Raping one-year-olds: the harshest face of war in Sudan

BarcelonaWhen almost two years have passed since the outbreak of violence in Sudan, immersed since April 2023 in a civil conflict between the army and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the UN warns of the use of child rape as a weapon of war. UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, denounces in a report released this Tuesday More than 200 sexual assaults on children, including children as young as one year old. "Armed men rape and sexually assault children, including one-year-olds," the organization says.

According to data collected on the ground, 221 rapes of minors have been recorded since the beginning of 2024. However, UNICEF already indicates that this is a small fraction of the total number of cases. The reason is that survivors and their families often refuse to report for fear of stigma and social rejection, reprisals from armed groups, or difficulties in accessing victim assistance services. The data released this Tuesday indicate that up to 147 of the raped children are girls (66%), sixteen are under 5 years old, and four are only one year old.

"After nine o'clock at night, someone opens the door, holding a whip. They select one of the girls and take her to another room. I could hear the girl crying and screaming. She was being raped. And every time she was raped, she came back covered in blood. She was still a child," one of the children recounts. This is a woman who spent 19 days locked in a room with other victims. "The girls were only released at dawn, and they came back almost unconscious," she explains.

For UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, "the fact that children so young are being raped by armed men should shock anyone and compel immediate action." "Millions of children in Sudan are at risk of rape and other forms of sexual violence, which is being used as a tactic of war. This is an abhorrent violation of international law and could constitute a war crime. It must stop," she adds.

Although the report does not specify who is responsible for the violations, a report from last October The United Nations pointed to the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). "It is part of a pattern aimed at terrorizing and punishing civilians [...] and suppressing any opposition to their advances," it stated, including among the paramilitary practices gang rapes and kidnappings and detention of victims "in conditions that amount to sexual slavery." The RSF, a militia with around 100,000 men, denies the accusations.

Fear of this situation is driving many women and girls to abandon their homes and flee to other cities, where they often end up in informal displacement centers or communities with few resources. And that, according to the UN, does not free them from the risk of sexual violence. The consequences include childhood psychological trauma, isolation, or, as already mentioned, family rejection, which is aggravated in cases of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, or serious injuries.

"They forced me into a large car. They took me to a place next to a railway station, and three people raped me. I couldn't confront my family about what happened to me [...] Now I'm nine months pregnant. I was close to committing suicide," explains another victim.

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"Widespread sexual violence in Sudan has instilled terror in people, especially children," Russell warns. "Parties to the conflict, and those with influence, must do everything possible to end these grave violations against children. These scars of war are immeasurable and long-lasting," she concludes. The agency is working to establish "safe spaces" and services for victims of gender-based violence, but calls on both the Sudanese government and the international community to protect children from the brunt of the civil war in the African country.

Sudan, where the war has already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, was one of the main destinations for US humanitarian aid programs. canceled shortly after Donald Trump came to powerLocal organizations dedicated to the protection of women and girls are key to providing support to survivors of sexual violence in the country, but they lack resources and receive limited external funding. According to reports the BBCAt least one of these groups was forced to halt its activity when the US government turned off the tap of the international cooperation agency USAID.