By: Rayan Mukhtar

This essay seeks to answer the question: how is digital violence being leveraged as a tool to silence women in Sudan during the current war, and what are the psychological and social impacts of this?

This investigation falls within the analysis of Online gender-based digital violence (OGBV), a form of violence perpetrated through digital media that targets women and girls specifically because of their gender. It includes sexual threats, defamation, blackmail, digital surveillance, and the leaking of personal information.

This form of violence differs from general digital violence in that it does not merely target opinions, but seeks to police women’s bodies, punish their presence in the public sphere, and reproduce patriarchal power relations through technology.

During armed conflicts, the risk of this violence intensifies. Political repression intersects with patriarchal discourse, while mechanisms of protection and accountability weaken, turning the digital space into a direct extension of real-world battlefields.

This article focuses on analyzing the experiences of six Sudanese women, including political activists, journalists, and human rights defenders, who were subjected to digital violence during the war. The analysis is based on in-depth qualitative interviews aimed at understanding patterns of targeting and their psychological and social impacts, without presenting an opinion piece.

Between the War and the Hashtags: An Unsafe Sphere

Throughout the previous periods, the Sudanese digital sphere functioned as an outlet for free discussions and exchanging views. However, with the escalation of armed conflict, it has transformed into a new space of targeted violence against women.

Platforms such as Facebook and X have become spaces for organized targeting, where campaigns are launched against political activists, journalists, and human rights defenders. Interviews indicate that these campaigns often originate from political accounts or groups aligned with parties to the conflict.

Data drawn from the interviews reveal that targeting is directly linked to the participants’ political views, feminist activism, or calls for peace. This renders women’s digital presence a high-risk act, requiring a heightened level of digital security awareness.

Methodology

Despite the limited number of participants, the depth of the interviews allowed for the identification of recurring patterns with analytical significance.

This article is based on six semi-structured qualitative interviews with participants selected through feminist and human rights networks, based on their direct exposure to digital violence over the past two years.

The interviews addressed themes including the nature of violations, platforms used, psychological and social impacts, protection mechanisms, and coping strategies.

Interviews were conducted in a safe environment, with confidentiality and anonymity ensured, and personal narratives adopted as a central entry point for analysis.

Patterns of Digital Violence: Weapons of Fear and Exclusion

Moving from the broader context to lived experience, the interviews reveal clear and recurring patterns of online gender-based digital violence (OGBV).

Four out of six participants reported being subjected to coordinated defamation campaigns, including hashtags accusing them of “treason” or “moral corruption.” Such accusations are common in the Sudanese context and are used to strip women of political and moral legitimacy.

Three participants identified Facebook as the most frequently used platform in these attacks, due to its wide reach and ease of content circulation, while two participants described X as a primary space for political incitement.

The attacks were not limited to individual comments, but took the form of sustained campaigns employing multiple tactics, including:

• Threats of rape and murder (reported in four interviews).
• Organized harassment and insults.
• Leaking of photos and personal information (three interviews).
• Reputation smearing through misleading posts.
• Digital surveillance and geographic tracking.

 

Participant — Political Activist:

“I received a threat against my child if I continued posting about peace, and they knew our exact location.”

This quote reflects the use of sexualized threats as a means of forcing women back into the private sphere.

Participant—Independent Journalist:

“Every threatening message sent to a woman is an attempt to silence an entire voice, but silence does not protect.”

The repeated threat of rape points to the use of the body as a tool for subjugating women and violating their dignity. The leaking of images and personal data reflects an attempt to transfer violence from the digital realm into reality.

Targeting children and motherhood reveals the instrumentalization of women’s social roles as a means of psychological and political pressure, aimed at compelling them to remain silent.

The Invisible Wound: Psychological and Social Impact

The impact of digital violence was not confined to the virtual sphere but left deep psychological and social scars. Interviews revealed shared feelings among participants, including:

• Persistent fear and anxiety.
• Sleep disturbances.
• Loss of trust.
• Fear for their children.
• Self-censorship of the content they share.

Participant—Journalist:

“I stopped writing for a while because I felt that every word could bring a new threat, but silence was more painful.”

Three participants reported deleting old posts or temporarily withdrawing from public discourse, not due to a change in beliefs, but to avoid escalation of violence. This demonstrates how digital violence leaves invisible scars that restrict women’s participation in public life.

Absence of Protection and the Rise of Feminist Solidarity

The absence of institutional protection exacerbated the impact of this violence. Most participants confirmed that turning to the police was not a safe option, and that digital platforms’ responses to reports were limited.

Participant — Human Rights Defender:

“I reported the threats to Facebook with evidence, and received nothing but an automated message, while the account remained active.”

This absence reflects an environment that emboldens perpetrators, where digital violence is perceived as an act without consequences. In this vacuum, women rely on informal support networks, shifting the burden of protection from institutions to the victims themselves.

Awareness as a Counter-Weapon

Although digital violence is used to silence women and shrink their presence in the public sphere during the war in Sudan, the findings of this investigation show that digital targeting does not necessarily lead to silence. In some cases, it prompted women to develop strategic digital responses, reflecting a growing awareness of the gendered and political dimensions of this violence.

Five participants reported tangible changes in their digital behaviors; this includes disabling location sharing, strengthening privacy settings, and systematically reporting abusive accounts. These practices represent direct responses to the psychological and social effects of digital violence, while also reflecting a commitment to continued public engagement.

Analysis of the participants’ proposals showcases 3 connected response pathways: First, digital security as a prerequisite for sustained presence in the public sphere; second, confronting victim-blaming discourse that reproduces violence and amplifies its psychological and social impact; and third, documentation and accountability, through preserving evidence and transforming individual experience into a public issue subject to accountability.

These findings further indicate that digital violence does not work solely as a silencing tool but also generates psychological and social effects that push women to adjust their digital participation patterns, which leads to reshaping their presence in the public sphere during war.

Conclusion

The investigations showcase that OGBV in Sudan is used as a tool to exclude women from the public spaces, especially in the context of the war and weakened protection and accountability mechanisms. The cases examined show that this violence reflects the continuity of existing oppressive structures, reproduced through digital platforms.

Furthermore, the analysis findings suggest that combating this type of violence dictates systematic approaches that include digital security, documentation and accountability, and addressing victim-blaming discourse as key factors influencing the sustainability of women’s digital participation.