Armed men in Sudan have raped hundreds of children, including some as young as 1, the United Nations children’s agency said this week, as a catastrophic civil war nears its third year.
Health providers in Sudan have recorded 221 cases of rape since the start of 2024, according to the UNICEF report. Among the victims, 147 were girls and 74 were boys. Sixteen children were younger than 5 and four were only a year old.
The report incorporates firsthand accounts by victims and witnesses, including one in which captive children are described as being selected by armed men and later returned to their quarters covered in blood and nearly unconscious. Some were subjected to gang rape.
The children’s agency recorded instances of serious physical injury, psychological abuse and child marriage. Some of the victims were infected with H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted viruses.
There is no comprehensive data about sexual violence in Sudan, but a 2024 U.N. fact-finding mission reported that gender-based violence, including rape and sexual slavery, was prevalent in areas where the war between the Sudanese military and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, was being waged.
The war, which broke out in April 2023, has been marked by atrocities on both sides, ethnically driven killings and accusations of genocide. The conflict has killed many tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, according to some estimates.
The 2024 U.N. mission found that both sides in the conflict had perpetrated sexual violence, but that armed men wearing Rapid Support Forces uniforms or the attire often worn by the group’s allies were identified as perpetrators in “a large majority” of cases.
Tess Ingram, a UNICEF spokeswoman and the lead author of the new report, said she had spent weeks talking to survivors of childhood sexual violence in Sudan. She was struck by the impossible choices survivors often face after the violence.
“Some people may think the horror and the suffering ends when the rape ends, but that’s not the case, especially in Sudan,” Ms. Ingram said.
Survivors must decide whether or not to the disclose the rape to their family and others in the community and risk being disowned, publicly identified or seen as a collaborator.
“In Sudan, socially, it’s the survivors and not the perpetrators who carry that cultural burden of stigma and shame associated with rape,” Ms. Ingram said.
Ms. Ingram said some of the children who became impregnated by their attackers chose to give their babies up for adoption, while others chose to keep them.
She recounted the experience of one survivor who grew up in foster care and decided to raise her child herself, because she did not want the baby to go through the same ordeal she had. But shelters did not want to take in a pregnant woman.
“Now, the baby’s 8 months old and still doesn’t have a home to live in,” Ms. Ingram said.
