Investigating the Role of the International Legal and Policy Frameworks in Addressing Conflict-Related Gender-Based Violence in Protracted Conflicts: A Case Study of Sudan 2003-2025

Abstract

This study examines how international legal and policy frameworks treat conflict-related gender-based violence (CRGBV) as a legal category in protracted conflicts, using Sudan's conflict from the Darfur crisis in 2003 to the war that erupted in April 2023 as a case study. Drawing on Protracted Social Conflict theory, the thesis approaches Sudan not as a sequence of isolated crises but as a protracted conflict shaped by recurring violence, unresolved grievances, displacement, militarized power, institutional collapse, and the absence of a durable political settlement. Using a qualitative case study approach and discourse analysis, the study analyzes how selected legal and policy texts define, categorize, and represent CRGBV across four discursive fields: international human rights discourse, international criminal and judicial discourse, United Nations Security Council discourse, and the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. The analysis focuses on how these frameworks construct gendered violence as a legal and policy concern, how they assign responsibility, and how they frame protection, prevention, and accountability across different phases of Sudan's conflict. The study argues that international legal and institutional discourses increasingly recognize violence against women and girls as a serious violation, particularly through the language of sexual violence, civilian protection, and accountability. However, a persistent disconnect exists between their aspirational commitments and their practical translation on the ground. Their language often treats displacement, impunity, detention, siege, service collapse, and insecurity as background context rather than as protracted conflict conditions that actively shape how gendered violence operates, persists, and recurs. This disconnection renders not only women and girls but entire societies vulnerable to protracted conditions of suffering, fragility, and marginalization. This limitation takes a distinct form in each discursive field. Human rights discourse expands visibility but frames responses through monitoring, reporting, and procedural accountability. ICC discourse renders CRGBV legally actionable but narrows it to what can be individualized, evidenced, charged, and adjudicated. Security Council discourse recognizes sexual violence as a peace and security issue, yet Sudan-specific language compresses it into brief expressions of concern rather than sustained operational engagement. Women, Peace, and Security discourse identifies protection failures and women's exclusion but remains organized through monitoring, humanitarian protection, procedural inclusion, and institutional benchmarks. Sudan, therefore, illustrates a central limitation of international legal and policy discourse: the gap between the rhetorical recognition of gendered violence and the lived reality of those inside a conflict where that violence continues to operate, persist, and recur without interruption.