One-year-olds among those raped, UN says

Warning: This article contains details of sexual violence that some people may find sad

The United Nations Agency of the United Nations, UNICEF, says that armed men rape children and attack children like young people during the civil war of Sudan.

Collective sexual violence has been widely documented as a war weapon in almost two -year conflict.

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

A third of the victims were boys, who usually face “unique challenges” in reporting such crimes and searching for the help they need.

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

Sudan is a social country, as it prevents the stigma of the huge societal shame that surviving and their families from talking about rape, as well as the fear of revenge on armed groups.

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

Perhaps the most shock is that 16 of the victims were less than five years, including four children.

UNICEF does not say from the official, but other United Nations investigations blamed the majority of rape on the semi -military rapid support forces (RSF), saying that RSF fighters had a pattern of using sexual violence to terrorize civilians and suppress opposition to their progress.

RSF, who is fighting this war against its former allies, denied any violations.

“The huge size of the sexual violence that we taught in Sudan is amazing,” said Mohamed Chandi Othman, head of the United Nations fact -employment mission when its previous report was published in October.

According to the evidence provided by international human rights groups, victims of the RSF stronghold in Darfur were often targeted because they were black and not Arab, apparently, with the aim of getting them out of Sudan.

The humanitarian response of the United Nations to Sudan is already suffering from a lack of funding. Recent discounts in the United States are expected to reduce the programs to help the victims more.

The horrific details of the UNICEF report emphasize the terrible situation.

Ontinia (not her real name, “after nine at night, someone opens the door, holds a whip, chooses one of the girls, and takes her to another room. I was able to hear the little girl screaming and screaming. They raped her.”

“Every time they rape her, this girl will return to blood. She is still just a young child. They only release these girls at dawn, and they are almost unconscious. Each of them cries and spoke in a coherent way. During 19 days I spent there, I reached a point where I wanted to end my life.”

As a broken country in the war, Sudan is one of the most challenging places on the ground to reach services and front lines workers.

The United Nations says that the huge number of people who were displaced due to the war made women and children more likely to attack-three out of every four girls in school age.

The destructive result of these crimes is exacerbated by the fact that the victims have few places to join medical assistance, because many medical facilities have been destroyed, looted or occupied by warring parties.

Modern American aid discounts may be at risk to limited services available to protect children.

UNICEF provides 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 societies.

Activists have relied heavily on American aid, and most of them were forced to close, according to a Sudanese coordination committee that monitors them.

On a larger scale, the United Nations Handicapped for Women’s Rights Protection says that women -led local organizations are vital in providing support to survivors of sexual violence. But they receive less than 2 % of the total funding of the Sudan Humanitarian Fund.

The BBC has learned at least one of these local groups, known as “leading”, was forced to close when the American financing was stopped.

The Sudanese defender of human rights, which runs a government unit to combat violence against women, said that this was not a major account, measured by tens of thousands of dollars, but enabled workers to reach about 35 survivors per month and helped organize the private initiative.

“Those who were raped by armed men” do not have depression. “

She added that the demands of war – find food, and the need to flee – do not leave any space to deal with shock.