will support that decision.
• No live broadcast. No publication of the date or place of the interview.

Some of these women have been told, to their faces, that they will be killed for talking. A mistake here is not something you correct in the next edition. Please handle it the way you would handle a source in an organised crime investigation — and if that is not workable for your commission, tell us now and we will find another way to be useful to you.

Working with us

What we will not do

• We will not connect you to survivors for interview. Survivor identities, locations, and contact details are never shared — not with journalists, not with researchers, not on request. This is not a negotiating position. See How We Document.
• We will not confirm unsourced incident claims. If we have not documented it, we will say we have not documented it.
• We will not take a side between the SAF and the RSF. Both have been credibly accused of war crimes against Sudanese women. Our position is anti-violence-against-women and pro-accountability, applied without favour. Quotes that frame DAR Talks as aligned with either party are inaccurate; see DT-2026-003.

Other citable material on this site

• Statements & reports — every public statement, dated, ref-numbered, downloadable as PDF, each with pre-formatted APA, Chicago and MLA citations and a permalink.
• How We Document — the full methodology, also as a PDF.
• What is happening in Sudan — the sourced background record.
• Resources — the annotated library of documents we cite most.

Other inboxes

Survivors seeking support should not use these addresses. That channel is separate, operated by trained intake workers, and reachable through Contact.