Around 20 of the documented victims were under five years old, according to Unicef. In at least four cases, infants have been raped.
The perpetrators are said to be armed soldiers and militiamen, and the assaults have taken place in several parts of the country. Many of the rapes were conflict-related, according to Unicef, which states that sexual violence is being used as a weapon in war-torn Sudan.
The dark figure is also believed to be large, partly due to the severe stigma and partly due to the destruction of community services.
It's just the tip of the iceberg. There are undoubtedly hundreds of children who have been raped, says FN-organ's spokesperson Tess Ingram.
Trauma does not end when the assault is over. Many people Ingram has met have serious psychological scars, she says – including several who have attempted suicide and a girl who has received several blows to the head as a result of the rape.
According to human rights organizations, the assaults are being committed by both sides in the war that has plagued Sudan since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the country's army and the paramilitary RSF. Since then, at least 20,000 people have been killed and over 14 million have been forced to leave their homes. Parts of the country are suffering from severe famine.
The war in Sudan broke out in April 2023, when a split occurred within a military junta that had taken power a few years after the fall of the long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir.
On one side is General Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan, who commands the army, and on the other is his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the so-called RSF militia.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war. More than 14 million people have been driven into flight.
Both parties have repeatedly been accused of war crimes.
RSF has its origins in the notorious janjawid militias, which were sent out by al-Bashir's regime to spread terror and quell the uprising in Darfur in western Sudan in the early 2000s.
