CHILDREN in conflict-ravaged Sudan as young as a year old have been raped since the beginning of 2024, according to the United Nations children’s agency yesterday.

Unicef said that 221 children, including boys, were raped by armed men, according to records compiled by gender-based violence service providers in the north African nation.

The war in Sudan broke out in April 2023 between the military and its rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces with battles in Khartoum and around the country. 

Since then, at least 20,000 people have been killed, though the true number is likely far higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.

Rights groups say that atrocities, including sexual violence and forced child marriages, have been committed by both sides. An estimated 61,800 children have been internally displaced since the war began, Unicef reported last month.

Yesterday, the agency reported documented cases involving children who were raped during attacks on cities.

More than 30 per cent of the child rape victims were boys, Unicef said. 

The victims include 16 children under the age of five and four infants. The cases were reported in the states of Gedaref, Kassala, Gezeira, Khartoum, River Nile, Northern State, South Kordofan, North Darfur and West Darfur.

Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for Unicef, who was in Sudan in December, said she met with victims who “endured horrors that no person would want to experience in their lifetime, and in the aftermath of those horrors, their suffering doesn’t stop.”

She said that many of them dealt with physical injuries and “serious psychological scars,” including a girl who experienced seizures linked to her trauma and others who told Ingram they attempted suicide.

Unicef executive director Catherine Russell said in the report that sexual violence, including rape, is “being used as a tactic of war” in violation of international law and laws protecting children.