Annual among those raped, UN says

Warning: This article contains details of sexual abuse that some people may find worrying

Armed men rape and sexually attend children who are such during the Sudan Civil War, the UN Children’s Agency, UNICEF, said.

Mass sexual abuse is widely documented as a weapon of war in the almost two -year conflict in the country.

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

One third of the victims was boys who usually face “unique challenges” in reporting 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 real number will probably be much more greedy.

Sudan is a socially conservative country where a huge public stigma stops survivors and their families from talking about rape, as well as fear of retribution from armed groups.

UNICEF’s report provides a terrifying window on the abuse of children in the country’s civil war.

Perhaps his most shocking revelation is that 16 of the victims were under five, including four babies.

Unicef ​​does not say who is responsible, but other UN investigations blame the bigger part of the RSF paramilitary rape (RSF), saying that RSF fighters had a model to use sexual violence to terrorize civilians and suppress opposition to their progress.

RSF, which was waging this war against its former allies, Sudanese armed forces, denied any misconduct.

“The main scale of the sexual abuse we have documented in Sudan is stunning,” says Mohammed Chander Otman, chairman of the mission to establish facts of the UN, when his previous report was published in October.

According to evidence presented by the International Human Rights Groups, the victims of the RSF Fortress in Darfur were often directed because they were Black African rather than Arabic, obviously in order to drive them out of Sudan.

The UN’s humanitarian response to Sudan is already under -funded. Recent abbreviations in US assistance are expected to reduce programs to help victims even more.

The hate details in the UNICEF report emphasize the terrible situation.

“After nine at night, someone opens the door, carrying a whip, choosing one of the girls and taking her to another room. I heard the girl cry and scream. They raped her,” recalls the ohm (not her real name), an elderly woman who was kept by armed men in a room with other women.

“Every time they raped her, this girl would return with blood. She is still just a small child. They only let these girls go to dawn and they return almost unconscious. Each of them cries and speaks incompatible. In the 19 days I spent there, I came to my life.”

As a destroyed nation at war, Sudan is one of the most prevailing places on Earth to access services and first -line workers.

The huge number of people displaced by the war made women and children more vulnerable to attacks-three of the four school-age girls are out of school, UN says.

The devastating result of these crimes is worsened by the fact that victims have few places to contact for medical care, as many medical establishments have been destroyed, looted or occupied by the warring countries.

The latest abbreviations of US help can even endanger the limited services available to protect children.

Unicef ​​provides safe spaces for children through a network of local activists who have created what is known as emergency response premises to deal with crises in their communities.

Activists relied on the US help quite strongly and most were forced to close, according to a Sudanese Coordination Committee that monitors them.

The broader, the UN organization dedicated to the protection of women’s rights, says that local women -led organizations are vital for the provision of survivors of sexual abuse. But they receive less than 2% of the total funding of the UN Sudan Humanitarian Fund.

The BBC learns that at least one of these local groups, known as “leads”, is forced to close when US funding was stopped.

It was not a big expense, measured in tens of thousands of dollars, but it allowed workers to reach about 35 survivors a month, said Suleima Elhalifa, a Sudanese defender of human rights who lead a government unit to combat violence against the woman and helped organize the private initiative.

Those who were raped by armed men “have no luxury to be depressed,” she told the BBC.

The requirements of the war – finding food, needs to run – do not leave room to deal with trauma, she added.