Of a year among the violated, the UN says

WARNING: This article contains details of sexual violence that some people can find anguishing

Armed men are sexually violating and sexually assaulting children as young as one during the Civil War of Sudan, says the UN Children’s Agency, UNICEF.

Mass sexual violence has been widely documented as a gun in the conflict of almost two years of the country.

But UNICEF’s report is the first detailed account on the impact of rape on young children in Sudan.

A third of the victims were children, who generally face “unique challenges” by informing such crimes and seeking the help they need.

UNICEF says that, although 221 cases of rape against children have been officially reported since the beginning of 2024, the true number is likely to be much higher.

Sudan is a socially conservative country where the enormous social stigma prevents survivors and their families from talking about violation, as well as the fear of remuneration of armed groups.

The UNICEF report provides a frightful window to the abuse of children in the country’s civil war.

Perhaps his most shocking revelation is that 16 of the victims were less than five years old, including four babies.

UNICEF does not say who is responsible, but other UN investigations have blamed most of the violations of the paramilitary fast support forces (RSF), saying that RSF combatants had a pattern of use of sexual violence to terrorize civilians and suppress the opposition to their advances.

The RSF, who is fighting this war against his former allies, the Sudanese armed forces, has denied any irregularity.

“The large scale of sexual violence that we have documented in Sudan is amazing,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, president of the UN research mission when his previous report was published in October.

According to the evidence presented by the International Human Rights Groups, the victims in the strength of Darfur of the RSF were often attacked because they were black Africans instead of Arabs, apparently with the aim of expelling them from Sudan.

The UN humanitarian response for Sudan is already under -financed. Recent cuts are expected to reduce programs to help victims even more.

The heartbreaking details in the UNICEF report underline the terrible situation.

“After nine at night, someone opens the door, carries a whip, selects one of the girls and takes her to another room. I could listen to the girl crying and screaming. They were raping her,” recalls Omnia (not her real name), an adult survivor who was retained by armed men in a room with other women and girls.

“Every time they raped her, this girl returned covered with blood. She is still just a little girl. They only release these girls at dawn, and return almost unconscious. Each of them cries and speaks incoherently. During the 19 days I spent there, I reached a point where I wanted to finish my life.”

As a fractured nation in the war, Sudan is one of the most challenging places on Earth to access the services and first -line workers.

The large number of people displaced by war has made women and boys more vulnerable to attack: three out of four school -age girls are out of school, says the UN.

The devastating result of these crimes is aggravated by the fact that victims have few places to resort to obtain medical help, because many medical facilities have been destroyed, looted or occupied by the parties at war.

Recent help cuts in the United States may be endangered even limited services available to protect children.

UNICEF has been providing safe spaces for children through a network of local activists who have established what is known as emergency response rooms to deal with crises in their communities.

The activists trusted a lot of American aid, and most have been forced to close, according to a Sudanese coordinating committee that monitors them.

In more general terms, the UN organization dedicated to protecting women’s rights says that local organizations led by women are vital to provide support to survivors of sexual violence. But they receive less than 2% of the total financing of the UN Humanitarian Fund.

The BBC learned that at least one of these local groups, known as “she directs”, was forced to close when the financing of the United States was arrested.

It was not a great expense, measured in tens of thousands of dollars, but allowed workers cases to reach around 35 survivors per month, said Sulaima Elkhalifa, a defender of Sudanese human rights who directs a government unit to combat violence against women and helped organize the private initiative.

Those who have been violated by armed men “do not have the luxury of being depressed,” he told the BBC.

The demands of the war, finding food, needing to flee, do not leave space to deal with trauma, he added.