Abstract
This paper explores the factors that underlie the silencing of rape among ordinary women and girls in Sudan. The international community has played a large role in promoting the visibility and criminality of rape in Sudan, particularly in the Darfur conflict of the early 2000s, when humanitarian gender violence programming increased. Rape has been described as an aspect of warfare, a disciplinary mechanism as well as an index of social and cultural (dis)empowerment among marginalized populations. Sudanese activists also drew attention to rape as an institutionalized and violent form of aggression by agents of the state against its population. But aside from exceptional cases and mediatized mass rape, it remains rarely if ever reported and even more rarely prosecuted. In fact, with the increased national and international visibility, one can observe a silencing and controlling of rape discourse by the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) as well as in Sudanese public discourse. This research contributes to understanding the deadlock in rape awareness and dialogue, and the exacerbation of polarized positions by suggesting that opposing understandings of gendered agency are at work which exclude victims from access to justice.