Sudan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Internal trafficking occurs within Sudanese territory, including in areas outside of the government's control. Sudanese women and girls, particularly those from rural areas or those who are internally displaced, are vulnerable to forced labor as domestic workers in homes throughout the country; most are believed to be working without contracts or government-enforced labor protections.
Some of these women and girls are sexually abused by male members of the household or forced to engage in commercial sex acts.
Thousands of Dinka women and children, and a lesser number of children from the Nuba tribe, were abducted and subsequently enslaved by members of the Missiriya and Rizeigat tribes during the civil war that spanned from until ; some of those enslaved remain with their captors. Sudanese girls engage in prostitution within the country, including in restaurants and brothels, at times with the assistance of third parties.
There are reports of organized child street begging in Khartoum and other large cities. Sudanese women and girls are subjected to domestic servitude in Middle Eastern countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and to sex trafficking in European countries. Some Sudanese men who voluntarily migrate to the Middle East as low-skilled laborers face conditions indicative of forced labor. Sudanese men who migrate illegally to Libya have been rounded up, detained in prison facilities often outside of state control, and exploited as forced laborers.
Sudanese children in Saudi Arabia are used by criminal gangs for forced begging and street vending. Sudanese and Eritrean nationals are brutalized by smugglers from the Rashaida tribe in the Sinai, including by being whipped, beaten, deprived of food, raped, chained together, and forced to do domestic or manual labor at smugglers' homes; some of these individuals were not willing migrants but were abducted from Sudan-based refugee camps or at border crossings.
