“Should I Raise Her or Give Her Up?” The Psychological Struggle of a Sudanese Mother Who Gave Birth After Rape

Moatinoon Follow up
Source: BBC
“I must love her… what else can I do? Should I treat her differently from my other children? A mother loves the children she gives birth to — but her… there is a difference.”

With confusion and inner turmoil, Zainab (a pseudonym) describes her conflicting feelings toward her daughter Maryam (a pseudonym), who had not yet turned one when we met them.

In 2023, Zainab was subjected to gang rape during an attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on the Sudanese city of El Geneina. Weeks later, she discovered she was pregnant. Since then, she has been living with a deep psychological struggle.

“I love her, and she is my responsibility. God gave her to me. But what is in my heart sometimes shows. She is still small, yet she can feel everything,” Zainab says while holding Maryam in her arms.

“The RSF elements came to our neighborhood. I was at home with my family when they abducted me and took me to a nearby area. Four men wearing RSF uniforms and carrying weapons blindfolded me and ordered me not to cry or speak. They tied me up and committed horrific acts against me. What they did was terrifying. They left me at the brink of death.”

As Zainab recalls the horrors she endured, her words are filled with pain and grief. Her daughter interrupts her by crying, prompting Zainab to breastfeed her immediately.

“Women’s bodies have become a battlefield”
During the war in Sudan, rape and sexual violence have been systematically used as weapons of war, according to Anna Mutavati, Regional Director of UN Women. “Women’s bodies have become a battlefield,” Mutavati says.

United Nations organizations and the UN Fact-Finding Mission accuse the warring parties in Sudan of committing a horrifying series of human rights violations, stating that the Sudanese army, the Rapid Support Forces, and their allies are responsible for widespread abuses, including targeting civilians through rape and other forms of sexual violence.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented 368 incidents of sexual violence from the outbreak of the war in Sudan until the end of May 2025, affecting at least 521 victims.

More than half of these cases involved rape or gang rape, often targeting displaced women and girls. The Office attributed over 70 percent of the cases to the Rapid Support Forces.

According to the UN, these figures represent only a small fraction of the real scale of the problem, as hundreds of cases go unreported due to social stigma, fear of retaliation, and the collapse of medical and legal systems in some areas.

Psychological trauma and social stigma
At the Sudan–Chad border, Zainab and Maryam live in a camp for Sudanese refugees. Zainab arrived at the camp with her other children. After her arrival, her menstrual cycle was delayed, and she initially thought it was due to the beating she had endured. But after experiencing fatigue, illness, and loss of appetite, she went to the hospital, where she discovered she was pregnant.

“When they told me I was pregnant, I didn’t know what to do. Should I kill myself? Leave the area? Or abandon the fetus? The news brought back the memory of what happened. I wanted to kill myself, but God gave me patience.”

Zainab’s husband died before the war, and being a single mother posed a significant social challenge for her. “Everyone kept asking where this pregnancy came from, and whether I had conceived in El Geneina because of the war,” she recalls.

“If I live among people, they will talk about me. That’s why I don’t mix with the community here or visit neighbors. If I see someone laughing, I think they are laughing at me. I don’t feel comfortable inside.”

Abortion was the first option Zainab considered, but the hospital refused because the pregnancy had exceeded four months. After Maryam was born, Zainab wanted to put her up for adoption, but everyone around her advised her to abandon the idea and raise her daughter alongside her other children.

An internal psychological struggle
Among those who supported Zainab during her ordeal was Amina, whom she met at the refugee camp in Chad. Amina’s story is strikingly similar. She was also abducted from El Geneina and raped by six RSF members, according to her account, and later discovered she was pregnant.

“I wished I had been killed by a shell instead of being raped and carrying in my womb the child of one of the Janjaweed (RSF). I wished the shell had killed me and torn me apart,” Amina says.

Amina did not immediately tell her husband about the pregnancy. He discovered it after finding a hospital paper. “He asked me how I could be pregnant when we had not met since the beginning of the war. He kept talking for a long time, but I couldn’t tell him.”

A few months later, Amina miscarried, which brought her a sense of psychological relief. “It felt good. I became very relieved. What happened was not by my will, and he (the fetus’s father) is not from my tribe. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me. But if I had aborted the fetus myself, that would have meant committing a sin.”

A community of survivors
In one of the largest refugee camps on the Sudan–Chad border, we saw thousands of displaced people, most of them women and children, living in dire humanitarian conditions. There is not enough food, no adequate medical care, no money, and no work.

We visited a cluster of tents in the middle of the camp bearing a sign reading “Safe Space for Women and Girls.” There, we met several survivors who had been raped or subjected to sexual violence in El Geneina and listened to their testimonies.

The details of their experiences differ, but they all face the same pain endured by Zainab and Amina, and they support one another in similar ways. One woman breaks down in tears while speaking to us, and another immediately rushes to comfort her.

Some of them know the identity of their attackers, but they do not know how to hold them accountable.

The volunteers running the safe space are themselves victims of the war. Many have lost brothers or husbands. From time to time, they organize communal kitchens, handicraft workshops, and traditional arts events.

“If we don’t reduce the psychological impact of trauma on our community, we will face bigger problems,” says Zahra Adam, the center’s director. “A survivor may commit suicide, lose her sanity, or fall into other serious problems.”

“What if my daughter finds out?”
Amina’s presence beside Zainab appears to be a lifeline. She not only shares the painful experience but also helps her confront difficult questions, amid an almost complete absence of specialized psychological support for rape survivors.

This becomes evident when Zainab is asked whether she would tell Maryam what happened when she grows up. She is unable to answer directly and redirects the question to me. I, too, am unable to respond, and silence fills the moment. Amina then intervenes firmly:

“You are forced to tell her. She is your daughter, whether she was conceived lawfully or unlawfully. She will want to study and work, and without documents she won’t be able to do anything.”

Zainab listens silently to Amina’s advice without commenting. When asked what goes through her mind when she looks at her daughter, she says:
“The moment I see her, I remember everything that happened there (in El Geneina), and I can’t treat her the same as my other children.”

Maryam interrupts again with crying. Zainab quickly embraces her and breastfeeds her, her eyes filled with tears and a sigh that conceals a heavy inner pain and unresolved psychological struggle.