Female rights activists in Sudan are facing harassment, violence, and other rights abuses, Human Right Watch (HRW) [advocacy site] reported [press release] Wednesday. The report [text] found that women in the region are subjected to abuses including genital mutilation by Sudanese security forces. The report found that while both men and women face repressive tactics when fighting for human rights, women are often subjected to sexual means to engineer their silence:

[T]he incidents described … illustrate how women activists are at risk of abuses their male colleagues are far less likely to experience, from brutal acts of sexual violence to damaging attacks on women activists’ reputation. Some of the incidents also illustrate how security personnel can use the threat of social stigma to intimidate women they subject to sexual violence into remaining silent about the abuse, abandoning their activism or even fleeing the country altogether.

The report called on the governments to investigate and prosecute those security personnel responsible for such abuses.

The human rights situation throughout Sudan has drawn global condemnation of Sudan’s political leaders. Earlier this month South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a lower court’s ruling that the state broke the law by not detaining [JURIST report] Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir despite an International Criminal Court order to do so. Last month a UN human rights expert called for an end [JURIST report] to conflict in Darfur between the Sudanese government and the Sudan Liberation Army/Abdul Wahid, which may have led to human rights abuses and violations of international law.